This is the End...?

So today is Wednesday and on Wednesday the Bookscan numbers come out. And this week, for the first week since its release eight months ago, zero copies of Love is the Law have sold, according to Bookscan. That doesn't mean that zero copies have actually sold. The Kindle rank suggests that one-three ebook copies sold last week via amazon. Bookstores not reporting to Bookscan, like local heroes could have sold paper copies, as could any number of other independent stores and comic book shops, the latter of which especially tend to not report and often carry Dark Horse prose titles.

Of course, I've been busy. I've also decisively stopped linking to amazon, and readers don't respond to publisher links or powells.com links nearly as enthusiastically as they do amazon links. And I've had other books to talk about—The Last Weekend (an import basically only available on amazon and via mail order from Borderlands Books, and the All You Need Is KILL graphic novel. So, is this the end of Love is the Law? Eh, probably, unless something happens—an award nomination, an excellent late review, a murder inspired by the book. The consistent if tiny word of mouth Love is the Law gets likely continues to help in ways too small to measure on a weekly basis.

Barnes & Noble still has copies, which is "nice" to see. Nice in that returns usually begin after just three to six months, so there may have been sales and re-orders, or at least some mercy in culling the shelves. The book is the sort of thing a browser might just pick up and take home because it is inexpensive and looks distinctive. But "nice" to see is relative. Here's how it works:

I see my book in the store and think, Oh no, nobody is buying my book!

I don't see my book in the store and think, Oh no, the bookstore isn't even ordering my book!

So you can't win, though obviously high Bookscan #s are better than low ones. My usual link, to Dark Horse's own site, which ships from local Portland store Things From Another World, also doesn't report to Bookscan, so I'm not helping reportage either. I just find amazon viscerally loathsome these days.

What to do? There isn't much to do. This post can be seen as a kind of vulgar reverse psychology—now someone'll buy a copy of the book after reading that the book isn't selling, yeah! Ultimately the answer is just to move on to the next thing, which is getting a US deal for The Last Weekend and seeing how that goes. And maybe there will be no more novels after that at all, which is fine, as I prefer writing short stories. Even in these dying moments of the late anthology boom, there's still plenty of opportunity out there for someone who likes short fiction and who fits the "weirdo" slot lots of anthologists have.

And then...well. This just happened. Literally, I got this in my email, as a comment under a Google+ link to an early review of Love is the Law, right now:



Here's a Google translate:

Give me one good reason why I should even give a single dollar when you deal with is learning disabled and as a pariah? When you beg people to buy your shit - I'll buy some readers my projects along with the DVD of the film that I look at my roster and will connect with things you find on bandcamp.com. Tell me Nick; Why should I buy your shit when all you do is smother me? Now they are on an equal footing as you - and he said something pretty strong to my fellow TOC, because some of the readers who really do not deserve. I'm too good for them are my personal friends, you've taken a big bowel movement on those who have gone their own for years. Your friends turn around and do the same thing that they were vehemently against in 2004.
         Maybe sit down and give my work a real possibility then think about what I said - I do not say this as I am in English and using bing to help me say this, so my family can see this in Ofena. Think about that before you as someone who has learned everything yourself as you look like a child molester of your photographs choke. I am the attorney for the under-published; self-published and web-published - had not changed anything on that aspect. One thing he did - sold my work and had been in magazines for horror, science fiction and creative nonfiction. Sometimes the magazine pays very little but you pay the same - but think about that one. Look what happened to Jani Lane in 2011; When they found him dead in a hotel room by his own vomit, without a single dollar to his name. Let me ask you this - what do you think the money to go towards my novel when I make a sale?
        I will tell you - and donate to the ministries to feed the children. Donated to St. Jude on behalf of a friend who moved to Los Angeles and gave him the anthology that I have done which has become the most personal project I've done and had this project in my old high school. This project is going to my cup of tea for many generations - and my mission with my company expanded further the mission of August Derleth; to obtain H.P. Lovecraft in public high schools. I only project that is too much. Do you really want to choke something like that? I had to re-think what he did Jani Lane and one of my authors is really thinking of doing his biography, he asked me to co-write this but with the dark mind I have. I do not want to do something that has tainted his memory. - I've contributed enough to make him a scapegoat; but think about this - God had used a little project I have been thinking a lot about when I first published in 2007. When I rebooted it. It is my most personal anthology - so you really want to choke something like that?

This is the first I've heard from Pacione in years. O, Imp of the Perverse who rules the universe, you give me such odd things.