Here’s where I need help. Right now I feel like I have an almost completed puzzle in front of me; a couple of sections to go, and I know what the whole picture is supposed to look like but I just can’t physically see it yet. We’ve laid it all out over the last two columns -- heavy distribution in your own neighborhood; adopting nearby neighborhoods as your own; adopting niche, virtual neighborhoods and setting yourself up as the “comic guy” amongst them.

It’s a great start, but right now they’re a bunch of little pieces that are supposed to be incorporated into a bigger picture.

Let’s talk about Caleb Monroe. I’ve been talking to Caleb for over a year; we met at Wizard World LA 2005. He has a knack for roping in phenomenal artists, he’s a good writer, and his book REDCHAPEL is strong. I think if it came down to it, I could trust Caleb to represent my publishing company. I know he has the passion and the knowledge to not embarrass me. On the flipside, I’m pretty sure he’d say the same about me.

Caleb doesn’t work for me, of course. But what if he collects REDCHAPEL into a hardcover, comparable in price and size to POSTCARDS? What if he makes some inroads into neighborhood bookstores near him, he’s getting a strong cut of the list put in his pocket by distributing locally, and he’s managed to tap into that 13-year-old HARRY POTTER crowd that REDCHAPEL should easily be able to tap into? What if he’s doing on his end, way over in Los Angeles, what I’m doing here in DC?

I don’t know; would it be the worst thing to ship him a case of books, say 25 hardcovers, in exchange for 25 of his hardcovers? Media mail, save some bucks. Now I go back to my local bookstore, I go to POLITICS AND PROSE, who now trusts my judgment because they know my product has strong production values and they know I hustle it hard. They know I’m their local comic guy, and I refill their stock of POSTCARDS and tell them, “Hey, I got this other book, my friend Caleb’s book, REDCHAPEL; it’ll be great for the kids.” I leave them a free copy if they’re not instantly convinced, follow up and try to take their order the next week.

I’ll have a better chance of selling it than if Caleb cold-called them. They know me; I’m making money for them. I’m the local comic guy and the local comic guy knows what will sell. At the same time, Caleb’s taking my 25 books and selling them on his end better than I’ll sell them over there.

This way, instead of selling ten copies of POSTCARDS to a local store, I’m selling ten copies of POSTCARDS and ten copies of REDCHAPEL. We don’t send each other money, just books. If I sell his books and get a high cut of the list, it makes no difference than if I were to sell 25 copies of my own book. If Caleb, on the other hand, is having a hard time selling my books, that doesn’t adversely affect me; sure, that’s 25 books that won’t be in circulation but by selling Caleb’s books I still get PAID for them.

The system, essentially, weeds out the weaker salesmen. It’s sort of distribution of the fittest.

So Caleb sells my book and I sell his. I’m moving twice the amount of books I normally would on a local level. Then we add A. David Lewis to the mix; send him some books up in Boston in exchange for copies of THE LONE & LEVEL SANDS, or the upcoming EMPTY CHAMBER. Get Neil Kleid, the New Yorker, involved and he sends us all copies of BROWNSVILLE.

We take 200 books that are sitting in storage, costing us money, and we swap them for 200 books that are new to the area, that people in our neighborhood will want. We sell them at our local shows; at our bookstores and coffee shops. My local comic shops sets up a little “Jason Rodriguez Recommends” shelf; I’m selling him copies of these books for a better cut of the list than he’d get through Diamond.

The more people involved, the more we can focus on the genres we think we can sell. I make inroads with the history buffs with POSTCARDS, I push BROWNSVILLE on them, a book about Jewish gangsters in the 1930s; maybe set something up with Ande Parks to swap CAPOTE IN KANSAS or UNION STATION for copies of POSTCARDS; two more books that I can push on the history and historical fiction crowd.

So that’s where I’m at. There are a LOT of logistical issues here.

• There needs to be a central hub, obviously; if someone isn’t shipping books out everyone else needs to know.

• If the books come in and the quality isn’t what you expected, what do you do? Is it a risk you take when you decide to include someone in the swap, or do you hold the person with the sub-par product accountable?

• If the book looks great but reads like shit, do you even try to sell it or do you eat the loss? Is it worth sacrificing some of your integrity with your local distribution network?

• If you send the books back, however, there’s no guarantee you’ll get yours back.

• What do you do if someone representing your book isn’t doing right by your product? Not selling it is one thing, but what if he or she is just a downright nasty person with no people skills whatsoever? What if you get complaints addressed to you from local bookstores asking you to stop sending your “sales rep” to their shop?

• Goods lost or damaged in the mail.

• If I trusted anyone to sell copies of my book it would be Saul Colt, but he’s in Toronto. How does that affect the plan?

These are just a few of the problems with this idea; I’m sure you’ll come up with a bunch more. But I want to work on this; this is important. When I go into my local shops to sell POSTCARDS, I’d rather sell them 40 copies of four different books than 10 copies of one book. I want to set this up; I think us small-pressers NEED to set this up.

So, let’s get to talking…