09/08/04 WED:
---Worked on a mini-catalog to send out. Came up with this for an introduction:
Welcome to what I won’t call Catalog 145, although that is what it is, sort of. It has been almost two years since #144. A variety of factors have contributed to my absence--doing more business by computer, getting tired of recycling the same material through yet more catalogs, wanting to get caught up on things that the ongoing catalog cycle never seemed to allow, etc. etc.--plus I will admit a certain element of irresponsible laziness has crept in on more than one occasion. I could not have predicted it would be this long, however. The number of you who have wondered if I am still in business has been gratifying, and even those who I have remained in contact with via email often express the thought that my various feeble e-initiatives are “a far cry from a catalog”. This here does not purport to be a substitute, either. Since Catalog 144 went out, I have been keeping up the New Arrivals section, changing its name to Recent Arrivals, now thinking maybe I ought to just call it Arrivals Since Last Catalog. These are the new books, not used, that I have more money tied up in and most would like to have be known are available. I am only sending this particular list to people I have not heard from in a while, because my book shipments going out have all along contained printouts of Recent Arrivals. So this cataloggette would contain a lot of redundance to them. I hope to have another list, with fewer New Arrivals and more of the used and older new books, prepared shortly--to go to more recent customers and to people who respond to this mailing.
Of late I have also been slacking off getting orders sent to publishers, especially the ones that are parts of farflung bureaucracies controlled by bean counters. Some fine and autonymous writing and editing still gets done, and I know I have missed a lot. I have not been keeping up like I should. My monthly issue of Locus sits barely looked at these days, in favor of the daily NY Times and thrice-weekly DVDs from Netflix, to name a couple more significant distractions that perhaps not coincidentally started arriving about the time the catalogs stopped.
I hope this type is not too small to read. I know I already had small type, and this is even worse. But we will see how it turns out.
---Need to add part about discount plans in effect as of 12/02 are still in effect, since I don’t expect people to be able to use--and pay for--their discounts if I don’t even let them know what I have.