Well folks, it is a bittersweet moment of success for me, the books have finally arrived from the publisher! It has been a looooooong and harrowing path to this point and, even though the museum exhibit that I made them for has been postponed, and all the shops and galleries are currently closed I am glad to see this 3 year journey come to some sort of an ending.

It’s a very long story, but I’ll try to make it brief. In late 2016 I approached the owner of Alaska’s largest art distributer and one of the only publishing companies in the state with an illustrated book of poetry I had made. She liked the book but the publisher had just released 2 books of local poetry and she was hesitant to take on a third, but then she saw the small hand-bound book of owl prints I had made for my dad before he passed and she loved it. She proposed that I expand upon it to include ALL of Alaska’s birds of prey and incorporate informative text for each species. In January, 2017 we wrote up a contract that gave me 1 year to complete all the work and submit a draft for editing and publication in January of 2018.

 I spent the next year in a frenzy of activity. Over the course of 12 months I carved over 40 new woodcuts (some as big as 3 foot by 5 foot) spent weekends at the library researching bird ethnography and Alaskan history and wrote 70 pages of text, all while working a 9-5 and being a dad to my 3 boys. Everything was done on time and I gave the whole bundle of pages together with several huge rolls of original art for her to scan and edit into illustrations in January 2018. She was supposed to have the first edit back to me within 2 months for my approval and a little longer than that for her to digitize all the imagery and get my OK on. The deadlines passed with no word from her, after months of ignored emails, dodged calls and general avoidance from her I finally realized that she was never going to live up to her obligations in the contract. But still she wouldn’t be honest with me and just tell me what was going on, lies and more lies followed. End of story, over a year was wasted.

To make matters worse, in the intervening months between the contract acceptance and my realization that the publisher would not fail, I had been invited to submit a proposal for the Valdez Historical Museum’s 2020 summer season. This was a huge deal for me, my first real museum exhibition. I proposed a show based around the book and woodcuts, the museum accepted and we began to plan for the biggest art event of my life. When I realized the publisher was a worthless piece of crap and no book was forthcoming I had to act fast and get a book made, as that was one of the main aspects of the exhibition and laid out in my contract with the museum. What to do?

Around that time another publisher reached out to me and, like a drowning sailor I grasped at whatever rope was tossed. Unfortunately, I didn’t know at the time what a tangled web the publishing world was and it wasn’t until I had paid out close to 4 grand in fees that it was revealed the company had a hidden “shipping charge” not covered in the contract which added up to $1 per each book shipped, so if I ordered 100 books I had an extra 100$ to pay for that order, 400 books? A extra $400!?! Apparently this publisher had never heard of media mail and that books were some of the cheapest items to ship. It was all a scam.  So after investing tons of money to have these folks do the illustration placement, editing and layout I had to walk away, at their “new” prices I would be spending more to make each book than I would get by selling them.

To make matters worse when I tried to get my art back from the first publisher/art distributer that had started the whole project I discovered that she had been taking the art I sent her to digitize for making the book and was selling it to stores and galleries in the southeast of Alaska, an area pretty remote and accessible only by water, but with a strong tourism economy thanks to the cruise ships. I tracked down and communicated with 2 galleries that had purchased my works directly from the, publisher without my knowledge (or theirs, to be honest they hadn’t done anything wrong, it was that dishonest publisher who had lied to both me and the stores) and most of the work was already sold, with no money going to me and no way to reclaim my lost art. 

At this point I thought I was well and truly fucked. I had already spent over 4 thousand dollars of my very limited funds, I had no book, half the art for the book was missing and I had an exhibit coming up in a few short months that was supposed to be based around a book that didn’t exist. After threatening legal action I did manage to get most of the art back from her, but the damage was done. Up until that point I had a pretty good faith in the humanity of people and trusted the world, this bitch changed all that, now when I enter into a business relationship with another artist or gallery mistrust is going to be my first line of defense against people like her.

Thank goodness for the amazing community of local artists and writers who advised me to contact Todd communications. It wasn’t cheap, but Todd got me back on track, improved the layout of the book and gave me a good deal on publishing and distribution. We were on schedule and the book was on its way for just a few thousand more dollars. I was this close to making it all work out.

Then the Covid virus hit. Museums are shuttered, galleries are closed, the cruise lines probably won’t operate at all this summer and all for very good reasons. The impact was severe though. I had been planning on some pretty strong revenue this summer based on sales from the last 2 summers and had doubled up on my art presence, we had scheduled and paid for spaces in twice as many events as we typically do in a summer on top of having the big museum opening in Valdez. The entry fees will eventually be returned and god bless the event planners for Salmonfest, forest fair, the seabird and shore bird festivals and all the other events, they have been great about communicating with us artists through this whole ordeal, but now I have to take some steps to keep this book from becoming an economic millstone around my neck.

Here is my solution:

I am offering an on-line special for those who wish to order my book. The cover price is $12 but for $20 plus shipping and handling I am offering a copy of the book, signed and personalized, together with a 4x6 hand pulled woodcut print of one of the illustrations from the text, which alone has a $20 value. For your $20 (plus shipping) you get a $12 book and a $20 print, signed and dated by the artist.

If you or someone you know loves Alaska, history, etymology, birds or woodcuts, then this is the book for you.

Each book comes with a hand pulled woodblock print, everything signed and dated by the artist (me)

Here is the direct link to purchase

https://www.mythinkworks.com/workszoom/3548953#/

Thank you for reading and sharing!

Cheers,

kc