Quimby’s bookstore, the Wicker Park mecca for independently-published and small press books, comics, and zines, celebrated the launch of David David Katzman’s new book, “A Greater Monster”, Thursday night.
“A Greater Monster” is about an ad executive who goes on two hallucinogenic trips before breaking into an alternate reality. Katzman calls it a “psychedelic fairy tale.” It was 7 years in the making and features 65 pages of illustration and links to two websites. Katzman worked with three professional musicians and a sound engineer to compose the music posted at one of the websites. The second link features an animated sequence from the book.
Katzman said the decision to include multimedia elements “happened very organically, as I was writing it.”
He said one of the main themes of the novel was changing perspective and point of view and instead of just accomplishing that through the point of view of the main character, he said he “wanted to change the perspective and point of view of a novel and of a reader.”
Quimby’s, according to their site, favors “the unusual, the aberrant, the saucy and the lowbrow.” They’re carrying Kaztman’s book on consignment, which they’ll do for any title that costs less than $25 retail, without review. “That’s one of the things that we’re really proud of, here, is that we provide a platform for authors to say what they want to say without any sort of review process or our values determining what gets on the shelf,” said Neil Brideau, a Quimby’s employee.
The store also accepts applications from authors who want to hold events at the store, though store manager Liz Mason said they were now getting too many applications to host everybody. However, Katzman has “been around in the independent publishing community for a while and we’ve always carried his books and he’s done events here and we’re excited about celebrating that release with him.”
Katzman self-published the book through his own publishing company and is in the process of choosing a distributor now. The book is available at Quimby’s in Wicker Park and on Amazon. If you're interested in what's involved in self-publishing, Katzman has been blogging about the experience on his website. Here's a closeup of that cover, which I loved:
You can also follow Katzman on Goodreads, where you can tell he has good taste because he's reading "Cloud Atlas". I don't think I've linked to Quimby's yet. Go to Quimby's! They have the most comprehensive FAQ section of any website, ever. I did a lot of research to come up with that fact, obviously. In all seriousness, their FAQ is a great resource for anyone interested in self-publishing comics, books, etc, or for learning more about the store itself.
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