Issue
In 2005, when a freight truck pulled up to the front door of my apartment in Ithaca and disorged twenty-two boxes of the first issue of 400 Words — enough to completely line the living-room wall — it seemed impossible that I’d ever be rid of them all. (Not that I wanted to be. I’d never gotten a delivery on a freight truck before and the boxes looked great all stacked up together.) But. Suffice it to say that I had some books to sell, and a few ideas but no really clear plan for how to do that.
But the people I showed them to seemed to really like the books. They found them fun to hold and look at, but more than that — and this is the part that really made me feel good — people went way beyond the call of politeness in actually reading them. Having favorite pieces. Telling me, “I really liked that one person who wrote about x,” or, “that guy who did all the y, he was amazing.”
And then Microcosm picked 400 Words up for distribution. A write-up in Utne led to a bunch of direct sales through the website. I had a few stores that I dealt with, and friends told their friends, and by 2006, after I’d moved back to New York, I was shocked to go up to my parents’ attic and realize that there were only four or five boxes left: just a couple hundred copies.
And now there are just a few. Like, fewer than I can count on my fingers and toes. I may bring a handful to the next 400 Words reading/event in NYC, but for all practical purposes, they’re gone, and I’m going to be closing sales of Issue 1 on the website.
There are still plenty of Issue 2′s, though, so go ahead and order away! And don’t forget to send in your personal stories about work for the forthcoming Issue 3–and look for a couple of website-only themes soon, just to mix things up.
Thanks, everyone.
No Comments Yet