If you would like to purchase a book......
Contact me at jim@jimstrahle.com if you would like to make a purchase or make inquiries.
My First Book Sale
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Once the cartoons were being published in local papers, I began sending samples to other newspapers and magazines. It occurred to me it would save money to put the cartoons in a book and it would also give me a keepsake. The price of each book drops the higher the quantity printed. I counted friends and relatives and decided to publish an initial run of 300 books.
I went to the bank I borrowed the money from to finance the printing and asked if they would be interested in helping me sell the books, perhaps hosting a book signing. The president of the bank was glad to do it. I ran a small ad in the local paper announcing when the book signing would take place. On the day of the signing I arrived at the bank during their closing period between 2 and 4. I knocked on the back door with my five boxes of books and was met by a very puzzled looking bank official. I reminded him I was here to sign my book which was to go on sale at his bank at 4:00 pm. He let me in and directed me down a hall and into an empty room containing only a desk and a chair. I carried the boxes in. The door was self closing. There I sat, in a small office with the door closed, waiting on the chance that anyone that might come to the bank would find me down the hall and through the door. I was contemplating my plan to sell books and what a miserable failure this was going to be. Meanwhile, someone approached the president of the bank and said, "Do you know there are people lining up outside?" He went to the blinds and pulled them back for a peek. "It's got to be Strahle. Get him out here!" Suddenly two or three people burst through the door and gathered me and my books and moved me to the bank lobby. When the doors of the bank opened, the flood of people came to buy a book and have me sign it. I sold all 300 books in the 45 minutes it took me to sign them,. What began as a disaster ended being a pretty good day. |