** Quick PSA: My next Kickstarter launches on Tuesday! **

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Some of you have been with me for a decade or more. I published Fat Vampire in 2012, for crap's sake. So you're probably thinking, "Dude. What do you mean with a subject line like, 'I finally feel like a real author'? You've been an author for a long time."

True. But for all that time, I've dealt mainly with ebooks. And don't get me wrong; ebooks are great. They're great for a lot of readers. They're also great for authors, because I don't have to pay to print them, or pack a box when people order them. Ebooks don't require elaborate (and expensive) paperback- or hardback-sized covers, and I don't have to worry about misprints or screwing up files in the same way as I do with physical books.

For over a dozen years, I've been an author who sold mainly ebooks. When I did sell physical books, it mostly happened at arm's length: People ordered and received them, but they never went through my hands. The printer held them and the customer held them ... but yours truly did not.

As great as ebooks are, they're just ones and zeroes. You can hold a reader that contains an ebook, but that's not the same as holding the book itself. And so for the 13 years I've spent doing this writing thing, I've had an intangible life. Books began on my computer and ended up on other computers, so I had no real physical anchors: no real objects in the world to prove I was here.

In the past few months, though, I've changed that. I've started selling my books in person. Some of it happens through bookstores and libraries, but a lot is me hanging a shingle. Austin is an artisan-friendly city, and it turns out there are ten or more book-appropriate markets within a half-hour drive of my house every single weekend.

I decided to try selling at a market once. Then again. Then again. And I became addicted. Now, whenever I'm in town, I spend part of my weekend driving to some sort of a market, setting up a 10x10 tent, and meeting new readers. It's one hell of a kick.

You're probably looking at the picture above right now, imagining me hawking books one-by-one to locals, thinking how weird it all is. I get it. No authors do this sort of thing, outside of a few crazies like me. But HOLY SHIT is it fun. I've never before had such a direct connection to readers, and I've never had readers who've read my book after meeting me in person. It's an entirely different dynamic. It feels like a throwback, really -- a way of selling books before the internet.

(By the way, when I get a chance, I'm going to swap out my "NOW" page (linked in the footer) for a "Where to find me" page. I'll try to keep it current, in case you're local and want to stop by when I'm out selling. I'm still finding which places suit me best, so for now it's still all over the place.)

Anyway, with all that prelude, here's what I mean about finally feeling like a real writer:

After holding some of my books and watching how excited new buyers were to discover them, I started hustling to get additional books available in paperback format. I wanted MORE. And MORE! Over one weekend, I reformatted a dozen books that had never been consistently in print and ordered copies. They arrived this week. OMG HOW COOL IS IT TO HOLD BOOKS I'VE NEVER HELD BEFORE?

I have grand plans for the future. I love hand-selling so much, I plan to graduate from the "one straight table" approach you see above to a U-shaped arrangement with bookshelves and browsing space. It'll be like a tiny little bookstore that only exists for four hours at a time, with everything I have available at once.

And man, I truly do feel like a writer now in a way that I never felt before.

About 80 of my books will soon be available in print. That many books won't even fit on a single bookshelf. I'll need two. And then I'm going to be able to step back and look at them, and say, "Oh my God. I wrote all of that."

It's not exactly the same as looking at an ebook library, as much as I love ebooks.

So expect more of this from me. And if you're in coming to Austin, be sure to check in. I'm already seeing returning regular readers, and I'd love to see you, too.

Such fun times. I'm digging the hell out of it.

JT

P.S: Kickstarter launches Tuesday. Woot!