Blair: Well Dave, I’ve got to say it’s been a pleasure having this discussion with you and Mike. I really enjoyed reading your conversations with Steve Bissette and Jimmy Gownley over the last few months and hopefully our discussion holds up to both of those alright. (Maybe we’ll even have to do this again sometime).

Thanks again, and I look forward to seeing you in July!

Mike: “Cinderella Liberty”… there’s a comic in there somewhere! Perhaps it’s naivety or perhaps it’s simply optimism, but I do think there are people out there that would enjoy the sorts of work we do on the fringes with our self-published works. Far more than recent sales would have us believe. I continue to find support for my own work in the most unlikely of places. When those allies are found, I am overcome with a sense of gratitude. It makes the battle seem a little less hopeless. It reminds me of two different quotes that I’ve collected into a category I call Mantra’s on my Ultraist Studios Blog Journal. The first was something you said in your conversation with Steve Bissette over at his Myrant page:

“Self-publishing for a living is somewhere on a sliding scale between extremely unlikely and totally impossible”

Which, so far as I can tell in 2011, is as close to a truth as I can imagine. And that in turn makes me think of something that writer Seth Godin said recently on his own blog:

“Your chance of winning is so vanishingly small it’s as if, from an investment point of view, there are no winners. Which means that you should play the game for the thrill of playing it, for the benefits of playing it to a normal conclusion, not because you think you have any shot at all of winning the grand prize.”

That can be said, not only for self-publishing, but for life itself.

I mean, we’re all going to fly into the ground one of these days…
… so we might as well enjoy the ride!

Thanks again for instigating this conversation Dave.
Both Blair and I enjoyed doing it.

But now it’s time to fax this off before the clock strikes twelve.
The family and I look forward to seeing you in July.

Mike Kitchen – signing off.