Four short years ago we published our first comic

strip on the web. We thought we’d take this opportunity

to chat a little about all things Unshelved.

First of all - four years! We started off with forty

readers, and as of last week we have over twenty-six

thousand. There was a time when most of our readers

worked in libraries, but this year many of our new

readers were civilians. Ours is a big tent full of book

love and customer service humor. You’re all very

welcome.

Last fall we started the Unshelved Book Club -

every Sunday our characters discuss a different book in a

full page of color - and it’s been extremely well

received by librarians, readers, and the authors

themselves. Getting personal thank-yous from the likes of

Ursula K. LeGuin, David Brin, and Dan Simmons will never

get old. Lots of libraries are printing out Book

Clubs and using them to promote books, exactly as we

intended. Read Responsibly!

They talk! After a few successful experiments in 2004,

we hit the speaking circuit full-bore in the fall of

2005, when we gave seven talks in six weeks. This year

we’ll continue the fun, speaking at state conferences for

Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, Connecticut, and New York,

with several others in the works. We’ll also be

exhibiting at PLA, ALA, and Comic-Con. And last but not

least, Bill will be part of a webcomics panel at SxSW in

Austin next month.

Our fourth Unshelved collection is in the works

and we hope to announce it soon. In the meantime we just

reprinted our second collection What Would Dewey Do?

. That means all three of our books are in print and

should be widely available. We also just stocked up on a

mess o jackets and shirts. Drop by our <a

href=“http://www.overduemedia.com/store.aspx”>store

and see what we’ve got - your support helps keep our

little operation running. If you work at a library,

bookstore, or comic shop and want to stock our books,

they are available through Diamond Book Distributors and

most every other book source.

What's next? With the advent of the Book Clubs

our original vision for Unshelved is complete.

We’re slowly making progress on a mainstream book that

Bill is sure will get us on Oprah. We’ve got more

ideas for t-shirts than we’ll ever be able to sell. But

since we both have day jobs and families, six daily

strips and a Book Club every week (plus frequent

travel) keeps us pretty busy. The TV show may have to

wait for a little while.

And now you. We make Unshelved to your

demanding specifications, and you reward us with your

laughter, your suggestions, your mentions in blogs and

mailing lists, recommendations to friends, and of course

your business. We couldn’t do it without you, but more to

the point we wouldn’t want to do it without you. We hope

that we get to do it for at least four more years. If we

do, it’ll be because of you.