The Joy of Trash Is Officially Out and It is Spectacular!

About ten months ago I came to the stark realization that I had just under thirty thousand dollars in debt, no savings to speak of and the Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place’s Patreon account was making about twenty-five hundred dollars a month despite the website taking up pretty much all of my time and energy. 

I had to do something dramatic and I had to do it quickly if I did not want to doom myself to a lifetime of crushing debt and/or become so unsuccessful that I would no longer be able to support myself as a writer, something I have done since I was twenty-one in 1997. 

Thankfully inspiration met desperation and something wonderful happened. Since I had had tremendous success turning The Weird Accordion to Al, the website’s least successful column, by a large margin, into a book, I figured that if I were to make a book out of this website’s most popular columns and features then it’d be an even bigger success. 

The seeds for The Joy of Trash were planted. I would create a book with all of this site’s tremendous strengths and none of its equally sizable faults, something anybody could read and enjoy and laugh out loud at, not just extremely indulgent cultists. 

This website is not for everyone. The Joy of Trash is. I was overjoyed by the response The Joy of Trash Kickstarter received. It did even better than the Kickstarter for The Weird Accordion to Al and it did not have the considerable advantage of being inextricably linked to one of the most beloved figures in American pop culture. 

I am officially pleased as fuck to report that The Joy of Trash is now available for purchase on Amazon and this website! At the risk of being immodest, I think it’s easily the funniest and most entertaining book I have ever written. 

I took my time with The Joy of Trash. I had it professionally copy-edited and proof-read for a sizable chunk of change because I want the book to represent this site and its eccentric creator as purely and strongly as possible. 

We’ve got a good thing going here at the Happy Place but it’s been a real struggle to make a living from it pretty much since its inception.

I’m hoping The Joy of Trash changes that. The Weird Accordion to Al, The Weird Accordion to Al: Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition and The Weird A-Coloring to Al all did very, very well sales-wise without seemingly attracting anyone to the site. 

That’s because all of those books are “Weird Al” Yankovic-centric so they appeal somewhat narrowly to the pop parodist’s super-fans.

That’s not true of The Joy of Trash. It’s all me, baby! It’s my soul and my spirit in book form. If you like me, then you will fucking love the book and if you fucking love the book, then you like me and this labor of love. 

Please consider buying The Joy of Trash through this website’s shop or Amazon. If you order from Amazon it can arrive by Christmas Eve but if you order from me, I will send you a PDF of the book to hold you over until I start getting big shipments of books from Amazon, which should be in January. 

I was hoping to sell a lot of coloring books through the site but ended up selling about 1700 copies of The Weird A-Coloring to Al through Amazon and about 50 through the Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place shop. That was not ideal, in that I get paid part of the money from Amazon two or three months from now but all of the money instantly if you buy through me.

Back when I was on Scribner and Abrams Image I had high-powered publicists and four or five months to cultivate interest and excitement in a new book. 

As an independent, I have no publicist, and also no publicity. The Weird A-Coloring to Al did extraordinarily well considering that not a single article was written about it, nor did it appear in even a single gift guide despite being perfect for the Christmas season. 

I worry that I sabotaged myself by launching a book I couldn’t be more emotionally, financially and professionally invested in at the exact time the world shuts down and goes on break for two weeks for Christmas. 

I would love to do as much press as possible for this book so if you would like to talk to me about my book for your website or podcast shoot me an email over at nathanrabinauthor@gmail.com 

But honestly, nothing I can say will do half as good a job of selling my book than simply showing Felipe Sobreiro’s amazing artwork for it. 

In conclusion (Jay Sherman voice) buy my book! Seriously! My career could very well depend upon it! 

Buy The Joy of Trash, The Weird Accordion to Al and the The Weird Accordion to Al in both paperback and hardcover and The Weird A-Coloring to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al: Colored-In Special Edition signed from me personally (recommended) over at https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop

Or you can buy The Joy of Trash here and The Weird A-Coloring to Al  here and The Weird Accordion to Al here