• If anybody’s going to the Rally to Restore Sanity this weekend, or is in fact going anywhere else at any time, and you want to print out something fun to introduce folks (whether their names be Stewart, Colbert, or anything at all really) to our little book and the story behind it, here is a printable PDF for any use whatsoever

• More media mentions! The Atlantic Wire and The Awl both capitalize on the Glenn Beck angle. (We’ve now got audio of that, below.) A rather more personal write-up at Connective Visions, and a nice interview with contributor Pelotard at the Litopia homepage. Pelotard’s got exactly the right idea: contributors! Solicit your local press! This is your victory too!

• What happens a few days after a bunch of people order books? A bunch of people start receiving books in the mail! We’ve seen tweet after tweet of folks excitedly opening their Amazon boxes to discover our thick, shiny stack of pulp inside. And reading it. And loving it. How cool!!

• We had a Facebook event for the Oct 26 launch date, but that date’s now passed. So we’ve set up a new Facebook page for ongoing participation — some people are posting photos, and David made a little prediction photocomic. Anyone who wants to take pictures, or share their thoughts on the book, or discover prediction slips out in the world (as David did! Scarily!) is urged to do so on the new Facebook page!

• Here’s the Glenn Beck audio from the 27th. It’s possible he’s mentioned us again — or mentioned taking the top spot in general — in the days since, but we haven’t heard from anyone who’s listened to the program. This bit’s about three minutes long, and of course we posted a partial transcript yesterday.

Anyone who knows Roger Ebert or Rachel Maddow, have them drop us a line, willya?

And remember that MOD is still under $10 on Amazon if you’re interested in joining the culture of death! I promise that every new sale is another tiny pea beneath Glenn Beck’s many mattresses.

• We’ve been sending out so many confirmation emails to folks who’ve asked us for the free ebook versions (coming soon!) that Gmail has throttled our outgoing mail. This has slowed us down a bit on responses, but rest assured we are still receiving everything fine. Keep sending in those receipts.

• Speaking of which, anybody who has, in the past, successfully formatted a Kindle .mobi file and would like to help us, please email us. This is hard UPDATE: We’re set for now!

• Finally — David wrote up a thing on Wondermark today about what’s next for MOD:

Machine of Death rose to #1 on Amazon and stayed there for over twenty-four hours. We accomplished everything we set out to do. Agents, publishers, retailers, distributors, well-wishers and the press have been flooding our email inbox. I can’t stress this enough: It worked. We won!

Once we hit #1, I called an agent I’ve worked with in the past — one who’d tried to sell MOD before but just couldn’t find anyone who wanted it — and he sprung instantly into action. Doors that were once closed started positively flying open before us. Although some big publishers have now approached us about buying the rights and doing a new edition of the book, we have declined. That ship has sailed. We are the publisher.

We also realized that we had an opportunity here to gain a level. We could have struck a deal with a publisher, potentially even a lucrative one, that would have been nice in the short term and could probably have led to interesting places. But we have larger goals than just signing a book deal, and we realized we could play the long game here, not just for our benefit — but for the benefit of our friends and colleagues in webcomics as well.

And so in the last few days, using resources offered to us that previously would have been absolutely inconceivable, we have laid the groundwork for a complex but amazing publishing/distribution structure that, in the future, should hopefully allow us to get not just Machine of Death, but also all TopatoCo-published and TopatoCo-partnered books into regular bookstore/retail channels, both in the U.S. and abroad. Ryan, Matt and I are harnessing this amazing rising flood-tide to lift all the boats we can find, all the ropes we managed to grab hold of when the waters hit.

Much has yet to be settled on this front, so I will simply say it remains a carefully considered work-in-progress and I expect to make more important announcements about this in time.

TopatoCo is, of course, the publisher/distribution company that handles merchandise for both Ryan’s Dinosaur Comics and David’s Wondermark, and in the last year or so, TopatoCo’s been publishing great new editions of comics such as A Softer World, Problem Sleuth, Nedroid, Hark! A Vagrant, and most recently Questionable Content. TopatoCo’s business has always been mostly a direct-to-consumer model, but, guys — what we’ve done here has changed everything. We are setting some pretty cool goals for the future, and we absolutely want to drag our friends and colleagues up with us.

International folks, check the shipping prices for MOD on TopatoCo. Don’t know how they’ll compare to Amazon — it’s a heavy book — but it might be more reasonable for some, and if you want any other TopatoCo merchandise as well, you can always request a Flat Rate box and cram it full of T-shirts and everything else, amortizing the cost somewhat!

• Hugs to all and to all a good night