Author Copies
The publisher wanted forty-eight thousand pesos to destroy the remaining copies of my novel. If I collected them myself, there would be no charge.
I read the message twice. It said nothing about how many copies remained. Below my name was the name of a man I had never met, followed by Warehouse Administration. I had been dealing with Literary Management until then. Literary Management had stopped replying in March.
I wrote back to ask about the quantity. He replied before I had closed the window.
Three hundred and sixteen.
I had been telling people the print run was nearly sold out. I knew there had been four hundred copies. I had bought fifty myself, given away most of them and put the rest in my wardrobe. The publisher had sold some at the launch, though those figures had never appeared in a statement. My mother had bought six.
I called my brother because he had a van.
“Santiago?” he said.
“Quilicura.”
“That's Santiago.”
He wanted petrol money and the tolls. I said I would pay on Friday. He asked which Friday. I gave him a date.
My mother wanted to come. I told her there was no room. There was room beside me, but she had helped organise the launch and I didn't want to explain what we were collecting.
We left Rancagua at seven. My brother had brought a thermos of coffee and two bread rolls, each wrapped separately. He gave me the one with cheese and kept the one with ham.
“What's happening to them?” he asked.
“They're closing the warehouse.”
“The publisher?”
“The warehouse.”
The message said they were consolidating inventory. I hadn't asked what that meant.
The warehouse was behind a shop selling bathroom fittings. We drove past it twice. A woman in a fleece jacket opened the gate and told us to reverse into the loading area. My brother asked her to stand where he could see her. She moved without answering.
There were eight boxes on a pallet. Someone had written my surname on each one. I had signed a contract under my full name, believing at the time that this distinction mattered.
The man from Warehouse Administration was wearing gloves. He asked for my identity card, checked it against a list and put a sheet on top of the nearest box.
“Sign there.”
“Can I count them?”
He took a knife out of his pocket and cut the tape.
I picked up the first book. It was wrapped in clear plastic. The cover looked better than I remembered: a black-and-white photograph of a road, my name in red. There had been arguments about the name. I had wanted it smaller. The publisher said readers bought authors, not titles. Nobody had explained what happened when they bought neither.
“Forty in the full boxes,” the man said. “Thirty-six in the last.”
I counted the open box. Forty.
“You can do the others.”
My brother was looking at his phone. I signed.
We carried them out together. The man helped with two boxes, then returned to the pallet. When we had finished, he asked whether I wanted the wooden base as well.
“What for?”
He shrugged. He was offering me something free.
I said no. My brother said we could have used it at his house. By then the gate had closed.
On the way back he asked what I would do with the books.
“Sell them.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand.”
He multiplied the number by three hundred and sixteen. I could hear him doing it. He had always been better at arithmetic than me, though I had written about our childhood as if I were the clever one.
“That's over a million and a half.”
“If I sell them.”
He asked whether I had a place to put them. I said yes.
There was no lift in my building. We carried the boxes up three flights. He took the heavier ones without saying anything. At my door he asked for a glass of water. I had forgotten to put any in the fridge.
He drank it from the tap.
“Friday,” he said.
“I know.”
I put four boxes under the kitchen table and four against the bedroom wall. I couldn't open the bottom wardrobe drawer after that. There were books inside it too.
That evening I photographed an unwrapped copy on the table. I pushed the boxes out of the frame, wiped a mark off the cover and took another photograph. The first looked less arranged. I used that one.
Author copies available, I wrote. Signed on request. Five thousand pesos. Collection in Rancagua.
I considered adding Last copies and deleted it.
The first message came from a man asking whether I delivered to Machalí. I said I could meet him in the centre. He wanted it brought to his house. When I explained the bus fare, he stopped answering.
An old workshop friend sent a thumbs-up. Another asked whether this was a new novel. I said no, the one I had published four years earlier. He said he would look for it when he got paid.
My mother shared the photograph. Underneath it she wrote Proud of my son. I asked her to remove that because it made the post look like a favour. She called to ask what she was supposed to write instead.
“Just share it.”
“I did.”
I could hear a programme she watched every evening. She turned the volume down to speak to me.
“Did you eat?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I hadn't. There was cheese left from the previous morning, but no bread.
On Thursday a woman offered to buy ten copies. She wanted to know if I could provide a receipt. I asked what kind. The official kind, she said. She was buying for a reading group at a clinic. They had been given a small budget and had to account for it.
I contacted the publisher. Literary Management didn't answer. Warehouse Administration replied that stock had been transferred to the author and they could no longer issue sales receipts for it.
The woman said she was sorry. She would have liked to buy from someone local.
I told her I understood. Then I put the phone down and said something about her that wasn't fair.
On Friday my brother called. I asked whether he could wait until Monday. He said he had to pay a supplier. I transferred most of what was left in my account. I was short by six thousand pesos.
“It's fine,” he said.
“I'll send the rest.”
“I said it's fine.”
At noon a man came to collect a copy. He had read my post and wanted something for his partner's birthday. He asked what the novel was about. I gave him the explanation I used at readings. Halfway through, he interrupted to say she preferred crime.
“There is a crime in it,” I said.
There was. It happened before the story began and was never solved.
He gave me a five-thousand-peso note. I asked for his partner's name.
“Don't write in it.”
“I can sign it.”
“She might want to exchange it.”
I explained that I was the author, not a shop. He looked at the copy in my hand and then at me. He had understood that already. I put the pen back in my pocket.
After he left, I bought bread, eggs and a packet of coffee. I kept the receipt in case I needed to work out what the book had earned me.
On Sunday my mother came for lunch. She brought potatoes and a bag of oranges. I hadn't invited her because there was nowhere to sit, but she said she could help make room.
She stood in the kitchen doorway looking at the boxes. I told her there had been a problem with distribution. She put the bags down.
“Where's the knife?”
“Which knife?”
“To cut the tape.”
I gave it to her. She opened the box nearest the table and took out a copy. On the back was the photograph I had sent the publisher: me beside a bookcase, wearing a shirt I had borrowed from my brother. She rubbed her thumb over the small print beneath it.
“This one's different.”
“They're all the same.”
“Mine has your writing in it.”
She put it back and opened the flaps wider.
“We can fit two in my cupboard. Maybe three if I move the sheets.”
I said I didn't want her taking any more books. She said she wasn't buying them. She was offering me somewhere to put them.
We moved three boxes to the landing. The next morning my brother came to take them to her house on his way to work. This time he didn't ask for petrol money. I helped him load the van and wrote down how many copies he was taking.
One hundred and twenty. I subtracted them from the stock in my room, then added a second line to the page: At Mum's.