Austin Kleon

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Read Like an Artist Zine + Independent Bookstore Day 2022 events

To celebrate Independent Bookstore Day 2022 and the 10th anniversary of the Steal Like an Artist, my publisher Workman and I produced a free 12-page glossy zine called “Read Like an Artist,” with 10 tips for a better life with books.

Here is a very short list of the bookstores who ordered a ton (250+) of copies:

There are literally hundreds of bookstores participating, so check with your favorite local indie to see if they got copies!

If you live in Austin, Texas or nearby, on Saturday, April 30, I’ll be at two of my favorite bookstores here in town, signing and drawing in my books and hand-selling my favorites.

10AM-12PM – I’ll be at Bookpeople, our flagship store in town. Get there early — they should have around 100 zines.

2PM-4PM – I’ll be at Black Pearl Books, my hyper-local neighborhood shop. They’ll have about 25 zines, so they might be out by the time I show up.

Our friends at Bookwoman should have about 100 copies, too, so that might actually be your best bet for snagging one in the 512 area code. (If you’re down south, I just found out that Reverie Books has a handful, too.)

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Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics

My May pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is one of my all-time favorites and a bonafide classic: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.

Here’s my intro:

This a comic book about comic books. But it’s also much more than that: using the medium of comics, Scott McCloud explains a whole world of visual communication and teaches lessons that apply to anyone working in any kind of visual medium. To quote Art Spiegelman, the “simple-looking tome deconstructs the secret language of comics while casually revealing secrets of time, space, art and the cosmos!”  Originally published in the early 90s, this book has become a contemporary classic, and is in my top 10 all-time influential books on my own practice. Even if you’re not at all interested in comics, I promise that you will learn something from McCloud. And who knows? It might even open up a whole genre for you. I love this book because after you read it, you see the whole world differently. 

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