Dave Astor's New Book: COMIC (AND COLUMN) CONFESSIONAL

If you work in the world of syndicated cartooning or publishing, you know the name Dave Astor.

COMIC (AND COLUMN) CONFESSIONAL (with the subtitle Finding Myself While Covering Syndicates, Celebrities and a Changing Media World) is Dave's book about his 25 years of reporting on syndication for Editor & Publisher Magazine. So, there are lots of stories about cartoonists from those years -- and Dave intertwines his own personal story here too. One that I did not know. There's more about that at the bottom of the entry, in the photo of the back cover.

Here are a few photos from the book:

Garry Trudeau and wife Jane Pauley, 1990.

Milton Caniff and Charles Schulz, 1987.

Here's Dave:

The part-humorous Comic (and Column) Confessional -- which has endorsements from Gary Larson ("The Far Side"), Lynn Johnston ("For Better or For Worse"), Mort Walker ("Beetle Bailey"), and others on its back cover -- includes anecdotes about cartoonists, material about changes in the syndication and media worlds, personal stuff, and much more. 

Interested readers of a possible mention you do could order a signed copy of the book directly from me (by emailing me at dastor@earthlink.net) or order via Amazon.

The just-posted listing has several temporary errors, including the wrong publication year (it's 2012 not 2008) and the wrong publisher (Xenos not Lulu; the book is not self-published). But the book can still be ordered via Amazon despite the errors.

Since leaving E&P, I've worked as a Huffington Post blogger; my pieces about books (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-astor) have drawn more than 2,000 "fans" and many hundreds of comments since 2011. I also write an award-winning weekly humor column for The Montclair (N.J.) Times and serve on the board of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

I hope you will consider buying this terrific book.