REIMBUR$EMENT collects all the scratch cards, lotto tickets, and respective shopping receipts that Holly Melgard has collected over six years—more specifically, each time she had to invest in her work instead of making money with it, as the introduction says: “Sometimes the work I do results in earning neither income, livelihood, nor play, and often I find myself paying to work rather than being paid for work. Whenever this happens, I count my losses and take my chances gambling for alternatives.”

One copy of REIMBUR$EMENT costs the equivalent of the entire gambling stake plus the production costs claimed by Lulu: $329.53. In such a way, REIMBUR$EMENT addresses the typical economic imbalance of experimental print-on-demand and poetry ventures with a propensity for self-exploitation. It contrasts the idealization of print-on-demand as a means of liberation and self-empowerment with reference to the sustenance that makes the work possible in the first place. “Reimbursement is for the work,” it correspondingly says on the front matter.

Furthermore, REIMBUR$EMENT exposes the different economies of digital and analog media: alongside the printed book, Troll Thread also offers a PDF download, which—following the “gratis mentality” of the internet—is available for free. Through this, it becomes clear that ultimately both profit models fail: while the author doesn’t earn anything from the PDF at all, the printed copy will likely find only very few buyers because of its high price tag.

Like all blurbs from Troll Thread on Lulu, the blurb for this book ironically follows the “How to ...” pattern. It reads: “HOW TO PLAY. HOW TO PLAY. HOW TO PLAY. HOW TO PLAY. HOW TO PLAY.” The repetition is due to the minimum number of characters required for blurbs on Lulu.