What company will Shanghaied keep?

Apparently, awards sell books. So, I am looking for where Shanghaied may compete. And I am trying to figure out how to organize a book tour. According to my publisher, though, only 4% of book sales happen at bookstores. What?! I know. I feel despair at that too. Given that fact, how much time, money and effort does a book tour merit? But…

I like bookstores (and libraries). I can easily spend an afternoon in one, comforted to be surrounded by ideas and stories, characters and voices, with unlimited potential to meet our near and distant pasts, to imagine the future, to stretch my mind into explorations and discoveries. It’s a new experience (that I physically feel) to imagine Shanghaied nestled on a shelf amid all the other books, a tiny member of human creation.

The quiet among bookshelves feels like a reverence. While I can’t read all the books, I can read any of them. Real wealth is having that option. If a book offends you, don’t read it. Keep it from your kids, if you feel that is appropriate. But don’t force your dislike onto me and my kids. If a book is full of lies, there is another of truths. Trust the one that stands the test of time. It is a festering poverty born of fear (and thus, cowardice) to ban and burn books. Governments, churches, oppressors, zealots have done it throughout history…mostly in vain.