A.W.?

“Award Winner.” Try that on for size, if my grave is marked with a headstone, will the initials “A.W.” be tacked on after my name? Although my favorite so far is still “L.G.”*

Here is the link to Literary Titan’s book review: https://wp.me/p3cyvH-kyZ

And here the link to my interview with them: https://wp.me/p3cyvH-lop

I now carry a copy of Shanghaied with me most places and most times. So, last week, “out of the blue,” I walked into a bookstore in Berkeley, asked the manager to put my book on their shelves, and was told “no.” Catch 22: bookstores want a 40% discount and to return unsold inventory while Koehler Books via printer/distributor IngramSpark offers a 25% discount and won’t accept returns. Understandably, first time, unknown authors have this problem. After all, publishing is an industry and profit is its gatekeeper, without which there is no industry. When publishers report that only 5% of book sales are made at brick-and-mortar stores, what would sales be if bookstores got 40% margins? But publishers can’t risk those returns. So, so much for book tours…though bookstores feel good to me in a way that the internet cannot. The same way that FaceBook/Meta “friends” cannot feel like the friends I hug, the way an email cannot feel like a handwritten letter.

Shanghaied can now be found (and reviewed, by the way) on goodreads.

*Lily Gilder