Tag: booksellers

Rolling Along

This week is going to be wild!

On Thursday, I’ll have an article coming out on Jane Friedman’s website on networking as a debut author! It was amazing how that opportunity came together; I just cold-emailed her the idea of doing an article on my author journey and threw in everything but the kitchen sink into the pitch. She emailed back that if I picked ONE of those ideas, it would probably make a good article. So I pulled out that strand, and she said to give it a shot! That runs August 14 at https://janefriedman.com/

On Friday I go back to my college town bookstore and do a signing there–I hope it goes well as well. Give us an opportunity to see some old stomping grounds, me and Bob. The owner wants me to talk the local newspaper to do an article on the twenty-year Katrina anniversary this month so Monday I’m going to see what I can do about that.

And I’ve also started receiving all the materials for the Possumtown Book Fest this Saturday in Columbus, Mississippi–schedules, directions, information, contacts, etc. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun! I’ll see a lot of people I’m familiar with from school and some I know only by reputation. Hopefully meet a few people, too. This is only the second year they’ve offered it, and I’m really proud to be involved. I would have attended last year except it happened on the day of my first signing!

Such an amazing week! And there’s more where that came from the NEXT week as well. Hope to see some of you around!

Standing on Principle

I’ve read a lot about boycotts of bad actors in the book world, and most of it kind of slides off my back. My books are available on Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, Books-a-Million, and B&N websites. I didn’t decide that; my publisher and the store-buyers did. I don’t give it much thought in the day-to-day.

But this morning I had to face something down and decide what to do with it.

I was scrolling Facebook and came upon a meme that was so deeply racist it made my jaw drop. I’m not even going to show or transcribe it here; that’s how bad it was. I looked to see who had posted it–and it was an organization I have an event scheduled with next month.

Well.

I looked at the comments–several people had posted, wondering if the site had been hacked.

So I sat down and sent the organization an email, alerting them of the post and saying I hoped it was a hack and not a post by anyone in their organization. I put in a link to the post and sent it off.

And I made a decision, right then and there. If I got a reply of “lighten up” or “it was just a joke” or “I can post what I want”, I was going to cancel my event. I didn’t want anything to do with that kind of organization.

About fifteen minutes after I sent the email, the post had been removed with an apology put in its place, saying they had no idea what happened and were changing all their passwords and securing their computer access protocols. From the dealings I had with them up to this point, this response was perfectly consistent with who these people were.

I’m a very small literary fish in a medium-size literary pond, and my event would not have made a dent in their or my bottom line. But I felt at peace with my decision and with how ready I was to do exactly what was right. Maybe it won’t make any difference in the long run. But it was an important decision for me to make.