Barnes & Noble just assured me that my new book, “Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld’s Broadway,” is indeed out there on bookstore shelves and beckoning enticingly at you!
It costs a healthy chunk of change ($27), so I am certainly not asking you to go out and BUY it—but I would be ever so grateful if you’d talk it up, ask your bookstores & libraries to order it; maybe take to the streets with “ANNA HELD” placards or write to amazon.com that it is the best book ever published and that you are replacing the family bible with it.
My third book, and I still get that “this is SO TOTALLY COOL” feeling when I see it out there! If you’re curious, you can read more about it at my publisher’s Web site, http://www.uky.edu/UniversityPress/
I betch yall thought I was kidding when I said I wanted us to march to Barnes and Nobles as part of the NYC Doperfest: Redux and do a mass buyout of Eve’s book.
The first consumer review is in on the Amazon.com site: Five stars, and from Anna Held’s Great-grandniece, to boot!
MY copy’s on order at my local independent bookseller, who also got an earful about how the neighborhood would be sure to turn out in force to read it so he’d better order a dozen extra…
I went to Barnes and Noble last night to buy it but it wasn’t on the shelf yet. They PROMISED me they would have it soon, and from the dirty look I gave them, they’ll probably make a display in the window. Congrats, Eve!
Congratulations Eve. I checked at Greenwoods when I went in to pick up an order this morning and they don’t have it yet. I told them they better get it on order quick. So hopefully you’ll be famous all the way up here in Alberta.
That is so exciting! It must be the coolest feeling in the world to have people actually pay to read something you’ve written. Congratulations on a job superbly done, Eve!
I’m going to go call all the Barnes and Noble’s in LA right now. If they don’t have your book, I’ll demand that they get it ASAP, or else!
B&N 100 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles: 3 copies in stock.
B&N 111 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena: 3 copies ordered, only 2 in stock (woo hoo. One sale so far there. Cha-ching!).
There are 33 more stores on the list from the B&N website that are within 50 miles of the LA area. I intend to call them all for you throughout the day. But my boss just walked in, so I can’t do anymore calling right now. I’ll keep you posted!
Thanks, all—I really do want critiques, if and when you read it! Too dry, too wiseass, etc., etc.? Don’t tell me about the one or two typos—believe me, I have seen them with horror! But if you spot any factual errors, do let me know . . . Also, let me know if you like the photos—I spent a fortune on publication rights, and narrowed them down from over 1000. Had to really fight the publisher to get them all in.
Most U.S. authors sell US/Canada rights*; their publisher has a deal with a Canadian publisher/distributor to get the books out all over the Great White North. HB Fenn of Toronto is one of the biggest and best-known of these.
British authors usually have US-only deals with their US publishers; the Canadian distributors import the English edition, which usually predates the US edition anyway.
Plump Little Does/Authors like Eve, who lack the protection of a Sturdy Woodsman/Literary Agent, often sell World Rights to the Big Bad Wolf/Publisher. This means that the Publisher has the right to sell foreign-language rights to other Publishers throughout the World. The Publisher takes 25% of the foreign advance for itself and passes on 75% to the Author.
…I haven’t read the book, so I may have my facts wrong, Eve. But isn’t Anna Held one of the three women named “Anna” that Lawrence Welk loved in his life?
IIRC, she was married, so he didn’t include her in his dedications before every song like he did the other two, who were Chinese and Vietnamese, respectively. If you don’t believe me, look for an old Welk performance on PBS. You’ll clearly hear him say, “Anna Wong, Anna Thieu…”
Bad News, Eve. I rushed out to the Borders Books in the bottom of the World Trade Center at lunch to get my hot off the press copy, and they didn’t have it yet. The guy at the info desk said that they’d have it in the next few days, but it isn’t the same. (They didn’t have the book Uke recommended for me, either, when I asked for it last week.)
