After a long and very winding road my parents are back home in Canada. I’ve thanked them personally for all their love and support, but I’d like to do it publicly as well. They truly went above and beyond by visiting over 40 book stores on their way home, talking with sales staff, community relations managers and store managers, and all to hand out an ARC of a book written by their son. The final leg of the journey saw them visit two Barnes & Nobles in Lansing and E. Lansing (thanks Sara,) Michigan, and three Borders stores in Ann Arbor (thanks to General Manager Susan at Borders Express, and at the two Borders stores Audie and Kevin, the Ops Manager.) After a short rest while they unload the trailer and get things squared away they’re going to pop into some stores in Canada as well. Wherever they went they were received with genuine interest and appreciation which suggests that book stores are open and willing to work with authors and publishers at the grass roots level. So I’d also like to send a global thanks to all the people that accepted an ARC of A Darkness Forged in Fire from my parents on my behalf. And for all those stores my parents weren’t able to visit I’m happy to say that Pocket Books has mailed out a very robust number of additional ARCs across the country. By the way, a big thanks to the publicity and marketing staff at Pocket, especially Kerrie Loyd, Melissa Gramstad and Jean Anne Rose (and no doubt others I have yet to meet,) they have been on the ball from the start and met or exceeded any expectation I’ve had, and I dream big 🙂 And while I’m at it, a special thanks too, to Subrights Director Lisa Keim who continues to surprise with new sales, publicist Nicole Meistch in Canada and my editor in the UK, Sally Partington. It’s a thrill to be part of such an exceptional team.
While touring the stores my father also made a point of checking out the history section to see how many of my titles from Stackpole Books were there. Many stores had thirty or more from my Stackpole Military History Series which was very gratifying to learn. Some stores had even gone so far as to group the titles together which I’m told looks very impressive on the shelves (and, to be honest, was how the series was designed.) My hope is that we’ll get more stores to shelve them this way.
Oh, and I don’t want to forget to thank my web page designer Tessa Sweigert. I wanted something straightforward, easy to use yet still visually interesting and Tessa has come through brilliantly with her design. More features are going to be added so stay tuned.
