Finally, It's on Amazon....

Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis was published April 1, and the first copy was sold (to Lynn Obermoeller) April 12. For four months I've been lugging copies around, selling them one-on-one to interested people, or taking mail orders, because

....Amazon.com's listing said "Not in Stock"!

Two local newspapers printed reviews: the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the West End Word. Too bad for any reader who wanted the book, because

....Amazon.com said, "Not in Stock"!

You get the point. If you want to sell a book, it absolutely must be buyable from amazon.com. My contract specified that it HAD to be there, and I would not proceed with any promotional efforts until it was--because that's where people expect books to be. They don't buy books from publishers or from author websites. They go straight to amazon.com. And if it's not there, they can look at plenty of other books.

The publisher apologized for this agonizing and infuriating delay, citing busyness with other matters and a change in distributors requiring a trip to Chicago and negotiations. Taking things into my own hands, I placed Meet Me on Amazon.com as one of the Amazon Marketplace dealers, and consigned copies to stlbooks.com, another Marketplace dealer just as good. But friends emailed me that Amazon.com said, "Not in Stock." They didn't even see there were sub-dealers. This reinforced what I have always said:

A book must be available through amazon.com!

Amazon.com says "In Stock" as I write this, but who knows, the next hour it may be "Not in Stock"!

The Book Cover

Here is the cover of Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis, Penultimate Press, my new book to be published soon. (I'm working on the galleys.) Thought you might like to see it. I'm in love with this book inside and out! ISBN is 978-0-9760675-4-2 $17.95. Well worth it.

If You Sign Your Book

If you sign your name in your book, you’ve “autographed” it. Putting a personalized note in your book, and then signing your name (example: “To Florence, best wishes, Catherine”) is called “inscribing” it.

In Meet Me (the book is coming soon) I mention that poet Jane O. Wayne said she’ll autograph but won’t inscribe her books – having once found for sale a used copy she’d inscribed to a very close friend. Picture sending a heartfelt Valentine e-mail to your love. Imagine that he or she forwards it as a Valentine to somebody else.

If you send books out into the world, these things happen. It is part of authorhood. It’s recycling. It’s all good.

I too sent an old dear friend a book inscribed to her. Now she’s selling that copy online at secondhand. Because of the inscription she’s charging rather more than double the cover price. Like, which of us should feel embarrassed?

Meet Me: Preview the Book

My book Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis, is in production, and here's a PDF peek at what it will look like inside. I include the whole interview with poet Tess Gallagher, then in St. Louis promoting her books of poems Moon Crossing Bridge and Portable Kisses. That was in 1992, back when publishers actually sent poets on promotional tours. Tess was once my teacher, as I say in the headnote. Enjoy it -- the book has 12 more interviews: Carl Phillips, Ntozake Shange, Harper Barnes, Eddy L. Harris, Eric Pankey, more...Meet Me is now due to be published by Penultimate Press in December. Pardon me for my pride in it! You can pre-order by clicking here.

Hast Seen the Galleys

Visited my publisher's office Friday. Here's where experience in designing my own self-published books comes in very handy. I saw 12 potential covers for Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis. They all featured charming St. Louis doorways and porches with chairs & wicker, with tile, with ceiling fans, with painted doors, porticos, redbud branches visible...lovely. I asked that the title be changed from script type to sans serif, because script type is famously hard to read; the designer should have known better. The title said "Meet Me" but in script it looked like, "Seet Me," or "Geet Me" -- honest! It has pretty much been decided that the book will have a darkish cover with two comfortable chairs on a porch. The scene seems to say "Meet me," or "We met and talked here."

Then today I saw the interior layout and wished to change everything about it, for my own very good reasons. I'll let you know if I win any of these rounds.

Finally, the Real Title

The book of interviews with St. Louis writers -- 13 in all -- has a name that the publisher and I both finally agree on. It's called Meet Me. It'll have some kind of subtitle such as "Conversations with Writers in St. Louis." I'm proud of it. You'll see it this fall. It's just the sort of book I like: full of successful-writer secrets. I negotiated for and won ownership for all the electronic rights to the text.