It's Almost Time...

In a couple of days, I'm going to disappear to rest up between the promotion of my Michael Bloomfield book, which I've been doing for the past month, and the -- much bigger -- promotion for this, my first physical book under my own name in 33 years.

A lot of people have asked me where they can pre-order it, so here's the skinny on that. First, though, some explanation. At this moment (ie, as I write this, on September 25), the pre-orders won't get you a discount. I seem to remember Amazon telling me that a book I'd pre-ordered from them might drop in price, and since I wasn't going to be charged until the book shipped, the amount I paid would reflect the price on the day it was shipped. You may or may not get a deal like this. You will if you wait, most likely.

What I vastly prefer for you to do is to patronize your local independent bookstore, because giants like Amazon threaten their existence. Indies tend to know their local communities and select the books they sell accordingly. An alarming number of them are literal mom-and-pop stores, family businesses. They mean a lot to your community, and any writers who may live in your community.

If you want an inscribed copy of the book, you're going to have to see me in person. I really, really, don't want to drive to the post office to mail one off to you, and no, I don't get hundreds of free copies  when the book comes out. You can get inscribed -- or merely signed -- copies ("inscribed" means my writing "To Joe: I promise I'll pay you that $10 one of these days" or something; "signed" means just my signature) at my November 6th appearance at the Texas Book Festival here in Austin or at the release party at Book People on November 19th. Book People will also have signed books for sale after that, and they'll be available via mail order.

I also hope that there will be a modest book tour, although publishers no longer do them as a matter of course. I'd like to do a West Coast tour via Amtrak -- San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco/Berkeley, Portland, Seattle -- and an East Coast one of Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston/Cambridge. The only way this'll happen is if people in those cities ask for an appearance at a bookstore, and the bookstore contacts the publisher. So if you get to work, that might work out.

Meanwhile, for those of you who need to do this on-line, here are links to the pre-order sites:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
IndieBound
and Book People in Austin.

I've written the pitch for Vol. 2 (1964-2000), and my agent will be arm-wrestling the publisher while I'm away. I'm hot to get started on that one, which will be pretty controversial and just as much fun to read as this one is.

And if you're just tempted to get only one, remember that Christmas is just around the corner!