Bookstore excitement? Yes please!

It's not very often that I get much time to myself at the weekend for blogging/reading/editing/writing/breathing, and this weekend was no exception.  If I had found a moment to myself I would have already shared the fact that my local bookstore has agreed to stop copies of Identity X. 

Previously I wrote about my trip back to the UK (read this post) and how I was planning to make a visit to the local library and to the local bookshop.  I had previously taken the decision that the best way of getting them to look at my work was simply to give them a copy.  I think when you are asking a local bookstore to stock your book it is a bit much to expect them to make a decision based on an eBook.  Or even worse to expect them to buy a copy.  How can they see what it looks like?  How can they know that the quality of the print is?  How can they judge the work in the capacity that they would sell it in?  From an eBook this is impossible.  So I ordered a few copies and handed them out without really knowing what to expect.

I cannot say that I thought the initial meeting was very positive.  It seems that the local people of Warwick, my home town, are a busy bunch.  According to Keith, the owner of Warwick Books, he had three visits from local authors all asking him to stock their book the previous Saturday, and told me there was no way to stock them all.  Regardless, I gladly gifted them the book, and he promised that he would hand it over to his wife and co-owner, Frances, so that she could take a look at it.

Within less than a week Frances has emailed me back, telling me that she was finding Identity X very exciting, a bit like a futuristic The 39 Steps!  And add into that the fact that she also gave me a couple of suggestions for the next set of reprints, advice that I am always happy to listen to and see if I can improve the quality of the product.

So thank you Warwick Books for taking a chance on a local indie author.  The first shipment is on it's way!