Samurai Shortstop goes on sale

>> Saturday, May 20, 2006

It's official: Samurai Shortstop is now on sale!

After two long years of work and anticipation, my first novel is finally out there. I suppose it's like sending a child out into the world on his own for the first time. I just hope Samurai Shortstop doesn't quit college and move back in to work at the video store while "looking for himself."

Thursday, the actual on-sale date, was a working day for me. I spent the morning at the North Pointe Barnes& Noble Booksellers signing close to a hundred copies of the book (the children's manager there is totally awesome!) and then had a school visit with the seventh graders that afternoon at Holcomb Bridge Middle in Alpharetta. Here I am with some of the lunch bunch who had been reading the book before my arrival:


Friday, Wendi took the day off work and we drove around to visit some of the Barnes & Nobles and Books-a-Millions within an hour of our home in east Atlanta. We found Samurai Shortstop in half the Barnes & Nobles and all the Books-a-Millions - except for one BAM where they had already sold their lone copy! I signed a bunch of books, met a lot of booksellers, and had a great time seeing my book on actual bookstore shelves.


Here's Samurai at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers at Little Five Points in Atlanta. As you can see, I'm a charter member of the Face Front Club. Oddly, B&N has coded Samurai Shortstop not as "Teen," but as "Young Readers." That means you won't find me near Printz award-winner John Green, you'll find me near Butt Wars: The Final Conflict. Hrm. Still, I'm happy to be in Barnes & Nobles, and in such numbers - every time we found Samurai at a B&N, there were three copies on the shelf!

It's been a hectic but fun two days, and things promise to get even better now that the book is out. Hope you enjoy it!

2 comments:

Fabricationist,  May 21, 2006 at 4:46 PM  

I walked an hour yesturday to the third street prominade here in Santa Monica, CA. I do it every weekend to go to the book stores and catch a movie if the time is right. It's my weekend exercise which I conclude with beer back on Main Street, thus destorying the exercise bit, kind of like Gattie's in the college days. I'd planned to face your stuff, but neither the B&N nor the Borders had copies. CA is giving you no love. I'd have made inquiries, but didn't know what good it would do beyond being asked if they could order me a copy. If you have press stuff I could drop off to them I will on my next journey. You know how to contact me. What was odd, was the B&N had a whole slew of baseball related YA books on a display for the start of the playoffs or whatever. You know me and sports.

Alan May 22, 2006 at 8:35 PM  

I suspect you won't find the book at Borders anytime soon - they didn't place an initial buy, from what I understand. I hope that if it sells well everywhere else they will later choose to bring it into their stores.

Wendi and I found SS in half the Barnes & Nobles we visited on Friday. In some cases, books just hadn't come in, but I think there may just be some stores that aren't slated to get it. I don't know exactly how B&N operates, but some chains have different levels of stores, like A, B, C, D, etc., where As get everything, Bs get less, Cs even less and so on. How this is decided is a mystery to me, because most B&N's feel exactly the same to me, save the smaller or more tailored university branches. Still, I hope you run across it in your further travels.

I can send you some stuff, but you can also find my complete press kit online at www.alangratz.com/presskit.html. If you want some postcards to drop off, send me your address - or at least the address of the flop house where you temporarily reside.

I keep hoping one of the chains will decide to put SS on a baseball or Japan themed display. We'll see . . .

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