The Pulpwood Queens Shares News of Author, Amy Stewart!

Dear Readers,

Today on Shelf Awareness there was a very special feature on author, Amy Stewart is now an Official Pulpwood Queen Book Club Selection. Email me at kathy@beautyandthebook.com and I'll send you the current list!

Check out this very interesting and amazing story below!


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A Work in Progress: The Last Bookstore in America
　
Last winter Amy Stewart, bestselling author of Wicked Plants and Flower Confidential and new co-owner of Eureka Books, Eureka, Calif., was with her colleagues in the store during a raging storm. After hours of no customers, she said, "It feels like we're the last bookstore in America."
The comment sparked this idea: if Eureka Books really were the last bookstore, how would that have happened? Stewart, who had published only nonfiction before, then began a novel with that scenario that became The Last Bookstore in America. In it, Stewart envisions an electronic reading device called the Gizmo so popular that paper-and-ink books are rendered obsolete. Only a handful of indie bookstore remain and all of them struggle. But Eureka Books is an exception because it has a thriving side business: the distribution of a variety of Humboldt County's finest home-grown marijuana. (Humboldt is known for its marijuana cultivation.) After the owner of Eureka Books dies, the nephew takes over and eventually the secret of the store's success is exposed.
The local growers are excited at first because this makes legalizing marijuana a real possibility, but then big tobacco wants in and the little growers are up against the big conglomerates. Sound familiar?
"As a book store owner and author, it's my worst nightmare to think there were no books or bookstores," says Stewart. Working on the novel allowed Stewart to ask all those questions flying around in publishing circles about what that would mean for all of us as a culture. Would people still read? Would writers still write?
Ironically, considering the subject matter, The Last Bookstore in America, which Stewart considers a work in progress, is available now only as an e-book on Amazon and Scrib.com. For Stewart, she made the move mainly to receive feedback on the book.
On Scribd, The Last Bookstore in America is priced at $1.81; it's $2.99 on Kindle. Stewart picked those prices because after the e-publishers take their cut, she is left with the $1.05 she makes from a traditional paperback sale of her books. Stewart gives all the details of how she came to publish her novel-in-progress in this unconventional way on her website <http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ct.jsp?uz2871233Biz8400458>.
Using Scribd's social networking and her own, Stewart has alerted about 6,000 to the book's release. But those who fear the demise of the book at the tentacles of technology take heart; most people offering feedback have expressed interest in the book but also want to wait to read a printed copy. So far there are no plans for a printed version of The Last Bookstore in America, but in this strange new world you never know.--Bridget Kinsella <mailto:bridgetkinsella@yahoo.com>

Her book store, Eureka Books and website, www.amystewart.com needs to be checked out too! I am loving Amy Stewart!

Tiara wearing and Book sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick
The Pulpwood Queen