NIGHTLY READING THREAD: Welcome to Edition #82 of #GMGReads. Every night through this (increasingly) weird (and sad) time, I'm tweeting out a list of my five favorite books around a general theme—and a link to an indie bookstore where you can order them online....
Tonight I want to do something a bit different: One of the little-known facts in publishing is that "pre-order" sales make a huge difference to authors—strong pre-sales encourage publishers to promote books more heavily and print more copies, bookstores to order more copies....
... and all those pre-sales are then counted in your first-week totals, giving books a better chance of hitting bestseller lists. So tonight: Five forthcoming summer books by black authors you should pre-order right *now*, via The Lit Bar: bookshop.org/shop/thelitbar
1) Nathasha Tretheway (@ntrethewey), a breathtaking former poet laureate, has a memoir coming out, MEMORIAL DRIVE, reckoning with the murder of her mother and how that trauma changed her life. bookshop.org/books/memorial…
2) SA Crosby's new July thriller BLACKTOP WASTELAND has received a trifecta of raves from Lee Child, Dennis Lehane, and Michael Koryta. It stars a car mechanic and former getaway driver pulled into a diamond heist gone wrong: bookshop.org/books/blacktop…
3) I've recommended Isabel Wilkerson's (@isabelwilkerson) WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS before and she happens to have a new, timely book out this summer, CASTE, about the unspoken system that sorts and drives American life: bookshop.org/books/caste-th…
4) Editor Morgan Jenkins (@MorganJerkins) has a nonfiction book, out in August, WANDERING IN STRANGE LANDS, about her family's Great Migration and how it changed America and her family: bookshop.org/books/wanderin…
5) Alaya Dawn Johnson's (@alayadj) July novel, TROUBLE THE SAINTS, follows an assassin in New York's underworld at the start of World War II and the life that unfolds after. @PublishersWkly called it a "literary firecracker": bookshop.org/books/trouble-…
So treat yourself now—you'll be pleasantly surprised when the books show up this summer. And you'll really be helping these authors launch in the biggest way possible. Anyway, those are tonight's #GMGReads. What are you reading this weekend? Share! #avidreadersunite
