After an absence that followed the cancelation of their 2020 festival due to the pandemic, UntitledTown has partnered with the Friends of the Brown County Library and Lion’s Mouth Bookstore and is making a comeback with a one-day event of readings from your favorite Wisconsin and Midwestern authors. UntitledTown: the Comeback Event will take place on Saturday, August 21 from 10am to 4pm at the Central Branch of the Brown County Library in downtown Green Bay. Almost twenty authors including Nickolas Butler, Rebecca Makkai, Andrew Graff, Miranda and Baptiste Paul, Amanda Skenandore, Pao Lor, and many more will be reading their works. The one-day UntitledTown event includes readings for all ages and interests, featuring fiction and mystery writers, poetry and nonfiction writers, and children’s writers and storytellers. “Readers, writers, and lovers of stories will rejoice to learn that they can expect the same great literary experiences they have come to know and love from UntitledTown events,” reads a news release from Brown County Library. Detailed event information including times and author bios can be found on the Lion’s Mouth Bookstore website, and participating authors’ books are available for purchase on the website as well. “We are so excited to welcome back authors and the community for this special event,” a post on the Lion’s Mouth Bookstore website reads, “We can’t wait to see you there!” The revived UntitledTown is planning a variety of literary events throughout 2022, with the Book & Author Festival returning in 2023, so stay tuned!

Pre-order. You might be surprised to learn that pre-ordering a book is critical to the launch of a book. Publishers may make decisions about how much marketing support to provide a new release based on the volume of pre-orders. Some even determine the size of a first print run using those numbers. If a book has strong pre-order sales, reviewers are more likely to review it, the media is more likely to hype it up, and retailers are more likely to carry it in stock and give it premium placement. If you know an author has a book coming out, please pre-order it. Write a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. It doesn’t need to be very long or a deep literary analysis. The number of reviews a book receives affects the algorithms for getting found online. If you don’t like the book, don’t leave a review. As my mother used to say, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Spread the word. Let your friends and family know how much you enjoyed a book. Share this on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or wherever you do social media. Take a book-selfie. Post a picture of the book, your cat lying across the couch with a paw on the cover, you falling asleep on the couch with the book. Follow. Many authors have Facebook Pages you can like and follow. On Twitter, many authors have accounts and you can follow them and retweet to amplify their voices. Follow authors on…

As gift-giving season draws closer, publishers look to retailers to stock up for the holidays, but this season, one of the largest retailers, Amazon, decided to drastically cut book orders to publishers. The cuts are due to space issues in Amazon’s warehouses as they make room for “bigger-ticket items for Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” Publisher’s Weekly suggests. This choice to cut orders has a significant impact on publishers, resulting in lower sales during a season when publishers count on high buy-ins. Amazon’s decision is especially hurtful to indie publishers who rely heavily or completely on Amazon for sales. The decision “will affect publishers’ bottom lines for months to come,” Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) states. Despite the fact that Amazon began as an online bookstore in 1994, its ever-increasing dominance and power creates a dependency that ultimately hurts the book industry. Amazon has no devotion or concern for the book industry, and its decision to cut book orders demonstrates just how important it is for book lovers to avoid Amazon for book purchases. The head of one company suggested moving more sales to retailers like Walmart and Barnes & Noble, but the best thing book buyers can do to support the industry is to make purchases from local independent bookstores. Purchasing from indie bookstores supports jobs, authors, and the local economy in a way that large retailers like Amazon simply cannot. Despite its convenience, Amazon is ultimately a harm to the book industry. This season, support your local community…