My Dear Hearts,
I am so sorry to tell you that it's really hard to find copies of my book Hello, Cruel World.
Last night, I wanted to get buy a couple of couple of copies for friends. I'm watching my budget, so I went to Amazon, who carries the book at the lowest price. I found out that the book is not currently available. Amazon says it might ship in anywhere from one to four months. I tried to buy it someplace else, and this is what I found:
- Barnes & Noble is carrying the book and say it's in stock… cost is 30% more than Amazon
- I found about 20 copies at www.abe.com. 8 copies are available at cost. 9 copies are available from US$ 26 to US$ 60.
- 11 copies of the book are available on eBay. 5 are reasonably priced, the rest range from $47 to $122.
- Borders says it's on back order, and will ship in 1 to 4 weeks.
- Powells Books in Portland has one copy left.
- Elliot Bay Books in Seattle has 3 copies.
- St. Marks Bookshop NYC and Giovanni's Room in Philadelphia say it can be special ordered, time depending on availability.
- Strand Bookstore NYC has no copies.
My literary agent, Malaga Baldi, and I are working with my publisher, Seven Stories Press to fix this. They publish some magnificent titles, and I'm honored to be part of their stable. But the economy is the economy, and I'm told that it looks like the book will go into it's 4th printing and back on the shelves sometime in the first week of October. In the meantime…
-
The book is available at many school and public libraries. - There are also many LGBTQetc centers who keep a copy of the book on hand.
- You can download a free four-page version of the book, which I'm pretty sure will do a good job at helping you stay alive for a good year or so.
- Hello, Cruel World is available as an ebook. It's easy to find. I hate it. It looks ugly. But it's cheap, and all the words and most of the pictures made it into the electronic editions.
- You can find great tips from me and a whole slew of teens, freaks, and other outlaws by searching the Twitter hashtag #stayalive. I'm sorry, but you will need to set up a Twitter account to search it. But, then you can contribute #stayalive suggestions of your own. Instant interactivity, plus everyone wins and gets to stay alive.
Again, my most sincere apologies for allowing this to go un-noticed. I'll do the best I can to make reasonably priced copies of the book available again as soon as possible. In the meantime, if you know where there's a stash of these books, please post a link in the comments section of this blog. Thanks.
Love,
Kate
actually, you don’t really need to have a twitter acct to follow.
you can go to search.twitter.com, search for #stayalive and see what’s listed or add an rss feed for the search to your fave reader with this address: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23stayalive
~z
Kate,
It looks like Amazon has a Kindle edition. Kindle books are also readable on a wide variety of other devices, such as iPhones, PCs, Macs, and Android phones – no Kindle required.
Of course, I’m biased towards recommending this, as I worked on large parts of the Topaz conversion process which is probably what made this possible to begin with. 🙂
Fluffy… Thanks, and yep, I know about the Kindle edition. I hate it. Maybe it’s better on other readers, but it’s poorly laid out compared to the hard copy book. The plus is that all the words are there, and most of the pictures. xo K
When I saw @phinli’s RT, I went and checked Google Books – there’s no preview available. Perhaps even a limited one might be helpful?
I have a copy and I’m not giving it up! Seriously, this book changed my life. Thanks Kate for showing me that it’s okay to be what I am.
I bought my copy a couple years back on a B&N gift card-became one of the most useful gifts ever, must say.
I looked up different zip codes w/ the “find in-store” button at B&N & was able to find some stores in stock now near various locales across US–seemed to cover every region-seems like buying in store at B&N has a decent stock if the added $ & buying in-store is workable.
The site I found not listed above was http://www.textbooks.com – came up in a search as having 3 to 6 used copies for a cheaper price range than B&N.
I’ve had good luck with St. Marks being able to get books on special order for those in NYC area-and there’s a few of the B&N’s in NYC that have it in stock.
I’ve been following the stayalive tag on Twitter which has amazed me @ all the good that can come from Twitter. Thank you for the books & the Twitter tag/tweets/blogs–I hope the info above can help someone a bit.
(The ‘net research late on a not-so-good evening helped me #stayalive – if I can find any other places to find the book in stock I’ll post them in a lower-character-count post! 🙂
Viviane, thanks for the heads up on Google Books. I’ve alerted Seven Stories Press. They’re on it, but Google Books has a queue.
Glad to be of service, Jason. And thank you, MoreThanAnEcho, for the buying tips! kiss kiss, Auntie K
I got mine (and gift copies) at Bluestockings (NYC).
I loved the book hello cruel world it really helped me come out about being Pan Sexual to my family I’m only 14 and so far you’re book has helped me get through jr high and other obsticles i have had to over come thank you
hello cruel world was an eyeopener for my family thank you very much as they no longer count me as an out cast i know feel like part of the family again.
Thanks for the great presentation at American University today-awesome!!
2 things from me:
1) I tried to define “drag” for myself
” Drag is a train that takes you to all the identities places you always wanted to visit.” What do you think? Sense or nonsense?
2) Have you thought about adding “technology” as the 13th vector of oppression?
Was just thinking about it as social networks and communication tools do influence identity, desire and power. Don’t you think? I had a guy in mind who committed suicide because his gay experience got spread out due to youtube.
Take care and thanks again,
Gina
Dear Gina, thanks for your good thoughts.
1) Love your drag as train analogy. That would make you the engineer, right?
2) I don’t *think* technology is a vector of oppression, more of a medium for all the vectors of oppression.
kiss kiss
Kate
Auntie Kate, I love you, too. I remember that I wrote my first email to you, many years ago, in an internet cafe. Don’t think it ever got to you, though-I wasn’t aware that one needed an email account! In any case, you are the bodhisattva of gender, sent to us at just the right time. Thank you so much and forever. Kisses back at ya,
Brigid