Will Barratt
I am new to the book writing world and business, so every
part of the process of writing, editing, and selling my new book has been
fascinating to me. While I believe that
my topic is important and that the book should required reading in every
diversity class, I also recognize that others don’t agree. I suspect that people avoid the book the same
way they avoid talking about social class.
I get the occasional positive email from colleagues and
others who have read it and like it, but overall the response has been
underwhelming. Perhaps the book is like The Princess Bride. The movie did not do well at the box office,
but over 25 years has become a classic. Perhaps
not.
I have become very interested in the Amazon page for my
book because it shows me my rank. In
July I ranked in the top 1,000,000, in late August I ranked in the top 200,000,
and seem to have settled at around 400,000 to 500,000. The August boom was for the fall semester of
book orders.
For me, the interesting part of the Amazon data is the
section “Customers who bought this item also bought” I can recognize many books required by my
colleagues like Identity Development of
Diverse Populations, and Multiculturalism
on Campus. It is the odd ones, the
books I don’t recognize, that puzzle me.
Moral Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture puzzles me. My response is to add another book to my
reading list.
I started writing with a specific audience in mind. John von Knorring , my publisher at Stylus who
understands books, text, information, and media on a very deep level, suggested
that I write the book for a larger audience.
He was right. I had been reading
on a wide level so why not write to a larger audience. I had been consuming blogs like Social Class
& Quakers by N. Jeanne Burns (http://quakerclass.blogspot.com/),
and Education and Class by Jane Van Galen (http://educationandclass.com/), so why
not write to a larger audience. I had
been reading books like Tearing Down the
Gates (Peter Sacks), Higher Education
and Social Class (Louise Archer, Merryn Hutchings and Alistair Ross), and The Psychology of Social Class (Michael
Argyle), so why not write to a larger audience.
The question of course is how large the audience is. Is there no audience for topics on social
class or is it that people don’t want to confront social class in the US? Those writing on social class comprise a
small group, especially exploring social class as a personal characteristic
rather than an economic or sociological trend.
Those reading about social class also seem to comprise a small group. Apathy, satisfaction, and intentional
disinterest all have the same behavioral consequence. Is it that people read about ethnicity and
gender because they don’t want to read about social class?
My publisher tells me that if you are a faculty member
that you can get an exam copy if you are thinking about adding the book to your
reading list for a class.
If you want to buy a copy after reading some of my blogs,
then you can get a 20% discount using the code WBBLOG at the checkout:
http://stylus.styluspub.com/books/bookdetail.aspx?productid=278156
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