Wider Circles

Image copyright Fred First This may seem a small accomplishment to some, but the fact that Slow Road is now available via Amazon.com is a major milestone for my little project. The book is also on Barnes and Noble’s webpage, and others, perhaps.

This opens up a new means of getting the book before readers outside southwest Virginia even while I’ve only been reaching that audience in some small and limited way for about eight months at this point.

However, being qualified as a POD book, Slow Road will not routinely be shelved in the Shopping Mall Big Box Book Stores stores for people to pick up, peruse, and purchase. And of course, Amazon is all virtual, and the book will only be found by folks guided to the site by connections with other similar books, by tags, key words and getting the book’s site up from the low end of the rankings of the gazillions of books offered there.

Here’s where I would be most appreciative of your help.

Both Amazon and B&N welcome reader reviews. This would be especially easy to do for those of you who have in the past months been kind enough to write a short review of the book on your blogs–a matter of cut and paste. Please consider doing this, won’t you?

A thousand people have the book now. A dozen nice reviews that also mention other similar books would do wonders to make Slow Road Home visible to a wider readership.

So many of you have been a part of this sojourn since the early days. Thanks for hanging with me this far, and for spreading the word as many of you have done to your book clubs, family circles, workplaces and local bookstores. Please continue to do so as I am preparing my spring and summer calendar and would love to pencil in 4-5 engagements per month within 100 miles of home.

I do look forward to what lies ahead. If Slow Road can reach a little self-sustaining momentum via online sales, I will be able to focus more on some of the other things I’m excited about–both new writing and photography and the marriage of both. Perhaps more about that to come later this week.

And lastly, let me mention that if you want a first edition, fewer than 100 copies remain upstairs in the Very Back Room! Don’t delay! And a reminder: the book and a pack of Fragments Notecards (see Fragments sidebar) are still available for $25.

Review Slow Road Home at Amazon.com

Review Slow Road Home at Barnes and Noble

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. Notice that, in spite of several emails to address the problem, they have my name as Blair First Frederick. The wheels grind slowly. It took two weeks to show the book cover and an equal period of time to go from “available in one to three weeks” to “in stock”. There’s work still to do here, for sure.

  2. i will try to post a review in the next couple of days, after i get settled back in at home. i can just copy the one from my blog, as you suggested.