Inheriting the Trade just made its first best-seller list. The Denver Post recently published this week’s local best-seller list and Inheriting the Trade is #2 in non-fiction:
Local bestsellers
Article Last Updated: 02/07/2008 11:59:46 PM MST
The Denver area’s best-selling books, according to information from the Tattered Cover Book Store, Barnes & Noble in Greenwood Village, Boulder Book Store and Borders Books in Englewood
NONFICTION
1. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan, $21.95
2. Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U. S. History, by Thomas Norman DeWolf, $24.95
3. The Fine Art of the Big Talk: How to Win Clients, Deliver Great Presentations, and Solve Conflicts at Work, by Debra Fine, $16.95
4. The Complete Travel Detective Bible: The Consummate Insider Tells You What You Need to Know in an Increasingly Complex World!,by Peter Greenberg, $17.95
5. The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, $23.95
6. Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by John J. Ratey, $24.99
7. 77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age, by Terry Frei, $24.95
8. Sweet Potato Queens’ Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit, by Jill Conner Browne, $22.95
9. I Am America (And So Can You!), by Stephen Colbert, $26.99
10. How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter, 10 Times Better, by Charla Krupp, $25.99
Most of the credit for the success of the book in the Denver area goes to Harold Fields. It was Harold’s enthusiasm and hard work that resulted in our meeting with 300 middle school students one morning and 300 high school students on another. It was Harold’s relationship with Joyce Meskis, the owner of the Tattered Cover bookstores, that helped secure our appearance there. It was Harold’s extensive network of friends and colleagues working to confront racism in our society that packed the store on that cold Thursday evening to listen to the Spirituals Project Choir and to listen to me discuss Inheriting the Trade.
I give the balance of the credit, of course, to Joyce and her staff. Combine Harold’s hard work with the Tattered Cover’s high reputation and marketing efforts, and the result is that people in Denver are reading Inheriting the Trade in large numbers.
Huge thank-yous to Harold and Joyce.
Maybe this is an unimportant observation but I was thinking about how 7 of the top 10 best-sellers listed are in the self-improvement category.
Roughly, the topics are advice on: Eating, Talking, Traveling, The secret to living, Exercising, Raising children, and Looking younger.
The other two, one is a sports book and one is political satire.
So I think yours stands out in the list as being uniquely important, because it's about racial healing and racism.
I think that is self-and world-help more needed than anything! As someone who has dealt with personal pain in racism as I wrote you in an email, anyone who deals with this topic helps all of us who are dealing with it. Thank you so much.
Karen (Johanna)
Thanks for your observation, Karen, and your commitment to confronting the challenge of racism. Though I was pleased that "Inheriting the Trade" is receiving good notice in Denver so that people will hear about it and hopefully be open to our message, I would guess that a local bestseller list would change quite a bit from week to week. When an author is in town for a book reading her or his book sales will naturally increase for that week. Things may change dramatically the following week when a different author is in town…