Note from the Times: This bestseller list comes to us straight from The Raven Book Store in Lawrence. See other editions of the list here.
Recently, a number of authors have taken to Twitter to decry new Barnes & Noble ordering policies that make it harder (if not impossible) for debut authors to get their hardcover books on the shelves. Many of these authors are people of color, and many of them are writing wonderful books for kids.
This is certainly alarming; if Barnes & Noble is no longer supporting POC-written debut hardcovers, that’s shutting out a wide array of voices from a significant part of the book market, and it’ll make it harder for those authors to sell books and get published.
One of the authors raising the alarm was Kansas City’s own Britney S. Lewis. While Barnes & Noble refused to stock her debut young adult novel The Undead Truth of Us, The Raven ran a signed preorder campaign that landed this terrific book in our No. 1 spot by a landslide. An interesting study in contrast between independent and corporate bookselling.
1. Britney Lewis, The Undead Truth of Us
2. Sarah Henning, The King Will Kill You
3. Rex Buchanan, Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills
4. Chelsea T. Hicks, A Calm and Normal Heart: Stories
5. Margaret Dilloway, Five Things About Ava Andrews
6. Michael J. Travis, Celebrating Kansas Breweries: People, Places and Stories
7. Elisabeth Tova Bailey, Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
8. Danny Caine, How to Resist Amazon and Why: The Fight for Local Economics, Data Privacy, Fair Labor, Independent Bookstores and a People-Powered Future
9. Riku Onda, Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight
10. Natalie C. Parker, The Devouring Wolf
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