Why Publish a 2nd Edition?

 When I am looking for a book to read, here are some of the things I like to do. I look at my friends on Goodreads to see what others are reading and what they think about a book. I question friends that tend to have the same taste in books that I do. "Any new books you want to recommend to me," I ask. I write the titles of book contenders  in a handy little thing I call my "working journal" and I also add them to a list that I keep on Goodreads  that is quite cleverly called... wait for it..."Books that I Want to Read." There are already more books on that list than I can shake a stick at but I can't afford to delete any of them. I still want to read them even if I put them on the list ten years ago. 

I like to take a look at online websites, too. Some of them offer free books, like Free Booksy, for example, or Perlego. And because I tend to like historical fiction, I follow a few FB pages that focus on that genre, such as the Historical Fiction Company which is one that reviews books, as well. If you like historical fiction, too, there are a lot of FB pages that may interest you.  And if you love to read other genres, there are many Book Lovers Club pages on FB too. 

I always read the brief summary of a particular book that I might be interested in reading. Doesn't everyone––whether I'm browsing in a library or browsing online through BookBub or Library Thing, or one of the other platforms such as those listed above. If I am interested enough to examine the book more closely, I like to skim the reviews written by other authors, newspapers, and professional reviewers. It's those very brief snippets of reviews that I'm talking about. They're printed in the front matter of the book, those very first pages of a book.

I've always ("always" as in... since I started writing books, I mean) been envious of those books with those first few pages that are devoted to telling the prospective reader how awesome some professional reviewer thinks the book is. How I secretly longed to have those pages at the front of  Driftless.

When I recognize the name of one of the reviewers, probably because I've previously read a book by that particular author, that makes their recommendation more powerful for me.  

And if I were to be entirely transparent, I should say that sometimes, only sometimes, mind you, I have chosen a book because I liked the cover. Yes, I can be one of those people, too. 

Over the past several months, I've thought about how I'd love to see some of the reviewer's comments about Driftless in the front matter and that got me thinking about printing a second edition of the book. 

More importantly, there were two other topics that I thought were important to be included in a second edition, too. 

1) A message from the Mayo Clinic. Facts about schizophrenia.  What you can do to help someone that you are concerned about.

2) Fifteen Questions for your book club discussion.   

as well as, tah dah––

3)  Selected Reviewer's Comments about Driftless. There are reviews from other Authors, a psychologist, a clinical social worker, a previous mental hospital patient, and professional book award judges.

Stay tuned. A 2nd Edition will be available soon. Happy reading.