I’ve been living the thrill of first time publishing vicariously over the last few weeks. My friend Kelly Greene is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, so seeing her name in print is old hat for her. However, she has just co-authored a book called The Wall Street Journal Guide Complete Retirement Guidebook: How to Plan It, Live It and Enjoy It. Seriously. You can find this book at Barnes and Noble and everything. And Kelly wrote it with that other guy. That’s the coolest thing ever.
In the months before the book came out (way back when I ordered my copy), the book had a sales rank in the tens of thousands. As the sale date crept slowly forward, the number began to slowly drop. An advance book review suddenly bumped the sales rank into the low hundreds. Thinking positively, I told Kelly that we had a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator with her name on it to celebrate when it jumped into the top 10.
The big giant bump came when the Wall Street Journal sent an e-mail announcing the book’s arrival to all of its subscribers. Suddenly Kelly’s book was #9 on the Amazon non-fiction list. She just found out yesterday that her book will debut on The New York Times Bestsellers List (non-fiction Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous trade paperback bestseller list) at #13 on July 8. (This post should bump the sales right up to #1.)
We haven’t broken out the champagne yet but plan to soon. There will also be a reading/signing/pahr-tay at a local Atlanta book store soon. I’ll post that news when it comes in. In the meantime, you either will retire one day or are retired now. Either way, go get Kelly’s book - RIGHT NOW!
I asked Kelly’s three-year old son what it was like having such a famous mommy and he said, “I’m a pirate!”
June 28th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Hmmmm. This seems like some kind of snake-oil salesman routine. Get rich enough to retire by publishing a book about . . . getting rich enough to retire. If I open this book and the first line says something like “The first thing you need to do is write a book . . . “, my suspicions will be confirmed.
All kidding aside, congratulations, Kelly. I think we had lunch at Six Feet Under once. So now I’m kind of in the loop of famous author people.
June 28th, 2007 at 10:01 am
The book features neither tips for buying distressed real estate with no money down nor pictures of Kelly giving tips from her yacht.
July 12th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Thanks for the shout-out! I’m so bummed that you won’t be around for the book party. For anyone else who reads this, please come to Wordsmiths on July 28 at 1 p.m. to help us celebrate. Our office manager/frustrated former caterer is in charge of the food and drink, and she always goes over the top…