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We know you love our staff picks in the store (how else can we explain Cloud Atlas’s two-year streak on the WORD bestseller list?), but did you know that sometimes our staff picks go beyond our doors?

Kelly’s, above, is for Hothouse Flower and the Nine Flowers of Desire by Margot Berwin, a book she loved so much that the author is coming to read and sign at our Hot and Wicked Botanical Book Night this Tuesday! You can find this review in July’s Indie Next List in any independent bookstore in the country.

And Stephanie’s blurb for When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is featured on a cardboard display made by the publisher to go next to the book. Good thing, too, since it’s her choice for the best middle grade novel of the year!

Convinced? Drop by the store to get your copies today! Actually, for Hothouse Flower, wait until Tuesday, that way you can meet the author. We’re so proud of these blurbs that the books will be in stock for quite some time, though in the case of When You Reach Me, the sooner, the better—we have a limited number of signed bookplates for copies purchased here. And as always, if you’re too far away to make it in, just email [email protected] and we’ll be happy to ship either or both out to you!

Over the weekend, you may have heard something about a controversy over recent changes to Amazon’s ranking system that are primarily affecting books with sexual content, and especially books with GLBT content, by removing their rankings and thus impacting their visibility on the site.  More information is easy to find, as the internet has basically exploded about the whole thing.

Though it’s not clear yet what’s happened, here at WORD, we wanted to take this opportunity to assure our customers that the problem of books with “adult content” not being ranked is not endemic across the book industry. In the interests of transparency, our bestseller list is calculated as follows:

1. On first day of new month, run sales report for previous month.

2. Type top ten bestselling titles on a list.

3. Print out list on yellow paper.

(Possible glitch: the manager forgets how to count.  If this happens, we’ll be the first people to let you know.)

As you can see, it is a simple process and any book can be a part. We invite customers to test this assertion by buying dozens of copies of whichever adult title they like best to drive it to the top of our bestseller list.  No one would be more amused than we by an April bestseller list composed of gay erotica and perennial bestseller Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

This should clarify our position nicely, but if you have any other questions, you are welcome to email us at [email protected], call at 718 383 0096 (no extension, no phone tree, and definitely no hold music), or for direct human contact, visit us in person at 126 Franklin Street.