Ellen Stimson's upcoming memoir, Mud Season: How One Woman's Dream of Moving to Vermont, Raising Children, Chickens and Sheep, and Running the Old Country Store Pretty Much Led to One Calamity After Another (Countryman Press, October), will be shipped with bookmarks listing a "Mud Season Hotline," a phone number (855-MUD-BOOK, 855-683-2665) that give booksellers an opportunity to allow would-be book buyers to chat with the author for a minute or two each. The hotline will be operational between September 15 and November 15. Book groups will also be able to call and arrange longer discussions.
"Bookselling is a partnership between authors, publishers and frontline booksellers,"
Stimson said. "I have a great book tour scheduled that includes bookstores in 15 major cities, but that still leaves an awful lot of people out of this conversation. This is going to be a real hoot."
Bill Rusin, Norton v-p of sales and marketing, noted that booksellers "need every possible edge and we think this novel approach that lets the author partner with the bookseller at the actual moment of the sale will be a boon to this great little book and bookselling as a whole. Stimson is a former book wholesaler owner with a very funny warm presence so she is the perfect pioneer for this kind of bookselling initiative."
