Kirkus Reviews liked Cosplay: A History!

The first trade review for Cosplay: A History is in! It comes from Kirkus Reviews, and it's a good one!

Here are the big quotes: "An entertaining look at a vibrant, “interactive, interpretive, and immersive” pop-culture community...A wonderfully fun book showing that the art of having a good time has not been lost."

You can read the rest of the full review here.

For those not in the book industry, Kirkus Reviews is one of four major trade publications whose job it is to review books for booksellers and librarians. I frequently consult them when I do my own book lists, because they're good at concisely summarizing a book in question.

It's been interesting working on this project for years now — I sold it back in 2019, and had worked on it for several years prior to that — where it's basically only been in my head, and now, that work will get exposed to the wider fandom / reading public. Moreover, only a handful of people have read the book — my parents, another author, my editor, copyeditor, publicist, etc.

It's nerve wracking! I've got ideas that I'm putting out in the world, and I hope that people will find them interesting, informative, etc.  

So, seeing that another party not only read it, but actually really liked it and got what I was going for feels like a good sign that others will like it too. It's a huge relief.

I've had a couple of people ask about how and where to buy the book: the answer that I've been giving is anywhere you typically buy books! The product page has a bunch of links to retailers (the only one that doesn't work is Bookshop), in trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook form. (I don't know who's narrating the audio).

If you are interested in picking it up, I'd urge you to preorder it: those are invaluable for a book's sales. If you preorder it, send along your confirmation, and I'll comp you for the full subscriber list for this newsletter.

That's all for now – I'll try and have something for thr end of the week.

Andrew