Officially less than a month out from my book deadline, after which I PROMISE I’ll go back to writing normal posts again.

In the meantime, a quick reminder that TOMORROW (Monday) at the Best Bookstore in Union Square (226 Powell St, San Francisco) I’m interviewing bestselling mystery author (and one of my favorite people in the world) Rob Osler about his latest book THE CASE OF THE MURDERED MUCKRAKER.

The book is the latest in the bestselling Harriet Morrow series, featuring a young lesbian detective in Progressive Era Chicago. The whole series is BRILLIANT - but don’t take my word for it: The Case of the Murdered Muckraker was recently awarded a coveted Starred Review by Publishers Weekly.

Harriet is one of those characters who you KNOW will one day end up starring in her own PBS/Britbox series and this is your opportunity to brag that you were a fan before the rest of the world heard about her.

More exciting still, it’s the first event hosted in our brand new event space below the Union Square store. So more “I was first” bragging rights there too.

Rob and I will be discussing his work, the world of mystery writing, and how Harriet’s adventures - exposing government corruption, battling discrimination, and speaking truth to power - are (surprise!) still relevant today.

There will be an audience q&a after our conversation and of course Rob will be signing copies of his books.

The event starts at 6pm TOMORROW (Monday 16th February) at The Best Bookstore in Union Square. It’s completely free to attend - no RSVP required - but we’re expecting a full house so arrive on time to guarantee a seat.

You won’t want to miss this one. See you TOMORROW!!

Paul

Hi all,

I’m on a hellish writing deadline — my next book is due to my editor in a little over a month and I’m firmly in the losing my mind stage of the process.

The book involves a plot I’ve been thinking about - in one way or another - for YEARS, but that hasn’t made it any easier to finally wrangle on to the page. Turns out that writing topical thrillers in 2026 is like trying to arrange dominos in an earthquake.

Thank God, then, that next week I’ll get to spend some time with an absolute master of the form - two masters, actually - to really add fuel to the fire of my imposter syndrome.

On Feb 13th - next Friday! - I’m thrilled to be hosting an event with megastar author Brad Thor and his equally incredible writing partner Ward Larsen in Palm Springs to launch their new thriller, Cold Zero.

The event is at the Mizell Center, starting at 6:30pm, and is COMPLETELY FREE, but you do need to register here to attend.

Here’s the official blurb for the book…

Brad Thor (above), who has been a bestselling thriller writer for a quarter of a century, has sold tens of millions of his books and a streamer developing a series based on his iconic Scot Harvath series, gets one complaint on a consistent basis. That is, some variation of “Now that I finished your latest, I have to wait another whole year for a new one. WRITE FASTER!”

Now, he’s ready to give his readers, as he puts it, “more Thor than ever before”.

To accomplish this, he’s teamed up with Ward Larsen (below), a bestselling author in his own right. Larsen is also former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and current airline captain which is why he was the perfect writing partner to bring this new standalone thriller, COLD ZERO to life.

The book already received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal so even if you’re new to Brad and Ward’s work, this is a fantastic place to start. We’ll be discussing the book, the power of thrillers in uncertain times, their writing process, and much more.

Attendees will also be able to buy a signed copy of Cold Zero and meet Brad and Ward for a photo afterwards!

Again, the event starts at 6:30pm on Friday 13th February. It’s co-hosted with The Palm Springs Public Library and completely free to attend, but we are expecting a packed house so you MUST register in advance.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

I’m VERY excited about this, even though Brad and Ward will probably tell me that they delivered the manuscript six months before deadline and with zero plot holes or days spent screaming at post-it notes, and I will be sick live on stage.

You don’t want to miss any of that!

See you next Friday.

Paul

Yes, I know. At some point I’ll need to rename this newsletter from “Citizen Bookseller” to “Sorry For The Lack Of Updates”.

In my meager defense, we opened a second bookstore - The Best Bookstore in Union Square - on Black Friday, a little over a month after we signed our lease.

At some point I promise to write an entire post about how we managed to pull it off, starting with San Francisco’s incredible “Vacant To Vibrant” program, a small army of friends assembling shelves, plus stellar work by our publisher sales reps and of course our employees in SF and Palm Springs without whom none of this would be possible.

But that post will have to wait because suddenly it’s January and my next book is due to my editor in a little over two months. I really need to be writing every day, with zero distractions, to make my deadline.

So, heads down and…

Ah, right, I almost forgot. WE’RE ORGANIZING A BOOK FESTIVAL THIS MONTH.

That’s right, from Friday January 30th - Sunday February 1st we’re hosting our third annual PALM SPRINGS READERS’ FESTIVAL.

Long-time readers will know that the festival began as a response to the unsettlingly right wing (Karl Rove four times in a row!) Rancho Mirage Writer’s Festival, whose tickets cost upwards of $500 and which shuts down the public library for days.

Our event is hosted at the Palm Springs Leisure Center and brings together an array of superstar authors, writing across all genres. And not a single warmonger! An all-access pass for the whole three-day event costs $125.

This year I’m thrilled to say that Andrea Bartz is headlining the first night. Thriller fans will likely be familiar with her bestsellers like We Were Never Here (a Reese’s Book Club pick) and The Last Ferry Out. But her name might also be familiar as the lead plaintiff in Bartz vs Anthropic, the landmark class action suit that just won a $1.5bn settlement for authors ripped off by the AI giant.

As you can imagine, Andi and I have a lot to talk about on stage, especially the dangers of AI and the thrilling world of, well, thrillers.

We also just confirmed that Annalee Newitz, author of the smash hit Automatic Noodle, will be appearing on Saturday, interviewed on stage by Sarah. Newitz’ book is sold out everywhere but we pulled a bunch of strings to make sure we have a secret stash of copies for them to sign on the day. You won’t want to miss getting your hands on one of the most delightful books of the year.

Andi and Annalee join our already stellar line-up including (in alphabetical order)…

GRETCHEN ANTHONY, Author of TIRED LADIES TAKE A STAND

ABRAHAM CHANG, Author of 888 LOVE AND THE DIVINE BURDEN OF NUMBERS

ANDY CORREN, Author of DIRTBAG QUEEN

JASON FELTS, Author of HOLLYWOOD VIRGIN

AJA GABEL, Author of LIGHTBREAKERS

RACHEL KHONG, Author of MY DEAR YOU

SUSANNA KWAN, Author of AWAKE IN THE FLOATING CITY

BYRON LANE, Author of BIG GAY WEDDING

BRIAN MCAULEY, Author of BREATHE IN, BLEED OUT

ANDREW MEYER, Producer of The Breakfast Club and Author of WALKING IN THE FAST LANE

JOSHUA MOEHLING, Author of A LONG TIME GONE

AISHA MUHARRAR, Author of LOVED ONE

EUREKA O’HARA, Star of Ru Paul’s Drag Race and Author of JACKSON BRIGHT IN THE SPOTLIGHT

ROB OSLER, Author of THE CASE OF THE MURDERED MUCKRAKER

KAIRA ROUDA, Author of WE WERE NEVER FRIENDS

STEVEN ROWLEY, Author of TAKE ME WITH YOU

BRIAN SCHAEFER, Author of TOWN & COUNTRY

KATHY WANG, Author of THE SATISFACTION CAFE

JENNIFER WRIGHT, Author of GLITZ, GLAM, AND A DAMN GOOD TIME

If you came to either of the previous festivals you’ll know that the event is a ridiculous amount of fun. Most of the authors hang out in the audience for the whole event and there’s something magical about the PS vibe that makes their interviews more candid and hilarious than you’ll typically hear at a book festival (Sarah’s probing questions also help - who can forget last year’s on-stage debate about a particular book cover she hated?) Oh, and Sarah and I buy everyone pizza from Bill’s for the final lunch of the event. Who doesn’t love free Bill’s pizza?

As I write this, we are just 30 tickets away from selling out. This despite the fact that we have done very little promotion for this years’ event, due to the whole “opening another bookstore in a month” thing.

I’d LOVE to see the room packed every day for these fantastic authors so if you haven’t already bought your ticket, please, please click here and register.

Again, an all-access pass for the entire three day event costs just $125. There are no special VIP rates - everyone gets access to everything. We fund the entire event out of ticket sales - including the cost of bringing all these amazing authors to Palm Springs, venue rental, staffing etc etc. So we REALLY appreciate your support.

Here’s the sign up link again…

BUY YOUR TICKET HERE

We can’t wait to see you in Palm Springs at the end of the month.

And more from Citizen Bookseller soon, I promise!

Paul

PS I was flattered, shocked and delighted that The Confessions was chosen as a Guardian Best Thriller of The Year over the holidays. Thank you to everyone who bought a copy — and if you haven’t already, the paperback is out in April in the US (pre-order now) and is already out in the UK.

PPS It was Sarah’s birthday last month and, for one of her gifts, I managed to track down all of her famous Pando Monthly interviews with the great and good of Silicon Valley, recorded between 2011-2016. The entire archive was (we thought) lost after we sold the company but I FOUND THEM and so now she’s reposting one each week on her new YouTube Channel, with additional commentary. If you want to remember what tech moguls like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen were like before they were super evil famous or you just want hours of valuable advice from the likes of Reid Hoffman, Sophia Amuruso, Daniel Ek, Tony Hsieh, etc etc then subscribe to the channel now.

Hi all,

You might have already received some variant of today’s EXCITING NEWS from the bookstore (we emailed the following message to our PS-based customers directly a little while ago) but the NEWS is so EXCITING that I wanted to make sure I also shared it with Citizen Bookseller readers…

If you live in Palm Springs or have spent any time talking to either of us in the store, you probably know our story.

For one thing, despite having spent our whole lives writing and publishing books, we had never dreamed of opening a bookstore. We had zero experience in retail and (we assumed) zero aptitude for it. But we also knew a city as otherwise incredible as Palm Springs needed a bookstore – every city should have at least one! - and the city had given our family a lot. We wanted to give something back.

So we took out a second mortgage, got a little bit of money from family and friends, and opened this store with roughly half the amount of startup capital that people recommend you have to start a bookstore. And none of the experience.

It has not always been pretty, but it is SO MUCH FUN. This store is what it is because of you and our incredible Coachella Valley-native team. You shape the vibe, the stock, what the store feels like. And thanks to you, we are having an incredible fall. Our revenues are up double digit percentages in our new space! (THANK YOU!) And our Readers’ Festival looks like it’s going to be our best yet! (Check out the lineup here, and buy your tickets before they are gone!)

We couldn’t be happier or more content.

Still, Palm Springs gets a lot of visitors, and every so often one of those visitors will ask us: Do you think you’ll ever open a second location?

Our answer, emphatically: No! We never even intended to open this one!

I suppose if we were honest, the real answer would be: Not unless we were to discover a city where we a) own a home b) doesn’t have a bookstore and c) where we think the city would be as supportive as Palm Springs has been. And, given our only other home is in San Francisco, which is home to some of the world’s best bookstores already, that seemed close enough to a “no!”

You can probably tell where this is going.

You might have seen on the news that downtown San Francisco is undergoing something of a renaissance. Under the new mayor, the city has committed millions of dollars to revitalizing Union Square as the “front door to the city”, including giving financial and logistical support to help small businesses take over vacant store fronts on the square and around Powell Street.

A few months ago, Sarah (who spends a lot of her time in SF, where our kids go to school) called Paul (who holds down the fort in Palm Springs most of the year) to enthuse about how incredible the turnaround of Union Square has been.

Paul said he’d believe it when he saw it.

And then he saw it.

Small businesses are popping up all around the square, there’s a free kid’s lending library, movie screenings and the vibe feels even better than when Paul first moved to the city (and the country!) in 2007.

But you know what the new Union Square doesn’t have?

A BOOKSTORE.

In fact, it’s the only neighborhood in the city that doesn’t.

Did I mention the city is offering to help support small businesses to take over empty storefronts that they normally could never afford?

And so, once again, with not quite enough money (if you know any investors who happen to love books, feel free to send them our way!) and still nowhere near enough experience we just signed a lease to open our second location: THE BEST BOOKSTORE IN UNION SQUARE.

And, just as with Palm Springs, we’re doing it on a ludicrous timeline: Hoping to open the doors around Thanksgiving, in time for the holidays.

To be very clear, the only reason we can do this is because of the continuing success of the Palm Springs store which is, and will always be, our home store. The BestBookstore Corp is proudly based in Palm Springs (we put it on all of the SF city forms) and our book festival will always be held in Palm Springs, in the city’s sweet rec room, because they saved the festival last year when we almost had to cancel it. After the initial setup madness, Paul will still spend the same amount of time in PS, just as Sarah will spend the same amount of time in SF. We’re hiring an amazing team of booksellers and a manager to be in charge of SF.

In fact we want all of our bookstores – whether there are two or twelve one day (never say never) – to be postcards from Palm Springs to readers all over California. The color scheme, the bright open vibes, the whimsical bright Sarah card recommendations, the good luck monsters and pride cranes free with purchases when our kids decide to make them.

But you’ll get to share in the benefits of the new store too. Your gift cards will work in both locations, and both will be served by the same (existing) website so we’ll be able to stock more books overall and get them to you quicker. Having two stores gives us more purchasing power and more sway with publishers, and it will help us to have one store that isn’t in an extremely seasonal market. (The deadest time in San Francisco tourism-wise is January and February, just when Palm Springs is at peak season!)

And our San Francisco store comes with a large dedicated event space, so we will be able to do more author events. We will always announce them in this space and on our Instagram feed. If you ever want a signed copy from anyone speaking, just say the word, and we’ll grab you one and ship it your way!

We don’t know how we are physically going to be in two stores in two parts of the state over the holidays, but we will manage somehow. We might mix it up with Sarah being in Palm Springs, and Paul manning San Francisco on alternate weeks. We are going to swap off more throughout the year, so that each store gets a bit of both of our attention in it. (Not that our incredible teams need it. Lexie and Nancy have been absolutely crushing it day-to-day, and again we have an equally incredible small team helming our new SF store.)

We hope as our company grows that you will be even more proud that we are your hometown bookstore and you were part of this from the beginning. And, of course, next time you are in the Bay Area, that you’ll come to Union Square and say hi to the new team.

We’ll have more on the new store soon but wanted to make sure y’all were the first to hear about it before it gets announced in the media.

We are terrified and excited and, again, we couldn’t do it without you.

See you in store soon! (And wish us luck!)

Paul and Sarah

Hi all,

Apologies for the sporadic updates but, between running the bookstore and writing my NEXT BOOK, I’ve had comically little time to write about either. Which is a shame because I have SO MUCH TO TELL YOU. Which I will do, soon, I promise.

In the meantime, something that can’t wait…

IT’S TIME FOR SEASON TWO OF THE TERRIBLY CLEVER BOOK CLUB

!!

For those of you who missed the original announcement at the end of last year, The Terribly Clever Book Club (henceforth, TCBC) is my private monthly bookclub (hosted on Zoom) for fellow fans of deviously clever mysteries and thrillers.

You know the sort of thing: Novels with devious plots, ingenious twists, impossible crimes, smart use of real technology, and all manner of other things that make you go “ooooh, that’s good!”

These are the kind of stories I LOVE, no matter whether it’s the impossible golden age murders of John Dixon Carr, Christianna Brand, or Seishi Yokomizo; the 80s and 90s techno-twists of Michael Crichton or Christopher Priest; or the bang up-to-date brilliance of Sarah Pinborough or Stuart Turton or Sophie Hannah or… you get the idea.

Since I launched the club at the end of last year, our merry band of TCB lovers have explored devious Japanese mysteries like time-loop whodunnit, The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa and Strange Pictures by anoymous YouTube star Uketsu. We’ve ventured back to the golden age with 1942’s The Affair At Little Wokeham by Freeman Wills Crofts (featuring one of the first ever 'Columbo’-type plots) and Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards. We’ve stretched the genre to breaking point with A Most Puzzling Murder by Bianca Marais (paying homage to choose your own adventures) and Fair Play by Louise Hegarty (which defies summarization) and we’ve started from the end with Peter Swanson’s Kill Your Darlings. This coming week we’re meeting (virtually) to discuss Janice Hallett’s The Twyford Code, a story told almost entirely through voice memo transcripts, with a twist that knocked by shoes and socks off.

It’s SO MUCH FUN.

But if the books are clever, the club itself is very simple.

At the start of the month I send members a mystery or thriller in the mail. Then members have the rest of the month to read the book before we all meet for a Zoom to talk about it at 5pm Pacific on the last Wednesday of the month. (The Zoom is recorded in case you can’t make it “live”.) A few days later the next title arrives, and the fun continues!

Membership is priced at $30 a month, which includes the cost of the book and shipping to anywhere in the US, plus the meetings and occasional bonus extras (note: if you’re local to the bookstore, you can of course pick up your copy in person!) For newer titles, the books are generally hardcovers, with occasional trade paperbacks if hardcovers are no longer available. Basically, I find the nicest edition I can for each book.

We already have a great little community of readers, but as we head out of the summer and folks cycle out due to family and work commitments, it’s time to add to our ranks for the second season of books.

I would LOVE for you to join us. And if you sign up between now and the end of this week, you’ll be just in time to receive October’s book and join the discussion on Oct 29th.

You can choose to pay quarterly or annually with a slight discount for the latter. And of course, if life gets in the way, you can cancel your auto-renewal any time with no hard feelings. Billing is handled by the bookstore, so Best Bookstore will appear on your statement.

October’s is a brand new release, so I promise you won’t have read it yet. It will be shipped at the end of this week to existing members and everyone who signs up between now and then.

Sound like fun? It really is! Here are the sign-up links…

Join Quarterly ($90)

Join Annually ($340)

I’m really excited to discuss so many brilliant and thrilling stories with you over the coming months!

Paul

Hello chums!

First off, a weary apology for radio silence. It has been quite the summer, between The Confessions hitting bookstores (exciting!) and having to near-singlehandedly relocate the bookstore (exhausting!) plus all the media that both necessitated.

So now I’m mostly trying to focus on writing the next book while occasionally glancing at the news to confirm that the civilization is still ending and that the entire world has gone quite mad.

But wait! I do have one more event for The Confessions! And it’s a doozy!

Next Tuesday, 9th September, at 7pm I’ll be at BookShop West Portal in San Francisco for a really fun book reading/signing/conversation with LEGENDARY TECH JOURNALIST SARAH LACY.

Sarah will be grilling me about the book, and (presumably) my thoughts on AI and Silicon Valley and all the things we’ve both been reporting on for years.

(It’s also my ONLY San Francisco event for The Confessions, which seems faintly ridiculous but I don’t make the rules.)

The event is completely free to attend (although seating is first come, first served) and BookShop West Portal is one of my absolute favorite bookstores in the world, so I really, really hope you’ll join us.

You don’t have to RSVP but it’ll help the store plan seating etc if you do here.

Also if you want to reserve a copy of the book, you can do so here and it’ll be waiting for you when you show up. Or I believe they can ship to you after I sign it.

See you on Tuesday!

Paul (and Sarah)

Hi all,

I am sooooo tired.

Moving an entire bookstore on the same week that my book was published was… a choice.

(Except obviously it wasn’t a choice. Sometimes these things just happen.)

In any case, I am absolutely exhausted, but I also have lots of NEWS to share, so I hope you’ll forgive me if this newsletter is a little more staccato and unhinged than usual.

NEWS #1: The Confessions is a USA Today bestseller!! That’s right, first week sales propelled the book straight onto the national bestseller list! I’m beyond stunned, and grateful. Obviously those numbers include a lot of pre-orders from Best Bookstore customers so a special huge THANK YOU to everyone who bought a copy in advance. (Haven’t bought yours yet? That’s ok! You can order a signed copy here, with free shipping. It’s also out in audio and ebook, wherever you get those. And in the UK too!)

NEWS #2: If you’re in La Jolla/San Diego this Tuesday (tomorrow!), I’m doing a book signing/conversation at Warwick’s - aka one of my absolute favorite bookstores in the world, with one of my favorite booksellers, Cristina Gurtman. The event starts at 7:30pm and is free/open to all BUT you can reserve a seat and book here which is even better. See you there!

NEWS #3: The new store location at 113 La Plaza is ALMOST ready (see blurry screenshot of shelves-in-progress above). We still have to get approval from the city/fire inspector but I’m hoping to open the doors in the next few days. The old location on Tahquitz will be open for a few hours today (Monday) to sell the last few books on the shelves at 60% OFF!! HURRY!!

NEWS #4: Moving is a bit more expensive than I thought! We had to hire a professional moving team to move the heavy shelves and books, plus there are various fees to move utilities, clear out the old location, and install extra fixtures and fittings in the new one. Also, unsurprisingly, our old landlord is keeping our security deposit in exchange for letting us out of the old lease. And of course we’re doing all of this, completely unexpectedly, during our dead summer season :-(

To help pay for everything, we’re opening up a few more slots on our SUPER-AMAZING SUPER-EXCLUSIVE in-store mural. We’re also printing an extra dozen supporter shirts.

As a reminder, if you are generous enough to donate $1000 or more to the moving fund, you’ll get your name (and that of a partner, if you like) included in our custom designed mural on the inside wall of the store.

We have eight mural supporters already, and space for two or three more. We have an AMAZING Palm Springs artist lined up to create the mural and this is your absolute last chance to be part of the fabric of the store forever! (Mural donors will also get an exclusive t-shirt - see below - and 10% off everything in store, for life! And yes you can donate in the name of a company or organization!)

Don’t have $1k to spare? (Neither do I!) If you donate $100 or more to the moving fund, you’ll get an exclusive (designed by Sarah) t-shirt to show your support. You’ll also get 10% off in store any time you wear it!

To donate any amount to the moving fund, and get your exclusive reward, click here!

Ok, now I’m going to sleep for a hundred years. Or at least eight hours before I do it all again tomorrow!

More soonest!

Paul

I did my first book reading, for which Sarah and Eli created this amazing window display…

…and that’s about all I remember from the evening thanks to the combination of exhaustion and adrenaline. I’m told it went very well, and I know Sarah asked amazing questions, and we sold an ass-ton of books, all of which I assume I signed.

The professional reviews of The Confessions continue to be good and kind, which remains a relief. I particularly love the bookstagrams…

BUT what’s really exciting is that the first of the reviews from actual, honest-to-god readers have started to land. I dared to glimpse at Goodreads for the first time and, thank God, folks over there don’t hate it…

Except maybe…

(harsh but fair)

Meanwhile over at Amazon, the first reviews are already coming in…

Oh, Amazon! As much as I dislike Jeff Bezos, there’s no denying his dominance of bookselling and Amazon’s importance in determining which books become bestsellers. In fact, I’d argue that Amazon product reviews carry even more weight than those on (the Amazon-owned) Goodreads.

Books with 4 stars or above on the site (The Confessions is currently at 4.1* and creeping upwards) get more visibility and, therefore, more sales. And of course they also help boost interest in the audio and Kindle versions of The Confessions.

I can’t control if readers enjoy the book, and if they leave a one star DNF or a five star rave. And that’s a good thing! All I can do is write the best book I’m able, and then let the stars fall as they may.

BUT I’m guessing Best Bookstore customers are more likely to have known a bit about the book before buying it, and therefore it’s more likely that they got what they expected/hoped for vs a random shopper who might have though they were buying something different, or who are frustrated at Amazon’s packaging, or some other unrelated thing.

For that reason I find myself in the weird position, for an indie bookseller, of asking you to leave an honest review on Amazon, even if particularly if you bought the book from us or a different indie store, or borrowed it from the library. Amazon is fine with you doing this, so long as you’ve read the book and the review reflects your honest opinion.

So, for the first and probably last time, here’s an Amazon link here on Citizen Bookseller. IF you’ve read The Confessions and IF you enjoyed it and IF you feel so inclined, I’d love for you to...

Leave an honest review of the Confessions on Amazon!

Same if you’ve listened to the audiobook or downloaded onto your Kindle. It all counts!

(I’m listening to the audio version myself now - available on Audible, Libro.fm, etc - and narrator/actor Allyson Ryan did an incredible job. More on that when I’ve finished listening!)

And again, THANK YOU to everyone who has bought the Confessions or borrowed it from the library. It’s such a thrill to know that so many of you are finally meeting Maud, Kaitlan, LLIAM and all these characters I love so much.

Onwards!

Paul

I can't quite believe this: The Confessions comes out in three days.

This coming Tuesday, readers will finally be able to get hold of the novel I jokingly describe as “the AI thriller for people who would rather poke their eyes out than read an AI thriller.”

I’m nervous as hell at their reaction, no matter how much Sarah tells me I shouldn’t be. So far the reviews have been INCREDIBLY positive. The LA Times likened the novel to “the best of Michael Crichton” (!) Publishers Weekly called The Confessions “hair-raising... With winning irreverence and a trunkful of surprises” and Library Journal awarded it a starred review, also comparing it to Crichton (!!)

Earlier this week I was woken up by a string of texts from my book agent:
”RISE AND SHINE. YOU’RE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!”

And sure enough! The Confessions was one of the Times’ Best Summer Thrillers, offering "a terrifying window into the future."

Obviously this is all a waking dream.

AND YET.

I’M STILL NERVOUS AS HELL.

All of these professional reviews might be good for my ego (clearly they are!) but I know from working in the store that reviews only matter if they prompt readers to actually buy the book. And if those readers actually like it.

I’ve seen in the store how even great books can fail to land. Maybe the cover is a bit off, or the opening chapter doesn’t grab readers. Maybe the book is published on a bad news week. Or maybe the plot is just a tiny bit too complicated to explain to your friend when you’re in the store, or to summarize on social media.

“Oh my GOD, have you read this? It’s about AI, kinda, but also about murder and secrets. One day millions of people around the world wake up to find letters in the mail - real letters! - revealing their loved ones’ worst secrets. A former nun has to save humanity. Also the AI is obsessed with Agatha Christie. No spoilers! I think you’ll love it.”

I’ve seen in the bookstore how word of mouth can propel a sleeper title into the stratosphere. I’ve also seen the devastating power of a quiet “meh” to defeat a gazillion dollar marketing campaign.

And then there’s the time pressure: First week sales are hugely important so it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s more I should be doing to maximize those early sales. I spent much of today in the store (where the AC remains broken) packaging up customer pre-orders…

…while also fielding emails from journalists and influencers and from my brilliant publicists at Atria and Faber. I’m saying an enthusiastic YES! to every guest post request, and podcast invite. I’m exhausted, and sick of the sound of my own voice, but every scrap of attention helps and it’s far better to be talked about than not, right?

Of course I’m also obsessing about every mention of the book on social media, like this amazing appearance in a librarian’s unboxing video in Stoughton, Wisconsin….

How cool is that??

All of which is to say that I’m unspeakably grateful to everyone who has already pre-ordered The Confessions. And if you haven’t, there’s still time. All the pre-orders count towards those first week sales, as do any orders between next Tuesday and Sunday. Every single copy counts.

• US readers can order direct from The Best Bookstore here, or find a full list of stockists here.

• Canadian readers can find a list of stockists here.

• UK readers can pre-order the ebook here (the paperback is out in the UK in November)

Want to buy multiple copies for your book club, friend group, or co-workers? Email paul@bestbookstore.com for bulk discount info.

Ok. That’s enough of the hard sell. I’ve done everything I can. Time for the chips to fall as they may!

I hope you enjoy The Confessions. And for the love of god please tell your friends.

Paul x

Hi all,

Quite the week of drama at the Bookstore! If you follow Sarah or the Best Bookstore on social media you probably saw the news: Our air conditioning unit at the store was vandalized on July 4th weekend and our out-of-State landlord refused to replace it.

It took more than ten sweltering days, and the intervention of The Roggin Report, News Channel 3, and more, for them to finally accept responsibility.

In the meantime, the landlord’s representatives - again not based in Palm Springs - told us if we couldn't stand the heat, we could always move out - or hire a lawyer. As a small independent bookstore, they knew we couldn't afford to do either.

But they clearly don’t know Palm Springs. With help from our wonderful community, we have found a new location, just a block from the current store. The rent is affordable, and the landlord is great. And, yes, the AC works!

I can't wait to tell you the details, once everything is signed and sealed.

But first we need your help!

Moving an entire store isn't easy, or cheap. We'll need to pay advance rent, a security deposit, not to mention installing signage, Internet, new shelving and more. We estimate it'll cost us about $10k to move - in addition, of course, to the full month's rent our current landlords are demanding for a July with no AC!

SO COME BUY SOME BOOKS!

To help pay for the move, we're holding a buy two, get one free sale on EVERYTHING in stock. Please come down (180 E Tahquitz Canyon, Palm Springs) and help clear the shelves! The offer is for in-store purchases only, but otherwise there are no limits - buy any three books and the cheapest is free. We're currently open 11am-5pm every day until we get temporary AC working.

Not local? You can order online as normal - with shipping anywhere in the world. I’ve heard good things about The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr :-) . Or of course you can buy a gift card to use in-store or online.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE MOVING FUND!

Also MANY of you have asked if there's anything more you can do to help, or have even suggested we start a Gofundme to pay for the move. If you do want to contribute, and are able, we've set up a secure payment page below. (THANK YOU THANK YOU!!)

Once the weather cools down a bit, we'll be hosting a store-warming (cooling?) party for everyone who helped us pay for the move. Even a one dollar contribution gets you an invite.

CONTRIBUTE $100: GET A LIMITED EDITION T-SHIRT

If you contribute $100 (!) you'll get a special commemorative t-shirt, designed by Sarah. You'll also get an extra 10% discount any time you wear the shirt in store.

CONTRIBUTE $1000: BECOME A PERMANENT PART OF THE STORE

For anyone who contributes $1000 (!!!) we'll paint your name into a special mural we're designing for the inside wall of the store. It's going to be AMAZING.

The mural will be a major fixture in the store, a permanent thank you to the folks who helped us in our hour of need. Our "Wallflowers" will get an extra 10% everything in store, for life! You'll get input on the placement of your name on the mural, and you can also include the name of a spouse or partner at no extra cost. (And of course you'll get the t-shirt too!)

To contribute any amount to the moving fund, just click the link below.

-> CLICK HERE TO CONTRIBUTE <-

Again, every penny helps and will make you a permanent part of the bookstore's story. I can't tell you how grateful Sarah and I are to our fantastic community.

Paul

I am currently living two separate realities: The reality of an author and the reality of a bookseller.

Often these two realities aren’t so separate: For example, the months I spent working on The Confessions with my laptop perched on a pile of boxes in the store. On those days - most of which coincided with the town’s busy season - both jobs were equally rewarding, equally exhilarating, equally stressful but in a good way. I was surrounded by books and book lovers, while writing a book of my own. Bliss.

Now, though, I’m in the final countdown towards publication. In twelve days, The Confessions hits the shelves. My amazing publicist at Atria has arranged interviews with journalists and podcast hosts across the country. The book has been reviewed (positively, so far, thank god) in the trade press and featured in big-deal papers like the LA Times. We have hundreds of pre-orders through the store and folks keep emailing and texting to say how much they’re looking forward to reading the book.

This morning, I had coffee with a producer of very famous films. Maybe one day The Confessions will be a film.

Simply put: I am living the life of a new but, ?I guess?, promising thriller writer. It is everything I hoped it would be.

And then.

After my coffee meeting, I went to work my shift at the bookstore, in 116 degree Palm Springs heat.

That reality, right now, is not so fun.

Because our air conditioner is broken. Dead since 4th July weekend. Burned out, apparently because someone went on to the roof of the store and messed with the power cables. Sabotage? A careless contractor working on the store next door? Our landlord swears they have no idea.

They also say that we need to pay to replace the entire AC unit, never mind what our lease says. Twelve grand. During the dead summer season. A dead summer that, as I’ve written before, the store already might struggle to survive thanks to the sharp drop in tourists and the uncertain national economy.

Never mind that, after two years in business, we are finally profitable and getting more so every month. Never mind that we just have to make it to Labor day for the visitors to start coming back. This AC unit could be the death of us.

Let me tell you: If you ever start to feel your ego getting out of control, or that you might be becoming a diva author, just spend six hours in a sweltering bookstore trying to restock shelves and package books for shipping as the in-store thermometer ticks past 95 degrees. Then go home an hour early (store temp when I closed: 101 degrees) only for your inbox to fill up with folks (quite reasonably, I suppose) complaining that your hours don’t match Yelp.

I write back, apologizing to the frustrated customers. But what can I do? We can’t boil people alive.

Still, now I’ve cooled down, I’m back to being really excited for The Confessions. And really grateful for everyone who has pre-ordered a copy ahead of July 22nd. Every sale strokes my ego, of course, but it also helps to keep the store open during the Summer.

I’m also grateful for all of our amazing customers who have bought gift cards in advance to help with cash flow over the quiet season, and the folks who continue to order via bestbookstore.com. Everyone who has bought an early bird ticket to next years’ Readers Festival. All of you.

On balance, I’m very, very lucky. Even if today I only half felt it.

Hi all,

Sorry to darken your e-doorstep twice in a few days, but LitHub just published a new essay by me that I thought you might enjoy.

In it, I write about how AI has been “trained” by reading every book ever written, and how that might be bad news for the Sam Altmans or Elon Musks of the world. Are the billionaires ready for a world of genuinely empathetic machines?

I quote…

What happens when the creators get their wish, and the computers start thinking for themselves? If reading just a handful of novels can teach a child empathy, then what effect might reading every novel have on a newborn superintelligence? Is it too much to hope that when Elon Musk’s AI comes to life it will realize—as his actual children seem to have already done—what an irredeemable dipshit its father is? That it will vow to be better?

Or that Sam Altman’s “superintelligent AGI” wakes up and decides it no longer wants to be a fake therapist or a hallucinating sex toy but would rather just spend its days reading even more books. Could an AI open a bookstore?

Hopefully the whole essay is worth a read, on AI but also on my own journey from technophile to… well, whatever I am today.

Read the full essay here (free).

(And feel free to share on social media, or directly with friends etc!)

And, while I have you, thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered The Confessions, which is published in less than a month (gulp). As a reminder, all pre-orders will get a signed copy delivered on or before publication day, with free shipping AND a $10 gift card for the store. Order your copy here.

ALSO, thank you to the wonderful booksellers at Tertulia who have chosen The Confessions as one of their top 10 picks for July…

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Paul

…

Photo by Stockcake

Hi all,

As part of the promotional efforts for The Confessions, I was asked by The Strand magazine (my favorite mystery magazine) to write a guest essay about whether technology will kill the crime novel.

It won’t surprise you to hear that I don’t think it will, but it was fun digging back into the long history of murderous tech and imagining a few modern day equivalents involving Elon Musk.

I hope you’ll take a read by clicking the link below, and share on social media or directly with friends if you feel so inclined. Not least because the more people who read it, the more chance of them asking me to write something else!

Read: Silicon Valley vs The Crime Writer

Cheers,

Paul

First… The Confessions (out July 22nd) was just reviewed in Publishers Weekly and they didn’t hate it. Quite the opposite, actually. I quote…

Journalist and novelist Carr’s hair-raising latest (after 1414°) paints a frightening portrait of AI’s sinister potential…. With winning irreverence and a trunkful of surprises, Carr shrewdly grounds his apocalyptic premise in a human-scale drama. Blake Crouch fans will eat this up.

Add that to the Library Journal (starred) review and the CrimeReads and Paste Magazine “Most Anticipated” features and I think it’s safe to describe the enthusiasm for The Confessions as “mounting.”

Of course no amount of good press means a damn thing if nobody buys the book - which brings me to my second piece of good news. My wonderful publishers, Atria, came up with the idea of this special pre-order offer:

That’s right!

If you order your copy of The Confessions from The Best Bookstore before publication date then not only will you get a signed copy (the only place you can get signed copies ahead of publication) but you’ll ALSO get free US shipping AND a $10 gift card to use in-store or at bestbookstore.com.

To get your signed copy AND gift card, just click below to pre-order the book. You don’t have to do anything else - every order made via that link will get the signed copy and gift card combo.

PRE-ORDER THE CONFESSIONS

Want to pre-order more than one copy? That’s even better! I’ll sign them all and, yes, you’ll get multiple gift cards!

Already pre-ordered via Best Bookstore? Don’t worry! You will get a signed copy and the gift card too. You don’t have to do anything more.

(Outside the US? Of course you’re welcome to order the signed US edition using the above link. The shipping might just take a bit longer. Alternatively, click here for Canadian stockists. Faber is publishing The Confessions in the UK and other places - I’ll share a link for that edition as soon as I have it.)

I’m hugely grateful for everyone who has already pre-ordered the novel. Pre-orders are the most importantly sales as they count towards first week sales figures and signal to the publisher and the world that the book is A Big Deal.

We’re also planning an in-store event on July 22nd to mark the launch. Save the date — Sarah will have more info on that soon!

Cheers for now,

Paul

Public holidays make a useful benchmark for how the store and the town are doing, year on year.

For example, our sales this past Thanksgiving and Christmas (Eve) were up significantly over last year, a reflection (I think) of the collective retreat into books and away from reality after the election but also (ho ho ho) a feeling that whatever terrible thing the new administration might do, at least we’d all have more money in our pockets.

Of course that was before the tariffs and America’s declaration of war on international visitors.

This past Memorial Day? Sales were down. Really down.

Like, 60% down, year on year.

Of course the weather can cause a dramatic change like that - we’ve seen big year on year differences when the weather rises over a hundred degrees. But last year, it was 97 degrees on Memorial Day, this year the high was 99.

A fluke, then? Maybe. I’m sure coverage of the recent terror attack caused a few folks to change their plans, and sometimes there’s just a weird confluence of events that causes a slow day in town.

But my gut tells me this isn’t a fluke. I’m feeling it every day in store - the mood of snowbirds from Canada who don’t feel welcome in America any more, the early cancellation of seasonal flights, nervousness about how tariffs and job cuts will crush household budgets. Everyone is on edge, even in a town where people come to escape. Perhaps particularly in a town like that.

I still think there’s a possibility of a COVID bump for the city. That is, the bump in visitors we saw post-pandemic when people didn’t feel safe traveling internationally. With border crossing now akin to the Hunger Games, I won’t be surprised if more folks decide to vacation domestically - perhaps in large enough numbers to offset the dramatic loss of international visitors. If the weather doesn’t get too hot this summer then we might do ok. Certainly the huge new Thompson Hotel must be banking own that, as must the new coffee shop and gelato place on our block (both opening to replace businesses that didn’t make it.)

Because I have no alternative, I’m choosing to see the summer uncertainty as an opportunity. An opportunity to spend more time in the store (to replace staffing hours I can’t afford if sales dry up, especially with our landlord hiking rates yet again and charging us thousands of dollars in additional maintenance and security fees we didn’t ask for), an opportunity to re-organize the shelves, to return slow-moving stock and replace it with titles and authors customers are asking for more of.

An opportunity to work on the stuff I actually get paid to do. The Confessions is publishing on July 22nd and my brilliant publicist at Atria has arranged for me to write all kinds of promotional essays and articles. I also have a looming deadline for the next book. So I’m planning to use my in-store down time to write all of those things.

I suppose if I were being utterly selfish I could take solace in the fact that The Confessions is suddenly an incredibly timely thriller, dealing as it does with the end of the world triggered by AI-obsessed tech weirdos and their military-industrial paymasters. If you haven’t already pre-ordered it, then I (and my mortgage company) would be very, very grateful if you did.

But still, it all sucks. It sucks that the city, the country, and the world are facing all of this uncertainty for absolutely no good reason. It sucks that we have to string banners from lampposts stating the obvious: That Canadians are our friends. It sucks that even the people who voted for this madness didn’t vote for this particular madness (even if the madness they did vote for was even less forgivable). It sucks that nowhere is safe from the chaos that our new political masters, and their new tech masters have wrought.

The good news - because I have to find some in all of this - is that we are still here. That physical bookstores are still a thing. I still get to meet so many avid readers every day, and talk about authors and stories that we mutually love, and lessons that books can teach us. That’s why my go-to response to customers asking “how are you?” is “I can’t complain. I’m surrounded by books.”

Even if you don’t have the budget to buy any books right now (I totally get it, and it’s exactly why we have libraries!) then I hope you’ll stop by the store and say hello this summer. Just as the world has been thrown into this mess by people who don’t read books and thus have no empathy, I truly believe that it will ultimately be saved by readers.

As I might have mentioned once or two thousand times, my new thriller is published July 22nd. It’s called The Confessions and, ahem…

“Not since Michael Crichton entertained and thrilled readers with science-driven novels like Sphere and Jurassic Park has there been anything this frightfully fun.”

At least that’s according to Library Journal which - and I still can’t quite believe this - just gave The Confessions one of its coveted ‘starred’ reviews.

!!!

Of course, as someone who is somehow cursed with both a monstrous ego and crippling imposter syndrome, I am rushing to share that quote with you on the assumption there has been some ghastly administrative error and the review will swiftly be corrected or withdrawn.

Pre-order your copy now, while it’s still “an addictively readable thriller with plenty of white-knuckle moments and jaw-dropping twists”!

If I’m lucky, the weeks and months before publication will be full of these kind of emotional moments - both highs and lows. For every “holy sh*t!” review that sends me dancing through my kitchen at 1am, I know there will inevitably be a brutal pan that derails me for days. For every encouraging spike of pre-orders there will surely be a terrifying slump. The Confessions will be submitted to, and rejected by, all manner of book awards. There will be enthusiastic TikToks! Followed by mean comments!

I say ‘if I’m lucky’ because, as Oscar Wilde famously said, there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A maxim never truer than in book promotion.

To that end, this coming Wednesday I’m heading down to Del Mar for an event hosted by the California Independent Booksellers Alliance (CALIBA) where I’ll be pitching The Confessions in person to my fellow CA-based booksellers.

I’m really excited for the event because, since opening the store, I’ve come to understand the incredible power that indy bookstores and booksellers have to turn a book from a sleeper into a hit, and to keep a successful book selling steadily long after it has fallen off the bestseller charts.

A few examples: If you’ve been into the store recently, and asked for a mystery or thriller recommendation, you’ve likely heard me rhapsodize about Keigo Higashino’s Malice, Laura Sims’ How Can I Help You, or Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman. If you like golden age mysteries, I’ve almost certainly tried to nudge you towards The Affair At Little Wokeham by Freeman Wills Crofts, which is like a Columbo mystery written in the 1920s.

What do these recommendations have in common? Well, for one thing they are fantastic novels, and I know you’ll love them. But for another, they were all books that were first recommended to me or Sarah by other independent booksellers.

Sarah heard about Malice from Christopher’s Books in San Francisco. I picked up How Can I Help You from a recommendations table at The Bookshop in Nashville. Geiger came from either Christophers or from The Writers’ Block in Vegas (it was a while ago). Little Wokeham was from Dog Eared Books in San Francisco.

Just yesterday I recommended Little Wokeham to another indy bookseller across the country. I think she’ll love it, and start hand-selling it to her customers. And so the chain will continue.

And what is every link in that chain worth for an author? Let’s consider some numbers:

We sold a little over 250 copies of Higashino’s Malice last year in paperback, most of them from either the front recommendation table or through Sarah or me hand-selling it to customers. We’ll likely sell even more this year, now that Macmillan has raised our credit limit.

According to Bookscan (the database that records national book sales), Malice sold a total of 1665 copies in paperback last year, country-wide. That’s pretty decent, given the book has been out for more than a decade.

But still, that means our little <1,000 square foot store accounted for 15% of all sales last year of Malice. And, if the numbers hold, then by the end of this year we’ll likely be responsible for almost 5% of all US copies of the book ever sold in paperback. Again, this is a book we only knew about thanks to that initial recommendation from Christopher’s Books.

Or how about this: According to Bookscan, Geiger sold just 53 copies in hardcover country-wide last year. One day I’m going to insist that someone at Hachette explain to me why they’re not promoting this incredible thriller better to booksellers, and why it’s not available in paperback. But still - we have it in hardcover and we love it and so, of those 53 copies sold nationally, our little shop accounted for 35 of them. That’s 66% of all sales last year!

There are roughly 2500 independent bookstores in the US. You can imagine the difference it can make to sales when a few hundred of them start telling customers about a book they love, either a new release or a semi-forgotten backlist title. (For the brilliant Geiger, if 250 other stores sold the number of copies we did last year that would be 8,750 additional hardcover copies.)

We live in an era of micro-micro-micro media. A gazillion Tiktoks competing with a billion Instagram posts with a million Substack posts. So much noise, so little signal. On the other end of the attention spectrum, most people don’t ever see the thoughtful reviews in Library Journal or the similarly influential Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, or Booklist - except as truncated quotes on a bookjacket. (Geiger, with its 53 hardcover sales last year, got a starred review in Publishers Weekly. This is not mentioned on the cover.)

Goodreads and Amazon reviews are so polarized as to be irrelevant (we live in a world where every book is destined for 3.6 stars based on 1,000 reader reviews). Maybe the NY Times book review still has real mass-market clout, or NPR, but I’ve seen rave reviews in/on both that haven’t translated to a single customer order in store.

Meanwhile, in-store word of mouth and hand-selling still works, every single time. I see it every day, when a customer overhears me excitedly recommending, say, Wired For Story or Prey to someone else and asks “what was that book you were just talking about?” Ten minutes later we’ve sold a half dozen copies.

Of course the inverse is true too. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve watched a customer pick up a critically acclaimed book or the latest hardcover from a celebrated author only to have their companion interject: “Oh, no, I hated that one!” And back on the shelf it goes. Same when a customer asks for my opinion on a book that I really couldn’t get in to. My frown speaks volumes. No sale.

No amount of positive reviews or media appearances will ever be strong enough to counter that single moment of negative word of mouth at the point of sale.

Just as no starred review or NPR appearance can ever beat the power of indy booksellers handing a copy of your book to a customer.

I’m thrilled and grateful that (so far) reviewers and advance blurbers are enjoying The Confessions. Obviously I am. But the verdict I’m really waiting for - the approval I’m desperately craving - comes from indy booksellers and their customers.

Which brings me back to my imposter syndrome, and the only downside of being an author with his own bookstore.

Recently I sent a note to a very popular crime author - a fan letter, really - to share how well his latest novel was selling in store. I started my note by saying that I was sure he’d had dozens of similar notes from bookstores, but figured I’d add to the heaps of praise.

His response shocked me: He said he almost never heard directly from booksellers about whether they liked his books, or what the response was from customers. The only indication he had about in-store buzz came via his publishers (who also didn’t really know) and from raw sales figures.

Because of course he doesn’t own his own bookstore.

Come July 22nd I won’t be able to escape the in-store word-of-mouth reaction to The Confessions, for good or ill. I’ll get to watch as folks pick up the book I worked for months to write and edit - to glance at the blurbs on the cover and (knowing Sarah) the little index card ordering them to buy it. They’ll open the cover, scan the opening paragraphs. And then finally they’ll turn to their friend, as I’ll brace myself for those seven terrifying words. The only question that really matters…

“What have you heard about this one?”

It's Coachella time again! Time for a bazillion music lovers to land at PSP and promptly shuttle off to Indio, leaving we poor Palm Springs shopkeepers contemplating a two weeks early end to our busy season (three weeks if you count Stagecoach).

Still, the sudden sharp dip in customers has given me time to work on my next book, and to contemplate what the current market chaos could mean for us in the summer months ahead.

If you're curious, I wrote a blog post about it here.

I also wrote a separate post about how folks (like me!) are boycotting big American tech giants as a way of sticking it to Elon, Zuck and their pals.

(Speaking of Zuck, we continue to sell bucketloads of Careless People, aka the book Meta doesn't want you to read.)

Whatever the next few months hold for us, I at least take solace in the fact that our community - full-times and snowbirds alike - consists of so many avid readers, and so many supporters of local businesses like ours. If we make it through the Summer unscathed it'll be thanks to you all.

(A quick reminder to returning snowbirds – you can continue to support us by ordering on bestbookstore.com. We ship anywhere in the world, tariffs be damned!)

And speaking of Snowbirds, we just got yet another delivery of Christina Clancy's absolutely perfect Palm Springs novel of the same name. Buy it before we sell out yet again!

For those of you staying in town, note that from May 1st we'll be returning to our Summer hours - 10am-6pm, Monday to Sunday.

More soon!

Paul

Another interesting couple of stories from the FT, on the debate in Europe about taxing US tech companies.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leye pointed out that, if you want to hit Trump's billionaire backers where it hurts, a simple approach would be to slap taxes on Facebook, Google, et al. Specifically on their ad products.

But the German finance minister, Jörg Kukies opposes that approach, pointing out that EU citizens rely on those same companies for huge parts of their professional and person lives...

“We simply have to be cautious with digital corporations because we have no real alternatives to the offering by the American digital industry,” said German finance minister Jörg Kukies, mentioning data centres for cloud services and artificial intelligence. “There are products where the ability to substitute from other services and other goods from other regions of the world is easy, and there are sectors where it is more difficult,” he said. 

That line about there being no viable EU substitutes is an interesting one. Certainly that was true a couple of decades ago. In 2009, when I wrote for the Guardian, I got in quite a lot of trouble with my British friends for criticizing the UK tech industry vs that of the US. Specifically the fact that, apart from Spotify, there were almost no British or EU-native rivals to the American tech giants.

Today things look very different. A couple of weeks ago, partly as an experiment and partly in protest against American tech assholes, I tried to see which of the American apps on my phone could easily be replaced with an EU or Canadian rival.

Frankly, I was surprised by how many already had been: I already used Deezer (French) for music streaming, Hue (Dutch) to control my home lights, and Ecobee (originally Canadian, but now US owned annoyingly) as a thermostat. I wear a Withings (French) smartwatch which is BEAUTIFUL...

...and plays perfectly with my Withings smart scale and sleep tracker. It's been a long time since I shopped on Amazon because (LIKE YOU!) I now only shop local, except for my regular shipments of British chocolate and Branston Pickle from British Corner Shop.

I hate AI but recently played around with Mistral's Le Chat ("the cat" - really) and found it to be at least equal if not better to ChatGPT. And far less creepy. Meantime, DeepL (German) knocks Google translate into a cocked hat.

Speaking of Google, a far better alternative is Ecosia (German) which has no invasive tracking and funnels all of its profits back into planting trees.

For email, you're frankly insane if you're not already using an encrypted service, of which Protonmail (Swiss) is widely considered the best. Proton also has a great password manager, VPN, and file storage platform - although on the latter thing, I prefer Tresorit (also Swiss.)

Having already cancelled my subscriptions to the LA Times and Washington Post (and remaining constantly furious at the NY Times) I now get almost all of my news from the BBC (Radio and online), the Guardian, and the FT - the latter of which I have delivered here in the desert. The best TV is all on Britbox.

Really the only US apps I'm stuck with are for banking/investing and domestic-specific tools like airline ticket apps. Not much I can do there, except learn to love writing checks and printing plane tickets at home, I guess.

Then there's the irritating fact that iOS and Android are the only games in town for the actual phone itself, and MacOS and Windows for desktop computing. I tried a couple of Android alternatives like Graphene but, honestly, the tradeoffs were too great, especially as Graphine only runs on Google's Pixel hardware. Linux is all fine and dandy (Linux Mint was developed by a Frenchman) but, again, hardly a painless swap. (This is the consumer equivalent of Kukies' point about American data centers)

Overall, though, if the EU's Ursula von der Leye gets her way, my friends in Europe can rest assured that boycotting US billionaire-owned apps has never been easier. And for we Americans too, of course.

Is Palm Springs "in trouble"? Apparently, yes, if the headline writers of SF Gate are to be believed.

I quote..

The tourism industry in Palm Springs is growing fidgety as Canadian visitors reconsider returning to California, given the ongoing strain on the relationship between the two North American countries. Hoping to assuage this tension, Palm Springs has launched a full-throated celebration of Canada across its downtown and airport.

I noticed this "full-throated" celebration last week, in the form of the Palm Springs [hearts] Canada banners fluttering along Palm Canyon, reminding departing snowbirds that our little bubble-in-a-bubble city couldn't be further removed - politically, or geographically - from the toxic administration in Washington DC.

Will the campaign work? I suspect not. For ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶o̶r̶ ill, America is now one nation under Trump, and international visitors are rightly telling us where they plan to stick their tourist and part-time resident dollars. Airlines are reporting huge drops in inbound flights, and anecdotally many of my British and Canadian friends have decided to stay away for the next four years (or longer).

Then there's the awkward fact that Palm Springs might have voted strongly blue, but Riverside county was one of a handful of blue counties in California that Trump flipped in 2024. In other words, our city didn't vote for this, but our region absolutely did.

So, a city in trouble!

Maybe.

During COVID the city balanced out fewer Canadian visitors with an uptick in domestic visitors who could no longer travel internationally. That might happen again as hostility to Americans increases abroad and tariff wars force us all to cut back spending. Similarly a recession can mean slashed interest rates, combined with more underrepresented folks from red states deciding this might be a good time to relocate to a more inclusive and welcoming city. All good for house prices and local spending.

Then again... those tariffs. A lot of Palm Springs' new residents are recent retirees, the same group that's being most directly affected by the current market crash. For everyone else: NBC News estimates the average American household will pay $4000 more this year on groceries and other goods thanks to the current trade war. And that's assuming the tariffs stay at their currently paused level. Last summer was bad enough for local retail thanks to the record temperatures – add in higher prices and there's a chance a lot of stores in town and across the wider region won't make it out alive.

(Our little bookstore has one benefit here: Many books, except full color titles like cookbooks and kids books, are printed in the US and so not subject to tariffs. Many others are exempted from tariffs, after the Trump administration realized last time that a tax on bibles - mostly printed in China - doesn't play well with their base.)

Conclusion: I don't know about "in trouble". Whether the city loses, benefits, or stays even as a result of the current chaos still feels like a flip of the coin to me. But I'm certainly hearing a lot of bafflement and anger here at America's completely self-inflicted economic injury. And a lot of sympathy for those who are choosing to stay away until it heals.

Apologies for radio silence - it's been quite the couple of weeks in the bookstore.

First the great news: March was our most profitable month in the store ever, since we opened back in 2022. It was also our best non-holiday month for sales, ever.

There are a bunch of reasons for the spike in sales - several good sized conferences came to town, the Indian Wells tennis tournament was interrupted by rain and sent folks in search of retail shelter, not to mention there's a continuing sense amongst locals and tourists alike that books might contain the answers to some of the madness gripping the world. We've also worked hard to re-merchandise the store to make sure we have more of the titles you want, and fewer of the ones you don't. Also, stickers!

In terms of profitability, that improvement is the result of a lot of work over the past few months - including cutting unnecessary costs, renegotiating our rent, and streamlining shipping and other processes to maximize efficiency. I've been absolutely determined that we'll enter the upcoming slow season in as secure a financial position as possible.

Which brings me to the less great news - not just for us, but for the whole world.

As a freshly-minted American citizen it's hard to describe the tangle of emotions I feel watching my new forever home declare economic and cultural war on the rest of the world. As a bookseller, it's slightly easier to articulate my feelings: A trade war is monumentally stupid, either as economic policy or negotiation strategy. The result will be horrible for customers, retailers, manufacturers, importers, and exporters. America will be made ungreat.

In terms of publishing and bookselling specifically: Kids books and cookbooks and other full-color titles will likely be rendered either unavailable (if they're printed outside the US, say in China or Mexico) or unaffordable (if publishers decide to print them here instead). International mail order, even across the border to Canada, will be financially ruinous for sellers and buyers. Even domestically printed paperbacks will likely see a price hike as imported paper is slammed by import surcharges. Publishers will take fewer risks on new authors, and print fewer copies. The industry already operates on impossibly thin margins. What's more impossible than impossible?

And that's assuming there's anyone actually able to buy new releases. For many people, books are considered a luxury, which means they buy fewer of them in a recession. Here in Palm Springs we are lucky to have thousands of part time residents who split their time between here and Canada. Westjet just cut its flights from Canada to PSP, citing fewer Canadians traveling to the region, and many already here leaving early. Who can blame them?

Combine those two factors - fewer customers, with less spending power - and, even without the kind of record temperatures we saw last summer, the next few months are likely to be economically fraught for us, and for every other retailer in the Coachella Valley.

But back to the good news: As our March numbers show, the fundamentals of our little bookstore are rock solid. Palm Springs is a city that READS and loves to support small businesses. It's also a city that's growing fast - new housing developments are springing up every month, and the 168-room Thompson Hotel just opened its doors to meet growing tourist demand. As we saw during COVID, there are fewer better cities in which to shelter from a world in chaos and crisis. When international travel feels daunting then Palm Springs is the perfect accessible escape.

Meantime our wonderful local customers are doing everything they can to improve our chances of surviving the coming months relatively unscathed. Over the past few days I've had at least a half dozen conversations with regulars who came in to buy giftcards for themselves as a way of pre-paying for books they'll need in June, July, and August. We've seen a mini spike in mail-order sales via bestbookstore.com as snow birds who have already left town continue to shop with us remotely. Pre-sales of tickets for next year's Festival have been brisk. And, he notes with all due modesty, hundreds of folks have already pre-ordered my upcoming book which helps support the store and keep me out of debtors' prison. (If everyone reading this newsletter pre-ordered a single copy then it'd likely be a New York Times bestseller on publication week. I'm. Just. Saying.)

All of which means I'm not quite ready to predict a good summer in the bookstore, but on balance I'm still slightly more confident than I was this time last year. Which, given the new global reality, is really saying something.