The Renfrow Story

As of a few days ago the Renfrow book can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and pretty much any bookstore in the country. If you’ve followed this journey for long, you know I am committed to supporting distribution through small bookstores and have been working with the Pioneer Bookstore in Grinnell for book sales. They remain the best place to buy your copy because they have the first edition, which is a higher print quality than the print on demand version you will get through these other venues.

Let me explain.

The first copies were ordered in bulk and printed by Print Ninja, a Chicago company. These 2000 copies are on heavier paper and the quality of the printing of each page is rich and simply beautiful. You can see the nuances of the shading and the backgrounds. You can tell by the feel of the book in your hands that the quality is excellent.

We’ve sold and distributed close to 1500 of the first editions. Of those, 400 were donated to Iowa libraries and I’ve got 100 set aside and still hope to get them to Chicago area libraries. This is amazing in so many ways and I am so grateful to everyone who helped make it happen. But I was hitting a brick wall in getting the book distributed beyond Grinnell. Independent bookstores want to be able to order from their usual supplier, a company named Ingram. So I had to find a way to do that.

IngramSpark is a branch of Ingram that is designed for self-publishing. If you submit your book to them it will become available to bookstores through the Ingram database. It will also then be available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the major retail outlets. In order to do this, they use a print on demand model, which means they don’t print the book until a copy is ordered. As you can imagine, the cost per book of these quick-print copies is higher (hence the higher retail price), and the print quality is lower. I also had to adjust the physical size of the book because they have limited options for size. The print on demand version also doesn’t get trimmed as consistently, so some of the pages have white lines along the edges. I’ve included a couple of photos of the two editions side by side so you can see.

The delightful Miss Edith will turn 110 on July 14th and my goal was to make it possible for anyone in the country to easily get a copy by that milestone. In honor of that, this second edition includes the photo of her holding the first copy of the book (taken on Dec. 2, 2023). It also includes the lovely note she wrote to me that was featured in my last post.

I also have the ebook in progress and hope to have it available soon. I found a company called eBook Partnership that for a flat feel will take my pdf and convert it to all of the various ebook formats. That conversion is in progress now. So hopefully the ebook will start popping up as available for purchase within the next couple of weeks as well.

I spoke to her last week and she is doing great. No big party for her birthday this year. But she is planning to go out to her favorite Chicago tea house with her daughter and a few friends. If you want to send her a birthday card the college is collecting them to deliver en masse. And if you’re in Grinnell, plan to come to the Grinnell Area Arts Council on July 12th from 4-6pm. We’ll be doing a celebration in honor of her 110th birthday as we launch a new exhibit focused on Grinnell during the Renfrow Era. There will be a photo booth where you can take photos or short videos which will be compiled into a video we’ll get to her on her big day.

And, one last thing. Because of the way the world works the listing on Amazon is going to be where more people can learn about the book than ever before. It would be a huge help to have lots of positive reviews on there. This will help inform the decision of anyone who is considering making a purchase. So if you have a minute, if you could do a review on Amazon (or on Barnes & Noble) it would be a big help.

Thanks so much.