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As of today, Coop is now officially available in paperback.  Included: new cover, new subtitle, new “P.S.” essay, and tucked in the back there, a little info about this project.

Book tour begins today as well.  Details here.  Before it’s all over, health and fate willing, I’ll go from ‘Sconsin to New York.  Today, however, I’m planting oats.  Pretty much right on the spot where that tot and those chickens are standing:

Time speeds along faster than a chicken coop on wheels!  The very first paperback copy of Coop arrived via the UPS truck last week, and we are now able to take orders (all orders will be signed by Mike).

Here’s the cover:

Yep, those are our chickens, and that’s our tyke herding them.  She had only recently learned to walk when the photo was taken.  Now she’s threatening to read the book herself.  Once again, this cover was the work of our friends John and Julie.

As you can see, the book has a new subtitle.  On the hardcover, the subtitle was “A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting.”  I’ve never had a book come out with two separate subtitles before.  There were meetings involved.  I believe we are attempting to broaden the demographic, as they say.  I’m plumb happy with my current demographic, but welcome any newcomers.  Question is, does this make the hardcover (signed copies still in stock!) even more valuable as a collector’s item?

By the way, this paperback version is a “P.S.” model, which means it includes an author interview and a new essay by Mike updating events (feral guinea hens, anyone?) since the hardcover release.

I’ll be on paperback tour in May and April.  We’ve added tentative dates to the calendar with more details to follow soon.

Weekdays at 12:30 p.m. CST from now until February 12, Jim Fleming will be reading Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Chapter A Day.”  Jim has a wonderful reading voice (I have learned he is a favorite of rural mail carriers) and you can listen to a live stream of the reading right here.

Missed a segment?  The five most recent chapters are available here: http://wpr.org/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm?Code=cad&repeats=no

I don’t recall if I ever posted this.  Last spring during book tour in Seattle I was invited to sit down with Nancy Pearl, the librarian who has her own action figure.  If you are an author, going on Nancy Pearl’s show (“Book Lust”) is like having an audience with the Pope, being on the Tonight Show, and meeting Elvis – all rolled into one.  As of this typing, I haven’t seen the whole interview, but I did watch enough to come up with a question of my own: Did I even answer her first question?

It’s fun to joke, but long before I met Nancy Pearl, long before I sat down to do this interview, she made  couple of mentions of my books on National Public Radio, and those mentions had a very direct effect on the continued life of those books.  So I am grateful, and if you think I look like I’m sitting for this interview in the manner of an eager first grader on his best behavior as he recites his spelling words for Teacher, well, so it was.

I’ll be on the “Back to the Farm” segment of To The Best of Our Knowledge this weekend.  Find out where/when to listen here.  I believe you can also eventually listen online here.