A personal newsflash: today (June 2nd) sees the US release of my bestselling banquet of historico-linguistic nerdery, Why Q Needs U – that book about the alphabet and the English language that came out in the UK last October and has consistently haunted British bookshops since then.
Despite its British origins and (very) British author, the book was never written with just one country and its English speaker-readers in mind. If it had been, it would’ve been much easier to write. The author winces to recall the writing and rewriting of its various attempts at guiding the reader towards imagining specific sounds, regardless of accent, in the mute medium of a book. Instead, Why Q Needs U was ambitiously intended for a global readership, no matter where you got your English.
From today onwards, copies of WQNU should be available on the physical and virtual shelves of American retailers (through which, I guess, Canadian, Mexican and Caribbean purchases will become easier too). Amazon is of course the big player, for which the link is here: https://geni.us/USWhyQNeedsU. It also comes in a choice of format: book, e-book, or audiobook narrated by yours truly.
I’ve been doing what I can to spread the word from a transatlantic distance, and this will bear fruit over June in the form of further reviews, interviews and episodes of scarily big podcasts. These will offer a surfeit of fun, free linguistic content to would-be readers, and to me a surfeit of stomach-shrinking shocks as that content is gradually released. I’ll try to keep track of them on my Media page.
A lot of time and a lot of money have gone into this US launch, so if there’s something you can do to help the book find its readership – whether it be through purchases, recommendations, reviews – it will for sure be appreciated.
Danny x
Danny L. Bate 