Publishing is a funny business. Here we are, with a warehouse full of books, ready to sell them to you. But doing so this month is going to be harder than usual. Our distributor went belly-up this spring, and stiffed us for thousands of dollars in sales to boot. Grrr.

We have signed on with a wonderful new distributor, and in the long run the change will be a great thing for our small press. But it’ll be a month before the new folks take over for real. Which means that for the month of June our books are only available through our online store, at retail stores that order from us directly, or at one of the public events we will be staffing in the coming weeks. Lucky for you, there are several of those!

If you’re in Chicago, find us Saturday and Sunday, June 11 and 12, at the legendary Printers Row Lit Fest, the largest outdoor literary festival and book fair in the midwest. We will have all of our backlist on hand — such as Aaron Foley’s bestselling How To Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass — at deep festival discounts, plus hot-off-the-presses copies of our newest title, Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology. We will be dropping our dose of Rust Belt realness at booth 327 on Polk Street, right smack at the south end of Dearborn.

Also on June 11,  we’re at tThe Cleveland Flea at Tyler Village, 3615 Superior Ave., has been rescheduled for June 18, thanks to predicted thunderstorms, but we’ll be there next Saturday with minty fresh copies of our brand-new Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook, Rust Belt Chic t-shirts and prints by our North Coast Biodiversity illustrator David Wilson. All current members of Belt will receive 25% off their purchase at the Cleveland Flea.

Speaking of those brand-new books, the official launch party for the Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook is Wednesday, June 22, at Market Garden Brewery, 1947 W. 27th St. in Cleveland. Come celebrate with the many talented contributors and the generous sponsors who made “the least practical, most literary” guide to the city possible — not to mention gripe about why your favorite coffeeshop wasn’t included and drink great beer.

And scant days later we’ll be in Flint, Michigan, to toast the release of Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology with anthology editor Scott Atkinson and a slew of Michigan’s finest writers. That’s Monday, June 27, at Soggy Bottom Bar, 613 Martin Luther King Ave., in Flint.

Every dollar from every book you buy directly from us, either online or in person, will help keep our small business afloat during this unexpectedly stormy transition. So please, pick up some beach reading from Belt and help bring us into sunnier summer days. 

Thanks, and see you on the streets in Chicago and Cleveland this weekend!