Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. What matter? What matters is love is love and how much you're giving to a wide range of friends

among whom you're living, but in order to love other people that way, you must first love yourself and know you're okay.

Jonathan Merritt, my uncle and me.

I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf an independent bookstore in beautiful

downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week I'm chatting with literary agent and author

Jonathan Merritt about the book publishing process.

We don't do a ton of interviews on From the Front Porch these days, but I knew I had to make an exception

for Jonathan.

He happens to be my literary agent, a sentence I never thought I'd say, and his new picture book, My Gungal

and Me, released last week, perfect for summer reading with your families.

Before we launch into our conversation, this is a quick reminder that if you've ever

wondered what the store behind the podcast actually looks like you can follow the

bookshelf on Instagram or I can't believe it on Tik-Tocille. We post behind the scenes pictures, videos, and various shenanigans

and also give updates like store hours, shop events, and special deals. Summer is a great time to follow us there so you can easily keep in touch and see what's happening at the shop, often in real time.

Just tap over to our show notes and follow us on Instagram or

Tik-Tock to stay up to date. Now back to the show, hi Jonathan.

Hi, oh my gosh, it's so good to be on with you. This is so fun and so exciting because I actually think a lot of our

listeners well they're obviously readers but I think they care deeply about the

publishing process but if they're like me, I only know one side of things. I know the book selling side of things.

And so often people will ask, you know, we'll get local authors in the store and things like that and they'll ask about the process and as a staff we're always pretty in the dark about that.

We're very much aware of what happens with hand selling and book buying but we are not as aware of or

privy to the the book business the publishing business and you are and so I think

...