KPD BLUE TOPS KAUA`I BEST SELLER LIST

KPD BLUE TOPS KAUA`I BEST SELLER LIST: KPD Blue is and has been topping the Lihu`e Boarders Books’ best seller list for almost a month now and according to author Tony Sommer “they can’t keep it on the shelves”.

The book, which we are proud to have serialized since September, has lifted a shroud for the thousands on Kaua`i who bought the book or read it at “ ....got windmills?”.

It’s unfortunate that not one Kaua`i official, past or present, elected or appointed. has even acknowledged much less tried to deal with any of the systemic problems- in both the Kaua`i Police Department and county government in general- that persist and some say have worsened since Sommer left Kaua`i.

“Tony” as everyone calls him lives a comfortable retirement in Arizona these days after receiving a big bag of cash to just go away and after he refused to report on Kaua`i as an “isn’t it cute the way they do it like corrupt third world countries” story.

Sommer says he hasn’t really gotten a lot of phone calls despite the fact that his number Phoenix is listed. But he does say he’s overwhelmed by the Borders sales numbers and had to laugh about them in light of the story of how the store- the only large bookseller on Kaua`i after they drove the rest of them out of business- originally wasn’t going to carry the book.

Borders didn’t stock the book until PNN wrote about widespread allegations on Kaua`i that the book was being censored and that Borders was being threatened by KPD officials to keep it off the shelves.

But it seems from the recent sales numbers that it really didn’t matter to Sommer financially that he allowed us to help him tell the story “on line” for free.

Sommer said that having people on Kauai know the true story was far more important to him said than making and money from the book.

“I just want the true story to be told” he said then and now.

The only problem the way we see it is that apparently the whole “we can’t carry KPD Blue at Borders” line was a way to gouge Sommer on the per-book royalty he receives.

The amount Sommer gets from each book sold at Borders is small fraction of what he gets from each Amazon.com purchase- about a buck-and-change on each Borders sale.

This weekend and the next we will post first KPD Blue’s Table of Contents- which we probably should have done originally- and then the index. We will include the “pages” as they were designated in the physical book with the TOC so that when we post the index in two weeks readers can find the chapter for each subject in the index.

We will be leaving up the archive at “gw?”. All we ask in return is that each reader on Kaua`i do at least one thing to help clean up county government on Kaua`i by actively taking on one aspect of the opaque paternalistic patronage system that has made our county’s government a laughing stock.

That system may provide endless material for a rabble-rousing activist reporter but it can’t be good for anyone who has to live under the Kaua`i county government’s corrupt reign.