Books That Don't Suck

Nothing to See Here

2008-09-26T08:33:00.004-05:00

As you can tell, I've been very bad about keeping this blog up to date. It's been a busy few months, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of writing more, not to mention a hundred other things on various to-do lists.

It's not all that feasible to keep two blogs up and running, especially since my bookstore-opening advances aren't exactly advancing at the moment. This is not to say I'm giving up that goal; I am, however, mostly watching to see how other successful booksellers weather the changing industry, and sometimes that can be kind of like watching grass grow.

So, if you're following me on this little corner of the web, you probably already know about my other blog. It's where all the neat stuff will be for the foreseeable future, including the bookish things.

We're not turning the lights off here, merely dimming them for awhile before the grand reopening. In the meantime, feel free to switch your links and bookmarks around to point to L'esprit d'escalier, where I'll be kicking off the book bloggery over there in time for Banned Books Week.

Farewell, George Carlin

2008-06-24T08:03:00.000-05:00

I don't remember when I first became aware of George Carlin. I like to think it was before Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, but I can't be sure. I know I'd heard A Place for My Stuff by then, but whether or not I realized that was the same person playing Rufus or not is unclear.

Somewhere between Bill &Ted and Dogma, I caught up on my Carlin education. We sold his books in the bookstore. If I heard a snippet of his routine while flipping channels, I'd pause and watch the whole thing. He was a comedian whose work I admired.

I was lucky enough to meet him.

One of the perks of my job is that every now and then I get to be in the same room with famous people. They write books, I sell books. It works out nicely. I'm not high enough on the totem pole to do much more than smile politely and shake a hand before moving on, but it's still one of those job benefits that isn't written down on any piece of paper. When I consider what I want to do after this, it's one of the things I know I'll be giving up, and it makes me a little sad.

In 2004, he wrote When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? and came to sales conference to talk to us. He read a few pages, having to ad-lib some of it since either the print was too small or one of the pages he'd printed out had gone missing. He stood at the podium while we sipped at our post-lunch coffees and talked for a while about his career and his life, and what the book was about. He took questions from us. He was open and honest, and of course, hilarious.

We had some time after the Q&A was finished to introduce ourselves, and I waited around, intending to just dart in, say thank you, and leave. The knot of people he was talking to shifted and I edged my way into the circle, just to listen. He noticed the newcomer - he noticed every time one of the faces surrounding him changed - and for each of us, he'd pause to say hello.

I don't remember what he said to me. It was most likely that kind of small talk you make when you're shaking the hand of someone you've never met and will never see again, but it wasn't a plain "Nice to meet you." I was utterly charmed by whatever it was he said (and I'm kicking myself that I don't recall the words), and I stood there awhile, entranced, listening to him patter on with the other reps.

I was, for a few moments, in the presence of someone I greatly admired. His was a brilliant voice, speaking truth through humor, making us think about politics, language and our treatment of one another. The world is a little dimmer today.

Review: Robert R. McCammon's Boy's Life

2008-06-06T11:52:00.000-05:00

In a conversation about favorite authors with some friends last night, Robert R. McCammon came up.

We discussed our love for his Blue World, and how we'd read Swan Song on the heels of The Stand, which made us love it all the more. We talked about how Usher's Passing was a wonderful, creepy follow-up to Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," and about McCammon's general awesomeness.

But the book of his I love the very most, the one I have that is so tattered and dog-eared that it's held together by a rubber band, is Boy's Life.

Let's see if I can remember my handselling pitch: It's about a boy and his friends, growing up in a small town in 1960s Alabama. It's a coming-of-age story, and a murder mystery, and a story of how a family deals with a changing world. It's about a storyteller, and magic, bike rides and summertime, a carnival and a monster, the Beach Boys and ghosts, the loyalty of dogs, a single green feather, a boy with a perfect arm, and the history of a black arrowhead.

I cry every time I read it. Twice.

I could, if you asked me to right now, recite the poem at the beginning of the book. There are phrases from it that I'll never forget, and scenes that I can close my eyes and envision.

It's about friendship, and families, and how even the people you love the most have their flaws, and you love them anyway.

In McCammon's own words:

I say Boy's Life is not about lost innocence, because I believe we all maintain the pool of innocence and wonder inside us no matter how far we get away from our childhood. I believe this pool can be revisited, and we can immerse ourselves in its healing water if we dare to take the risk of knowing again the children we used to be. This is a risky thing, because once we look back---once we let that wonderful pool take us in again---we may not ever fully return to being the adults we are now.

Boy's Life, like The Stand, is one of the books I returned to every summer for several years. It's been a long while since I've revisited either of those worlds, my summers having been swallowed up by other things these past few years. But I'm feeling that ache again, for both of them. I think it's long past time for the rereads.

And, because my tattered old copy might not be able to withstand another reading, Pocket Books is reissuing Boy's Life in trade paperback in July. Excellent timing.

Sign Me Up

2008-06-03T11:07:00.002-05:00

I had this post planned about Indie Bound, the new program that will be replacing Book Sense, which I think looks really neat and has the excitement and momentum to do amazing things.

However, I then saw this and all rational thought flew out of my head.

The Stand.

In comic book form.

And I have to wait until September before it happens.

/wails

The adaptation of The Dark Tower has so far been excellent - the writing, the art, the feel of that world. I will only imagine good things for the translation of my favorite book of all time into comic book form.

So, help me out here, O Those Who Read My Ramblings - what books would you love to see done as comic books? Which ones have already been done that you think are particularly good or particularly bad? Which titles would make you gnash your teeth and go "Nooooo! They'll fuck it up!" if a comic version was to be announced?

To Tide You Over

2008-05-30T08:57:00.004-05:00

I'm spreading in Shannon's book meme. (Which was spread from somewhere else, and somewhere else before that, and so on, as all good memes are.)

The rules!

Copy the list of books, then bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Here goes (with occasional commentary)...

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (I could swear I bought it, but I can't find it. I am ashamed.)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre (The first pop quiz I ever had came when we were reading this book my freshman year in high school. I actually hadn't read the chapter yet (le gasp), but somehow I managed to squeak out a passing grade.)
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife (Loved, loved, loved it.)
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner (I keep intending to read this.)
Mrs. Dalloway (Read it for school and loved it. It gets a bolding.)
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books (No, I don't know why I haven't read it yet, either.)
Memoirs of a Geisha (At an airport flying home, had given away whatever ARC I was reading to a bookseller I was visiting. The magazine stand had a bunch of meh paperbacks and this. I almost missed the call to board my flight, I was so entranced.)
Middlesex (No, but I have read The Virgin Suicides and loved it. Middlesex is on the list to buy.)
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel (I expected to hate it - I did my honors thesis on vampire literature (the English department collectively /facepalmed, I'm sure), so it takes a lot to impress me. Then I found out Kostova did ten years of research for this book. I loved it. I wouldn't shut up about it the whole summer.)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Y'know... I didn't hate it.)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
Anansi Boys
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels and Demons (I want those hours back, plzkthx)
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon (So, uh. My friend Eric has been recommending this forever, but when I was wandering the bookstore trying to remember which book he'd raved about, I got confused and thought he'd been talking about Neuromancer (hey, airport bookstore, 6:00 AM, no coffee. My brain wasn't on.) I loved Neuromancer. Now I need to go get Cryptonomicon.
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Spent the whole book nodding. I would have shouted "Amen!" every few lines, but I read most of it on the train. People tend to look at you funny when you do that.)
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

---

There are a lot of books on this list I'd still like to get around to. I'm kind of sad more of them aren't highlighted, but somehow the teachers and professors I had in high school and college deviated wildly from the lists of standard assigned reading. I can't complain, but the list feels light.

Of course, my genres-of-preference, sf/f and horror, don't have a lot of entries on the list unless the books are hugely successful. Hmph.

Brief Interruption of Service

2008-05-29T08:18:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've rambled at you. I've fallen a bit behind on industry news, and I spent most of last weekend doing family things and planting herbs, so there wasn't a lot of time to catch up on my reading. I've also been bitten by a writing bug, so while that's a good thing for me, it's made this blog a lonely place.

Unless there's a way to plug the eReader directly into my brain, I am going to be reviewless this week.

Back Tuesday with more yattering about bookish things. Until then, I might spill words onto screen over at the other blog. Come visit!

Technology and Me, a Love-Hate Relationship

2008-05-19T12:46:00.003-05:00

There was no review on Friday because the internet gods decided I didn't need to be connected to the outside world for the day. However, I have sweet, sweet connectivity now. Rejoice!

Also, I believe my Sony Reader might be fried, somehow. It had about half-battery on Thursday. I didn't touch it all weekend. Then, this morning, while I was waiting for the train to arrive, I pulled it out of my purse and tried turning it on.

Nothing.

Assuming that, somehow, the battery simply ran out, I plugged it into my computer when I arrived at work.

Nothing.

No icon letting me know that it's charging, no acknowledgment that something is plugged into the USB port on my computer. I haven't the faintest idea what might have killed it this dead, but it's not responding to anything.

Yet another argument for why paper books will always, always trump these devices. Right now, it seems to me, I have a $300 lump of metal and plastic and parts with no entertainment value whatsoever.

Tuesday Musing: Customer Service as a Value-Add

2008-05-13T11:11:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I heard an advertisement on NPR for a local realtor. The ad promised "exceptional customer service." I couldn't tell you the name of the company or what other things they might have offered, because I was so instantly caught up in that phrase.

It's something I see and hear in a lot of ads these days, this promise to be nice to customers, to be helpful and knowledgable and to, generally, not suck.

It floors me.

Exceptional customer service is something that should be understood. A business shouldn't have to promise that they'll do these things; they should just do them. Every person who walks through your door should be treated with respect. You go above and beyond for every. single. customer, whether they're buying $500 worth of merchandise or spending fifty cents on a newspaper.

Does that mean falling all over yourself and fawning on the customers? No, of course not. Then you're being disingenuous.

But a smile and a hello go a long way, as does knowing when to offer help and when to let the person browse in peace.

I can't wrap my head around why so many businesses these days toot their own horns about how great they are to their customers. Some of it, perhaps, is to suggest that the competition falls flat in that area. But it also sounds a bit like maybe that particular company wasn't doing so well on the service side before and has refocused. It serves to make me less confident about doing business with them, rather than more.

Should a commitment to great service be part of a company's mission statement? Certainly. However, it's an internal thing. Trumpeting the fact that you're good to your customers to the public sounds the same to me as the supermarket promising it will carry food.

Exceptional customer service should be a given. If you have to tell people you're going to provide it, you're doing it wrong. Shut up and do it. Let your actions speak for themselves.

Review: Cory Doctorow's Little Brother

2008-05-09T15:26:00.001-05:00

I hinted a bit about how today's pick was an author who didn't agree with the whole DRM thing. It's more than that. This book, like all of his books, was released under a Creative Commons license. Go look it up; it's a really interesting idea.

The author in question is Cory Doctorow, whom you might also know as the co-editor of Boing Boing.

I have so many things to say about his new YA book, Little Brother, that I'm not even sure where to begin. I suppose the best place is with a synopsis. So!

Marcus Yallow, a high school senior in San Fransciso, ditches school with three of his friends to play an Alternate Reality Game. While they're tracking down a clue, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge. Marcus and his friends are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and find themselves taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security.

When they're released - after several days of cruel interrogation - Marcus realizes how many of the freedoms he'd taken for granted are now being taken away under the guise of "keeping America safe." He's a tech-savvy kid, and he's brave enough and angry enough to undermine the DHS and start a kind of electronic rebellion.

Rebellion, of course, comes with consequences.

The introduction alone makes for interesting reading. Doctorow talks about DRM and copyright in a very accessible way. The internet is changing how artists have to think about distribution, be that authors, musicians, photographers, anyone. As Doctorow says, quoting Tim O'Reilly: "For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity." He makes the case that DRM is more a hurt than a help, hence why part of his deal with his publishers is that you can download Little Brother for free. (Ohyes. Go do it now.)

Every chapter is dedicated to a different bookstore, with a blurb about them or an anecdote of Doctorow's own experiences with the stores and their employees. Obviously, authors aren't going to leave the chains out - B&N, Borders, Amazon and a few others get their mentions, but the real gems are the shout-outs to Borderlands, Mysterious Galaxy, Tattered Cover, and the other indies.

And so, on to the story itself.

We meet Marcus just as he's getting ready to sneak out of school for the afternoon. The book is set in the near-future: the year isn't specified, but I'd guess it's around 2010 or so. The technology is a bit more advanced than present-day, but nothing is terribly far-fetched. They use school-issued laptops that log keystrokes and monitor the sites kids visit during classtime. Of course, Marcus has found his way around this, running a browser and an IM session that flies under the radar. You know right off the bat he's a damned smart kid.

His voice, to me, initially came off as cocky and a bit pretentious, but I had to remind myself that this is YA lit. It's not going to read the same way as other things I enjoy. (It's been suggested in the discussions at Making Light that the voice sounds almost like Doctorow's own. I am at best an infrequent visitor to his blogs, so I can't speak to that, myself.) However, once I let myself consider the audience a bit, and think of what I enjoyed reading 15 or so years ago, I was able to move past what bothered me. Younger-me would quite likely haved liked Marcus from page one.

There's a lot of talk about security and surveillance, and a third of the way in, I was chilled. Doctorow's not just making this stuf up. You can google plenty of the things mentioned throughout the book, and what makes it all the more terrifying is how plausible all of it is. What doesn't exist yet will soon, or already does, but just isn't available to the public yet. And here I am, all proud of myself for using Firefox as my browser with NoScript installed, and I've barely even scratched the surface when it comes to protecting my privacy online.

While Marcus can be a bit of a smartass, standing up and mouthing off a bit to the vice principal and later, the DHS agents, his bravado very quickly disappears when the fear kicks in. It's refreshing, when so many times in YA - in fan fiction and in published novels both - the main character snots all over the place and gets away with it. When Marcus tries, he learns that it doesn't work that way.

When he begins his rebellion, he also learns (several times) that his actions have consequences. Sure, it's fun tying up all of San Francisco by messing with RFIDs and screwing up tracking patterns. But when other kids get detained (not, mind you arrested - very few people are actually arrested and charged over the course of the book), Marcus realizes that his calls for civil disobedience may very well get other people tortured. At a concert-turned-protest, kids get gassed when they don't disperse. It scares the hell out of him - I did this. I started it. He doubts himself. He gets scared as much for his own safety as he is for others'. When it looks like the DHS will be actively going after the kids caught jamming, he sends out a plea for people to stop.

In times like those, when he's ready to give up and lay low, to try living a life as close to normal as he can, it's his friends' passion and commitment to winning back their freedom that keeps him going. It's never easy to do these things alone.

Of course, when your main character is seventeen, chances are there's going to be a bit of romance. There's a girl named Ange, and she and Marcus fall for each other. Ange is a good character, as much a leader as Marcus is. She's strong and not afraid to say what she wants. There's a lot of talk about the chances of Little Brother making its way onto banned books lists. I certainly think it will, though not because it encourages kids to look for holes and flaws in security systems. I have a feeling that all the technology and the idea of speaking out for your rights will be overlooked in place of "Oh my god, two kids have sex." It's honestly not graphic, and doesn't take up all that much of the story. It's told in a voice that's a bit awkward and a bit breathless and completely taken up by this new love, and then we fade to black (but not before we are informed that they'll be using a condom.)

Marcus gets a bit melodramatic every once in a while when he talks about Ange ("Ange, my Ange, my angel...") but most of the time, it's just a kid in a relationship, feeling all those Big New Love things.

I'm torn about my feelings on the end of the book. For the first half, Marcus feels like they can't possibly tell any adults what happened to them in the days after the bombings - no one's going to buy their story. It's believable enough, when you consider how afraid they were made to be. Even if they did talk to their parents, they were scared that it would only land them right back where they'd been.

By the end, though, he goes and tells his parents, and they are supportive, as is the journalist they go and talk to. There's a deus ex machina moment at the end, where he's been taken into custody once again, and just as it's getting really bad, in comes the cavalry. I'm not quite sure it works. On the one hand, it's a situation you very much don't want Marcus to be in. On the other, it feels a bit contrived.

There's a debate about the amount of exposition happening over at Making Light as well. I felt it was mostly seamless. Marcus occasionally went into detailed explanation about the things his readers might not know. How many kids actually know what LARPing is? What do you know about cryptography, internet protocols, and Alan Turing? He explains it and manages to make it all accessible. He doesn't veer into jargon without defining it. He doesn't talk down to the reader.

The place where the exposition bogs down, actually is where Marcus isn't the one As-You-Know-Bobbing. His teacher, Ms. Galvez, tells the class about the hippie movement, and that gets clunky, like he didn't quite have the right rhythm for the dialogue. The history itself was interesting, but the presentation could have been better.

I worry a bit that the swiftness with which the DHS steps in (and how quick they are to resort to stress positions and other forms of torture) is hard to accept, though I think this is more my own personal trouble with suspension of disbelief than it is Doctorow's writing. It's set so close to our own present that I'm looking at it more as 2008 than a few years from now. But when I think back to Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale, those are also books set in future versions of our own society, and I was able to settle in to them quite easily - likely because they were vastly different realities, where Little Brother is very close to our own time and situation.

There are afterwords from Bruce Schneier and "Bunnie" Huang, encouraging kids to look for weaknesses, to be creative and clever and unafraid. Doctorow's own closing acknowledgements offer some great links and reading suggestions. He is, as he admits, standing on the shoulders of giants, and names his influences.

So, I can happily recommend Little Brother. Being one of those over-25s that Marcus and his friends decide can't be trusted, I still really enjoyed it. I'm guessing its true YA audience will love it. If you do download it and read it and find it worthy of passing on to a teen in your life (or if you think it would be a good book to get into schools), I'd suggest following the links to the donate-a-book program linked in the introduction.

It definitely should open up some excellent classroom dialogues on the meaning of free speech, security, and privacy.

Tuesday Musing: The Sony Reader

2008-05-06T14:15:00.002-05:00

I mentioned a while back that my company handed out Sony e-Readers to some of the employees. The idea to relate my experiences with it got shoved on the backburner, but never quite went away.

Now that I've had a couple of months to play around and get a better feel for it, it's review time!

For the moment, let's put the comparison to ~~flesh-and-blood~~ paper-and-ink books aside, and look at the Reader as a device on its own.

Full disclosure: I'm a fan of gadgets. There are many people out there far more cutting-edge than I, but I have my iPod and my digital camera. My cell phone can flip around and be used as a keyboard for texting. The oooh-shiny factor for this is certainly high.

It's lightweight - just a bit bigger than a mass market paperback - and slim enough that I keep it in my purse. The interface is pretty self-explanatory, and the type is easy on the eyes. It's not like you're reading stark black-and-white words off of a computer screen. The font size can be increased or decreased to make reading easier.

You can bookmark pages in what you're reading, but at the moment there's no way to jot down your own notes about why you bookmarked whatever it was.

It can store a lot of books at once. So, if you're going on a trip and don't want to pack five different books into your carry-on (because you might finish this one, or not be in the mood for that one right now, or you only have a hundred pages left in your current one and your husband has been known to steal the backup book because he finished his first, leaving you with nothing but Skymall until he drifts off and you can steal it back from his sleeping grasp...), the Reader is a good way to carry a lot of books without lugging around your own weight in fiction.

There's an option to organize your books into collections - perhaps you want to keep the horror from touching the romances, or you have books you're reading for pleasure and books you're using for research. The program you use to transfer books from your computer to the eReader allows you to arrange them in whatever groupings make you happy.

The battery is supposed to last about 7,500 page turns before it needs recharging. I find mine to be draining much faster than that, closer to every 1,000. However it doesn't take that long to charge back up.

There are two different spots that control pageturning, one in the bottom left-hand corner and another along the right-hand edge of the reader. Most of the time, these are where your fingers or thumbs rest naturally when you're holding it. Unfortunately, I have a subway commute that occasionally forces me into strange, pretzel-like contortions so I can keep reading while everyone's shoving for space. It's times like those I wish there was one more pageturning button up near the top of the device.

For reading manuscripts my company is publishing, it's a nifty tool and it cuts way down on the amount of photocopying and distributing we've done in the past. I used to have shelves full of forthcoming books, some of which I might never get around to reading all the way through. Recycling them always brought a pang of guilt for the waste of paper. Now, I can go ahead and download those same manuscripts onto the eReader, and if I don't finish something, no trees were sacrificed for my fickleness.

But how does it compare to reading a real book?

It doesn't.

As portable as it can be, as "green" as the device is, it is not the same as holding a book in my hand. Reading is as much a tactile experience as it is a mental one. There's something to be said for the feel of pages at your fingertips and the weight of a book in your lap.

If I fill it up, I will eventually have to delete old titles to make room for new ones. If I want to go back to something I've removed, I either have to download it (and pay for it!) again, or at least hook the device up to my computer and transfer the file back over. With bound books, you can simply pluck something off your bookshelf to find a line you want to quote, or a single chapter you want to reread.

Sometimes, it breaks.

No, really. It gets touchy. Several times I've had it hooked up to my computer to charge the battery or to add/remove titles, and after shutting it down and properly removing the hardware, it doesn't want to start up again. It will sit at the loading screen, frozen, the books I want to read completely inaccessible unless I can find a paperclip, a pin, or the back of an earring to push the tiny reset button imbedded in the back of the Reader.

Maybe other people carry paper clips and pins around with them. I don't; I was a crappy Girl Scout. And while my ears are pierced, on a normal day I'm probably not wearing earrings. So, when I get to the train station and the eReader hangs, floundering as it tries and fails to boot itself up, I am essentially left bookless on my hour-long ride home. Paper-and-ink books don't fail you like that. Nor do you have to remember to bring a cord with you to recharge them should they run out of battery power in the middle of your trip.

And, the thing that will always, always make bound books trump any kind of e-reader for me:

You can't share the majority of the books you download to your Sony Reader, or your Kindle, or any other electronic reader with your friends. How many times have you loved a book so much, you press it into someone's hands and say, "You must read this?" There are at least three people reading this blog whom I've done it to, and who have done it to me in return.

The books coming out from most of the larger publishers come with DRM restrictions. You can't port your e-book over to your friend's reader. I suppose you can let your friend borrow your eReader (if you each have $300 to spend on one), but then what are you going to read in the meantime?

DRM is another rant in and of itself, which I'd like to address in the future. However, the author of the book I'll be reviewing this Friday nails it in the intro to his latest (DRM free!) book. I'll be cutting and pasting bits of that as part of the review - what he says before the story even starts is just as important as the story itself. (And the fact that I'm reading it DRM-free might tip some of you intarwebz-savvy people off as to which book it is, or at least which author, but for now, you'll have to remain in suspense.)

But, as it relates to the Sony Reader, unless publishers lift their DRM restrictions and allow customers to pass along the e-Books to friends, it threatens to strike a harsh blow to word-of-mouth recommendations. In these days of $25.00 hardcovers, how likely is it that someone will take a chance on a book that a friend recommended that they haven't even flipped through? Consider instead - if I lend you a book and you love it, you are likely to go buy a copy of that book yourself, to keep. Then, since you are now familiar with that author - since you trust that author - you will also pick up his/her next book on your own when it comes out.

All the flash and sparkle of the eReader dims when you realize that that goes away, all because of DRM.

So, my final verdict - the Sony Reader is a great tool as far as work goes, but for replacing regular books in your leisure time? No thank you. I'll keep the walls of my rooms lined with full bookshelves and suffer the sore shoulder from the books weighing down my carry-on bag, thank you very much.

Review: Gentlemen of the Road

2008-05-02T16:16:00.000-05:00

It's Friday, and I promised a review of a book that didn't suck.

A caveat, before we begin: I've never done any kind of serious book reviewing before. This isn't going to read like something in the New York Review of Books or Publishers Weekly. My experience is in handselling, and that's how I'm going to attempt to approach these Friday reviews - like you're a customer who has wandered into my store and said, "What's good?"

Okay?

Okay.

It's fitting, then, that this first book, Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, came to me as a recommendation from Marty and another friend.

It's possible that I was predisposed to love it - I devoured The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. However, where that book was set in New York during the Golden Age of comics, Gentlemen of the Road brings us all the way back to 950AD.

Pardon my awkwardness with a synopsis - I don't want to give too much away. Amram and Zelikman are the gentlemen of the title, though they are joined by others on the way. They are travelers, brothers at heart, but not blood relations. They are fighting men and occasional swindlers - whatever earns them enough to continue on their adventures. They also - Amram especially, but Zelikman, too - have a habit of doing the right thing. Which is, of course, what sets the tale in motion. There's a boy, you see - not quite a man - and he was a prince, until his father was overthrown. Amram and Zelikman are tasked with bringing him to the safety of family to the south, but the boy, Filaq, slips away with the intention of returning home and seeking vengeance.

There's your first chapter or two.

I am a sucker for the lonely characters, the good-natured not-quite villains who know they are flawed and live with it - or despite it, or because of it. Zelikman (and his appreciation for a good hat) had me hooked from the start. He's prone to bouts of melancholy, and has a sword that is mostly a thin, pointed bit of metal named Lancet. And a loyal horse named Hillel. I can't help it. He's one of those characters I fall in love with, just a little bit. Maybe someday I'll share a few of the others; some of you probably can guess a few of them.

Chabon's narration is nothing short of breathtaking. He takes his time with a scene, occasionally digressing just long enough to enrich the original point. Points of view switch seamlessly, not breaking the overall voice.
The story itself is finely crafted, leading you along on their journey and, yes, once or twice breaking your heart, just a bit.** There are writers who can weave poetry into prose, and Chabon is one of them. The story is a twisting adventure, loyalties changing (though never, truly, Amram's or Zelikman's), battles fought, and every page is a kind of verse.

Gary Gianni's black and white illustrations are gorgeous, too. It should be no surprise that the ones I liked best were the ones featuring Zelikman.

I'm drifting dangerously into talking about things that are spoilers - there are rousing speeches and heroism (big and small), rescues and chases and redemptions, and the whole thing leaves you wanting more. I don't know if Chabon plans on returning to these characters in the future, but if he does, I will be there at the bookstore on the laydown date, and the cover will be opened before I'm even out of the store.

**Get used to this: I gravitate towards books that break my heart.

Tuesday Musing - Customer Service

2008-04-29T19:53:00.001-05:00

Don't worry, I didn't forget. It is, still, technically Tuesday.

I promised a chat about the differences in customer service between indies and chains, didn't I?

I'm going to let you in on a little secret first. Ready?

There are good booksellers working in both chains and indies.

I'll wait while you pick yourself up off the floor.

The truth is, you can't always paint something like this with a broad brush. Once upon a time, ten years ago, I could (and often did) say that customer service in a Borders or a B&N sucked. Because, a lot of the time, it did.

But oh, the times, they are a-changin', and we have seen a shift in attitudes. Companies everywhere are realizing that sure, you can have a huge selection, and pride yourself on convenience, but if your employees are jerks to your customers, the customers will go elsewhere.

I don't care how big or small a company is, or what they sell. Thanks to the vastness of the internet, they're not the only game in town anymore. So, how do you hold on to your customer base?

You treat 'em nicely. You remember their names, the things they like to buy, if they have kids or cats or exotic fish. You help without pushing and smile when they walk in the door.

As much as I'd like to say in this regard, "The chains are cold and heartless and don't help their customers," I'd be lying. My husband occasionally goes to Borders before he picks me up from work (I know. I'll smite him later.) He's been trying to get his hands on George RR Martin's early Wild Cards books, which are currently out of print. The employee there suggested he try checking with Pandemonium. When next he visited (more smitings), the employee remembered him, and had another recommendation - Asimov's had collected the titles into hardcover editions at some point; maybe they'd still have some available. He helped him search for a copy of it. They didn't have it in stock, but it was a good lead.

It's the same thing I'd have done, in an indie.

Working in a bookstore of any flavor pretty much requires that you love to read and have some kind of passion for bookselling. There are probably other retail jobs where employees can just phone it in, but it takes a different kind of person to work in a bookstore. If you don't love it, you're not going to last very long.

There are places where indies can outshine the chains for customer service, though. (You didn't think I was going to call it a draw, did you?)

When you have three stories worth of books, it's awfully hard to keep track of your customers. I can wander around the stacks at a B&N and never see someone who's working there unless I go to the register or the customer service kiosk in the middle of the store. Indies are (on average) smaller. At Booksmith, I could look around the store and see who was where, and they could see me.

That smaller feel made it easier to approach customers, too. Sometimes, people simply didn't need help. They wanted to plunk themselves down in front of the history section and browse for a while. I usually said hello as they came into the store, then gave them a couple of minutes to poke around before I asked if there was something I could help them find. Sometimes they declined; sometimes they didn't.

But there was always someone within sight to ask.

I'd like to suggest that the smaller atmosphere makes it easier for indie booksellers to know who their regulars are, but as I'm typing it, I find I'm hesitating. Having only indie bookstore experience, I might well be wrong on this. I would be very curious to hear from someone who has worked in both an indie and a chain bookstore, to see if the larger customer base at a chain made it harder to develop relationships with customers.

One the one hand, I'd say yes - you're seeing more people on a daily basis and therefore can't devote as much time to each customer. But, on the other, most customers only truly need two minutes of your time or less ("Magazines? They're right up here at the front. Let me show you.") The ones who come in and talk about their favorite author with you for twenty minutes aren't lining up all throughout your shift, waiting for their turns to chat.

Hmm. I'd love to hear comments on this one.

My point here is, bookstores of all kinds can offer great customer service. Indies have always had it. The chains have recognized its importance and focused their efforts accordingly. If you receive subpar service anywhere, you have the right to talk to a manager - they want to know, so they can fix the problem. Doesn't matter if it's a tiny bookstore in the middle of nowhere or a B&N in the middle of Manhattan.

Good customer service should be the rule, not the exception.

Lateness (LOL, Murphy's Law)

2008-04-26T11:23:00.003-05:00

I had a bit of a computer mess the last few days, so, yes, I missed my very first Friday review. It's coming, I promise. Today is for getting things done around the house, and tomorrow is up in the air.

But it will get done. It's a very, very good book that I'll be talking about - one that most assuredly does not suck.

Edith Wharton House in Danger of Foreclosure

2008-04-23T07:59:00.002-05:00

via GalleyCat:

The Mount, the former Lenox, Massachusetts, home of early twentieth-century novelist Edith Wharton, is facing foreclosure unless Edith Wharton Restoration, the nonprofit organization that owns the estate and its gardens, can raise $3 million by Thursday.

The non-profit organization that runs the home, Edith Wharton Restoration, borrowed several million dollars to purchase Wharton's personal collection and have it returned to The Mount. They've spent $13 million in the last 20 years restoring the house and the grounds.

There's a bit of comfort in the article in Preservation Magazine:

If the bank forecloses on the property, the home may be sold to a private owner. However, since the National Trust for Historic Preservation holds easements on the house and adjacent acreage, The Mount, a Save America's Treasures project, is protected.

So, at least if it is foreclosed upon, it won't be turned into a strip mall. But it would be a terrible shame for the foreclosure to happen. Hopefully an arrangement can be made with the bank to extend the deadline - the organization raises the most money with summertime ticket sales.

If you happen to know any wealthy Wharton fans, point them at the articles.

Tuesday Musing the First

2008-04-22T16:00:00.004-05:00

From Torteya/ElZ:

I just came accross this article from 2001 about the virtues of Chain bookstores and immediately started wondering what your take on it would be.

I realize its focus is on very different qualities and effects than what I believe yours are when talking about chains but was curious nonetheless.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/allen

It's from 2001 though, not sure if things have changed much since.

Imagine me rolling up my sleeves. Here we go.

First of all, there's this:

The image of the big bad chains gobbling up brave little independents was crystallized in the 1998 Nora Ephron film You've Got Mail, in which the cute encounter involves typically, and preposterously, antithetical types.

I actually enjoyed this movie... right up until the very end. "Hi, you drove me out of business. I love you!"

Just... no.

However, just because I feel like the movie fails on a realistic relationship level, I'd say Ephron nailed it for the plight of the independent booksellers vs. the chains.

I don't have a degree in business, it's a common enough practice that when one business is doing well in an area, another company that sells the same product or offers similar services will move in nearby. It's not limited to bookstores - gas stations, salons, coffee shops - everyone's doing it.

I worked for the only bookstore in the mall. We had a clause in our lease that kept any other bookstores from opening. It didn't stop the chains from scouting out places just outside the mall, although luckily for us, none ever found a spot they liked. The closest thing was a Waldenbooks down the street which had just about the same floor space as Booksmith did and had probably been there about as long.

Still, when a B&N and a Borders opened up four exits down the highway, we felt it. It hurt our business, and unfortunately Booksmith's owner didn't quite have the savvy to fight back. We should have had a better niche carved into the community long before the chains came swaggering along; we didn't. While the chains weren't the ultimate downfall of Booksmith (that's another long, painful story), they certainly put a scare into us, and made those of us who cared about indies start taking a closer look at things we needed to do - not just to survive, but to thrive.

Next point, on the fear that chains will only carry bestsellers and smaller books/presses will get left out:

André Schiffrin, the director of The New Press and formerly the managing director of Pantheon Books, recently based an entire book (The Business of Books) on his contention that the takeover of publishing and retail by big corporations and conglomerates, including the book superstores, has impoverished the culture, leaving "little room for books with new, controversial ideas or challenging literary voices."

(snip)

A look around any of the superstores will show that more risky and experimental fiction, more first novels, and more serious nonfiction are available to general readers all over the country than ever before.

It seems to me that Allen is suggesting this happy bit of risk-taking by the publishers is thanks to the chains. Yet, when you look at the debut novels that have become bestsellers, the buzz about them quite often started with indies. Cold Mountain was a hit in 1997, because independent booksellers fell in love with it. A year after this article was published, The Lovely Bones skyrocketed because of the indies. Not the chains.

So, by all means, applaud big publishing for taking a chance on new authors. But don't hand that credit to the chains. A book put out by an imprint of a large publisher is still a book by that large publisher. Allen cites Hyperion's Theia imprint (which I don't believe exists any longer, by the way) as one of these ground-breaking, risk-taking experiments. Theia titles were right beside the rest of the Hyperion titles in their seasonal catalogs; chain buyers would have seen them at the very same time they were deciding on numbers for Don't Sweat the Small Stuff.

And you know? Theia did have some really good books. But their placement in chains really isn't worth the pattings on the back Allen is handing out.

Meanwhile, show me a Barnes & Noble that's carrying a book by Meisha Merlin (although, they've just announced that they're closing - B&N might have already returned everything they possibly could.) So, all right. Show me a B&N or a Borders with a book from Small Beer Press and I'll be impressed. As a matter of fact, I searched, using their "check in-store availability function." Two stores out of 22 in the Boston area have John Crowley's Endless Things in stock. Small Beer is based in Easthampton, MA. So, tiny representation it the publisher's home state.

I will absolutely allow the argument that the book came out a year ago, and that hardcovers aren't often kept on shelves for more than six months at a stretch, but that rule applies just as equally to indies - later in the article, Allen chides indies for not having certain books in stock - titles that have been out for years and years. (Better examples of small press books' availability in the chains are welcome, by the way.)

I've realized while I've been writing that I have a lot more to say about this article, but I'd very much like to keep to my promise about posting on Tuesdays, so I'm going to break it up into pieces. I may go back and revisit some of Allen's other statements as well. There were a few that I've passed over (regarding the attitudes of people who prefer indies, and the brush she paints us with), and some that need better clarification.

Next time: the difference between customer service and bookseller knowledge in chains vs. indies.

Refocusing

2008-04-21T11:00:00.004-05:00

It's been roughly forever since I've posted here.

Okay, less than a month, but still. The original idea behind this blog was to mark my progress towards opening a bookstore. If I'm being completely honest, there really hasn't been all that much. There are classes to be taken and business books to read, but so much hinges on clearing my own personal debt, that it feels like it'll be quite a while before there's real forward motion on opening a bookstore.

That, and right now it's a time of change for the bookselling industry. I'm not quite sure what it's even going to be like opening a store four years from now. MP3s and podcasts are changing the audio market. Products like the Sony Reader and the Kindle are having an impact on good ol' paper and ink books, but just what kind of impact is still uncertain.

I truly believe that the indies can survive this. They simply (ha!) have to figure out how to change with the times. Some of them are only now learning how beneficial it can be to have a store website, and a staff member or three who know what a blog is (and how to write a compelling one.)

It is still about the community. Success will always be based on that - how well do you know your customers? How involved with them are you?

Only, in this digital age (is that what are the kids calling it now?) a store's community is vastly larger than the town in which it's located. Bookstores in Seattle have readers in New York following their recommendations. A mystery store in the most rural town in the midwest can get books out not only to a big city in the U.S., but to just about any country in the world.

So, my saying, "I want to open a bookstore; I think I know how" is no longer true. There are changes coming. This is not entirely a bad thing, but unfortunately, some stores will refuse to move with it, and will fall by the wayside. Others will embrace it, improve upon it, and thrive. I'm going to be watching and waiting these next few years, and see how the successful ones do it.

In the meantime, this blog isn't going away. However, rather than me blathering on about the good ol' days and how we used to sell books uphill in the snow, barefoot both ways, I'll be talking about other things - books I'm reading (after all, I did name this place "Books That Don't Suck," didn't I?), what I'm seeing work for other indies, things like that.

I'd like to get a posting schedule going, most likely twice a week.

Let's go with... Tuesdays and Fridays for now. Tuesdays'll be for ramblings - industry news, whatever's drifting through my brain when I log in to write - and Fridays will be for book reviews.

SO. If you have questions you'd like me to attempt to field, go ahead and ask away. I have one buried in the comments from a couple months back that I never got around to answering (sorry, ElZ!). That'll be my first foray into this. For Fridays, if you have books to recommend, show me what you've got and I'll add it to the Pile O'Stuff. Discussion is always welcome.

Ridiculous

2008-03-26T10:01:00.002-05:00

They passed it.

Now is a good time to support the ABFFE, as they make an effort to have the legislation overturned.

Overzealous

2008-03-14T09:42:00.002-05:00

There is a bill getting ready to cross the governor of Indiana's desk. If he doesn't veto it, any bookseller carrying "sexually explicit materials" will have to register with the state. The ABFFE, a group of 15 independent booksellers, and Borders are encouraging the veto.

Aside from the fact that it's unconstitutional, it's also bloody ridiculous.

The bill seems to be aimed at adult bookstores, but the problem is, the wording is so vague that pretty much anything could be considered sexually explicit. There are bookstores that carry adult magazines. Most stores have The Joy of Sex and a copy of the Kama Sutra lurking somewhere where the kids can't get to them. At Booksmith, we kept them right up at the register - perhaps not the best spot for adults who wanted their privacy, but it ensured that seven-year-old Billy wasn't getting an eyeful.

Expand out a bit from the obvious - what else gets painted with that broad brush?

Erotica, of course. But what about other books that have sex scenes of any kind? Is the spinner rack of monthly Harlequin romances suddenly against the law if you don't register it? What about Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series?

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? What's Happening to My Body?

How about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition?

We had a magnet display at Booksmith. The designs ranged from inspirational quotes to reproductions of fine art. A woman spied Michaelangelo's David and accused us of selling pornographic material. This was a store that didn't carry adult magazines, and she freaked out over a magnet with one of the most recognizable sculptures in the world. What if that's the kind of person deciding where the line of sexually explicit vs acceptable is drawn?

I don't know very many people in Indiana, but if you happen to have friends there, ask them to call or write to the governor. Or, if they don't want to do that, encourage them to poke their heads into one of those bookstores and offer their support.

Truthiness in Publishing

2008-03-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

I don't get it. Yet another false memoir is being pulled from the shelves. At this point, after A Million Little Pieces and the J.T. Leroy disasters, how are agents and editors not checking facts?

I can understand that an editor must develop a very close relationship with a writer whose manuscript he/she wants to publish. It has to feel like a kind of betrayal, or a breach of trust, making calls to verify the accuracy of certain claims.

But how can a person not be wary after the deceit we've seen in the publishing industry recently?

I followed a link to the original New York Times profile on Seltzer/Jones from a post at Bitch, Ph.D. On reading the article, one of the first things I thought was, "This is going to suck if it's not real." While none of my personal experience would give me any insight as to the authenticity of the story, something about it just seemed fishy. Maybe it's my own cynicism. I mean, hell, the book was being published by a major publishing house, and the New York Times was running a profile. Surely they have to know things I don't, right? Surely they've covered their collective asses and gone through the vetting process, haven't they? No one wants to be the next one going on Oprah saying, "Oops, my author didn't so much mean that it was a memoir as she meant, 'very, very, very loosely based on reality.' As in, 'It's at least set on planet Earth...'"

Sad to say, the fishy smell wasn't just the lingering odor from James Frey's tuna sandwich. Margaret B. Jones just isn't real. The uplifting story of a girl who pulled herself out of a bad situation and turned things around to help other people was all a fake. She claims some parts of the story were based on her friends' lives, but that still doesn't make it a memoir.

So, when does it stop? When do we begin demanding better fact-checking before a book ever hits the shelves? It is so disappointing to invest yourself emotionally in a book, and believe that a real person out there rose above a bad situation, only to see the author brought low again by his or her own newly-exposed lies.

If there's a story you want to tell, by all means, tell it, but don't couch it as truth. Call it the novel that it is, and uplift your readers that way. Sometimes fiction is just as inspiring as fact - sometimes even moreso. It must be nice, that feeling that the world is patting you on the back, admiring you for the hardships you've overcome. But is it really worth the ire you'll receive when you're found out to be a liar? That devalues every word you wrote. It calls into question every. single. thing. It makes what might have been something good into nothing more than disappointment.

Homework - Strengths

2008-02-20T13:09:00.001-05:00

All right, homework time.

One of the slides at the class I attended asked us to make an honest appraisal of our skills. There were four categories: strengths, weaknesses, talents, and skills/experience. So, here I am, starting with my strengths. If there's anything you'd like to add, please do.

I'm level-headed. It takes a lot to faze me. I can deal with glitches and setbacks with a minimum of fuss.
I'm realistic. Sure, you could call this whole opening a bookstore thing a big dream, but I don't have any illusions about what goes into it. It's not all the magical, inspirational hip stuff you see in the books and movies and TV shows where someone "owns a bookshop." Those characters close down and go haring off to chase after plot points whenever they feel like it. They drink trendy coffee with their friends and are wildly successful. Real booksellers don't live in posh apartments and aren't making tons of money. They work - sometimes ten, twelve hours a day. Or more. I know I can kiss vacations goodbye for a while, and that there will be bad customers along with the good. I remember the things that drove me crazy at Booksmith, and I know they'll still be there, waiting, when I open a store of my own. I'm okay with that.
I'm a good listener. Sometimes it's less about selling someone a book and more about helping them in other ways, or getting to the root of a complaint and figuring out how to fix it.
I'm articulate. For dealing with publishers and community relations, sometimes it's all in the presentation.
I'm able to change with the times. I know this sounds like an odd one, but there are booksellers out there who don't have fax machines, let alone e-mail addresses or websites. Some of those who have had to close up shop have fought valiantly to keep up with the changing world of publishing and book-buying trends, but there are others who have failed because they refuse to change. What worked twenty or thirty years ago isn't necessarily going to work now. I might rail against "w00t" being added to the dictionary, but I can adapt to changes in bookselling.

There are a couple of other things I'm thinking of, but I would put them more under talents or skills/experience. Next up is weaknesses, but I want to mull over that one for a while.

Playing Catch-up

2008-02-04T12:11:00.000-05:00

There are a few things I intend to post about over the next few days (I know, I've been terribly neglectful). I have been mulling over the aforementioned homework assignment in my head; it's just a matter of typing it out in some coherent form. I am taking tomorrow off and plan to get writing done on several projects I've been dithering over. That will be one of them.

In an attempt to go green at work, the reps were given Sony Readers. I am of mixed feelings about this, and it will take a full blog post to explore and explain. The short version is, great for work, not-great for anything else. But, I'll go more in-depth in the next few days.

I have some book-reviewing to do, and plenty of reading.

A brief bit of good news, so this post isn't just a list of good intentions:

Last Friday, my boss called me into her office with bonus information. I was pretty sure I wasn't getting one, or if I was, it would come in the form of a cookie and a pat on the head, with a "maybe this year will be better." 2007 wasn't a great year for my territory, and while I know there are things I could have done better (which I aim to fix this year), there are several things that were simply out of my hands. Booksellers were being more cautious last year, trying to order in smaller quantities and cut back on returns. Customers weren't buying as much (even though bookstore and retail sales did rise slightly, from reports I've seen.) There were a lot of good books out there from the competition, and the writers' strike hurt at least one of the titles we were counting on.

So, add that all together, and I figured that any bonus I got would be one that came from pity.

It turns out, this wasn't so. Our bonus plan was restructured last year, and I didn't realize just how different it was from the years before. Now, believe me, I am by no means going to be raking in the dough when this check comes in. There are not going to be any fancy dinners at, say, the Ruth's Chris Steak House around the corner, nor will I be buying myself a small tropical island.

But, I will be able to pay off my car loan a few months early. The last payment would have been due this coming November (and I drive a pretty cheap car), so it's not a huge sum, but it's not something I've been able to scratch up until now, either.

I've always been looking at that last car payment as the thing that would let me start saving for other things - the biggest of those other things being the bookstore. Since day one, the plan has been to take the money that had previously gone towards my car every month and apply some of it to other bills and some of it to savings. Now I get to do that nine months early. It's a really, really good feeling. That, along with taking the classes, makes me more able to see this bookstore dream becoming a reality.

Also, the business cards I ordered have arrived. I need to take a picture of one and upload it. They came out very nice. I feel all professional and stuff.

Look, Ma, I'm Proactive

2008-01-17T12:46:00.000-05:00

Last night I attended the class in starting a business that was canceled in December.

For those just tuning in, The Center for Women & Enterprise runs a class on steps to starting a business as part of their program for aspiring future entrepeneurs. It was a two-hour overview of things to keep in mind - how to figure out what kind of a business you want to run, financial things you're going to have to look at, a brief look at putting together a business plan, networking, things like that.

One thing I took from the class, which was kind of a nice realization, is that I'm probably further along in the process than I had given myself credit for. Not that I've come even close to being financially ready to do it, or that I have the best sense of what needs to be done, but that I do know what I want to do, and have a fairly realistic outlook on how to get there.

There were probably eight of us in the class, and only three of us seemed to have a solid idea of what kind of business we were interested in starting. The others had kind of nebulous goals - wanting to work for themselves, maybe an idea of what industry they wanted to go into. One woman seemed reluctant to actually state what it was she wanted to do. I couldn't tell if it was because there was a man in the room (all she would say was her idea had something to do with women), or whether she was afraid someone might steal her idea.

The instructor gave us a few things to consider "homework" - questions to ask ourselves before taking the leap. I know the first set of them is probably geared towards helping people figure out what they would like to do if they haven't yet decided, but it could also help me figure out things specific to running a bookstore. She suggested that after we answer them for ourselves, we ask other people to answer them about us, too. Friends might spot things that we weren't aware of, or discounted as not-terribly-relevant, but maybe those things might be worth looking at. That will go up in the next few days.

A couple of things I hadn't really considered, but are good suggestions:

--Having business cards made. It doesn't need anything more than my name and my contact info, but I'm going to get some made up. You never do know when you're going to meet someone that might be a good contact. (I realize one of my answers for the "What are your weaknesses" questions on the homework is my shyness. It's something I need to overcome, because as much as "networking" sounds so... jargony, it is a fact of life.)

--Reading the Wall Street Journal and business sections of local papers. I'm loathe to sign up for the physical paper. We used to have the Sunday Boston Globe delivered, and I never read it. Such a waste. But I'm afraid with the online versions of the newspapers, I'll be inclined to get distracted and click away. For now, I'm going to try bookmarking them and get into the habit of checking them out.

All in all, a good overview class. I'm not going to take the second class in the series, Visioning, because from the description it really is for people who are still figuring out what they want to do. So, the next step is the financial planning class that begins in March. Until then, though...homework.

If You're Not Part of the Solution...

2008-01-17T11:40:00.000-05:00

In an interview with the New York Times this week, Steve Jobs offers this gloomy little tidbit:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Now, really. Yes, I read that report, too. And from a business perspective, I can see why he'd decline to develop Sony Reader or Kindle-like applications for the iPhone or iPod.

But "people don't read anymore"? Bullshit. Yes, they do. Bookstores did okay this past holiday season. Holiday post-mortems from all over the retail world showed that buyers were watching their wallets this year. It's not a big surprise, really. However, a slump in the economy shouldn't have people - especially smart people like Mr. Jobs - ringing the deathknell for reading in America.

Mr. Jobs earned a healthy dose of my respect last year when he published an open letter to the record companies, asking them to get rid of DRM encoding.

Some of the cool points he'd earned for that have been taken away by this recent statement. Am I saying he should get out there and dedicate himself to getting people to read more? No, that's not where his business' interests lead him. (Although, if he's so inclined, and got involved in sponsoring some literacy programs, he could earn some cool points back. They can be exchanged for beer or coffee if I ever meet him. Who doesn't like one or the other of those?)

Considering that I'm not a big fan of the Kindle or the Sony Reader - give me good, old-fashioned paper and ink books any day - it doesn't really matter to me that he's not pursuing the development of an Apple reader (let me guess, iRead?). Still, such a pessimistic statement sets my teeth on edge.

All Things Do Conspire Against Me

2007-12-14T12:31:00.000-05:00

I stayed in town late on Wednesday night, killing time at my desk before heading off to the class. Hooray for Battlestar Galactica previews on YouTube. The time came to face the cold. Went out, bought myself a cinnamon coffee, and hied on over to the CWE building.

The class was canceled. Sick instructor. Boo.

So, looks like I'll be trying again in January.

Still Alive!

2007-12-10T14:47:00.000-05:00

I've been doing mostly non-booksellery things the last few weeks, including holiday stuff, writing, and putting in a floor in our kitchen.

However, I haven't been entirely inactive. Last Thursday, I went to an info session at the Center for Women & Enterprise to get an idea of the kinds of classes they offer. I've just signed up for another class that runs this Wednesday night, "Steps to Starting a Business."

It was described as a two-hour course that helps potential businesswomen get started, a kind of overview of things you'll need to take into consideration and what sorts of planning to be, well, planning.

I'm pretty excited about it. The instructor who led the info session seemed to know her stuff and was enthusiastic about the organization. I will most likely be signing up for other courses that they offer, which are longer sessions and spread out over multiple weeks. They run courses in semester-like cycles, so I believe there will be new classes beginning in January or February. Looks like I decided to get off my ass at the right time.

More to come...

One Small Step

2007-11-02T14:52:00.000-05:00

I could swear I bitched about NPR's only linking to Amazon on their site somewhere around here, but I can't seem to find the post. Maybe I spent so much time composing it in my head, I never actually typed it out.

So, in a nutshell, for a long time, NPR has had links to Amazon alongside titles that have appeared on their programs. For an organization that relies so heavily on its communities, this always seemed a little off. I have NPR's books section as one of the RSS feeds on my google homepage. There are always titles mentioned that I'm curious about, but that little Amazon button has made me cringe. We've donated directly to NPR and WBUR during their fundraising weeks, so I certainly don't feel like I'm denying them support if I don't order from Amazon.

Recently, both NPR and The New York Times have added links to Booksense to their sites.

It's long overdue, but here's hoping it will catch on and other places will follow their leads.

New Year's Resolution

2007-10-31T10:14:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's a bit early for one, but I've done a lot of rambling about books and bookstores recently, but not very much about what I'm doing to work towards actually opening one, which is, y'know, what this blog is supposed to be all about.

A friend of mine attended some of the programs at The Center for Women and Enterprise last year, and she loved it. I've been hemming and hawing and thinking about going, myself, but have yet to sign up. Mostly, I've been thinking that I have time, no worries. But, well, this blog's coming up on a year old, and aside from trying to pay down some bills, I don't know that I've accomplished all that much towards opening a bookstore.

It would be nice to post about something I've learned, or progress made - even though my job sends me to regional trade shows, I don't always have the time to attend the bookselling sessions. When prospective booksellers are sitting in a room learning about the perils and pitfalls of owning a store, I'm usually busy opening boxes with my Swiss Army Knife and trying to make the tables look presentable for when the floor opens.

Five minutes ago, I signed up for the December 6th info session. It's more than a month away, and I'll probably wait until January to take actual classes, but it's a start.

Oh, Good Lord.

2007-10-25T11:58:00.001-05:00

The Harry-banning isn't over yet. A pastor at St. Joseph's School in Wakefield, MA, has yanked the books off of the library shelves because "themes of witchcraft and sorcery were inappropriate for a Catholic school."

From the Globe article:

"He said that he thought most children were strong enough to resist the temptation," said one mother who asked that her name not be used because she did not want her family to be singled out. "But he said it's his job to protect the weak and the strong."

Resist what temptation? There aren't exactly any instructions on, say "How to Hold a Black Mass" in there. Or "Host a Seance in 12 Easy Steps!" I can't imagine this pastor has actually even read the books. Does he think his students are going to run around, pointing sticks (eleven-and-a-half inches, birch and unicorn hair, springy) at doors and shouting "Alohomora"?

Okay, so they might. But they'd be pretending, because that's what kids do. You give them a book (or a TV show, or a video game) that stirs their imaginations and they'll play in that world. It's part of growing up. It doesn't mean they're sacrificing cats or trying to raise the devil.

What, is he afraid alohomora might actually work?

And why now, after the series is over? From this article, it looks like the series might have been featured in the sixth grade's summer reading list, but it's hard to believe he's only hearing about Harry Potter now, because of the reading list. The first book was published nearly ten years ago; they've been bestsellers from very early on.

When we heard the news report this morning, my husband and I figured it was more likely they were being pulled because of Rowling's revelation that Dumbledore was gay.** However, the banning happened a month ago, well before her announcement late last week. I'm guessing it won't help get the books back onto the shelves, but it wasn't the original reason. I'm not sure why it's taken a month for the story to break.

The parents seem to have mixed feelings about it - some are angry, some agree with the ban, some support "the spirit" of what the pastor did. I'll be interested to see what the kids' responses will be.

**The reason I didn't blog about that is because Neil Gaiman sums it up nicely over at his journal. Short version: there are always things authors know about their characters that don't make it into the books, and don't ever have to because those things aren't important to the story. Dumbledore's sexual orientation is one of those things.

What I Did on My Autumn Vacation

2007-10-23T09:58:00.000-05:00

About a week and a half ago, my husband and I went up to North Conway, NH, for our anniversary. We did all sorts of neat non-book-related things that will eventually go up on the other blog. As Friday afternoon grew steadily more rainy and gloomy, we sought out White Birch Books. We'd been to North Conway once before, in mid-February a few years ago. Then, we'd walked all along one side of the street, poking our heads into the shops. Just as I thought my nose was about to freeze off and it was time to turn back, we stumbled across the bookstore.

Inside is gorgeous. I'm not sure if it was originally a house that was renovated to become a bookstore, or if it's always been a bookstore that looks like a house. I didn't think to ask while I was there. Check out the virtual tour and you'll see what I mean.

I hadn't brought a book with me for the trip. I'm sure I could have opened the trunk of my car and found any number of ARCs in there from previous trade shows, but I wanted something new. Starting at one end of the fiction section, I moseyed along, reading titles, peering at covers, sometimes picking a book off the shelf and looking at descriptions, but I had no idea what I was in the mood to read.

There was one book I happened across, paused to look at, and put back - its title had jogged my memory about another book I'd heard good things about, but - horror of horrors - the name escaped me. I continued poking along, and when nothing else really caught my fancy, I went back to the one I'd looked at for a while.

I took my copy of The City of Dreaming Books up to the register, and while they were ringing it up, I got to play a game of bookseller mnemonics.

"So, I'm looking for this book," said I. "I don't know if it was a bestseller, but I think it was a booksense pick a while back. I know it was about books, or about a bookseller, and it had the word 'glass' in the title."

They didn't remember it right off, but it sounded tip-of-the-tongue familiar, and came up with the title pretty quickly: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. It's coming in paperback soon. Another to add to the to-be-read pile.

The City of Dreaming Books, by the way, is very good so far. I'm not quite sure what I'd call it. Literary fantasy? Years ago, the main character's authorial godfather (yes, godparents whose duty it is to give you a good background in books. DO WANT) was sent a manuscript. It was the best piece of work he'd ever read. He sent the author to Bookholm - a city devoted to all things book-related, with 24-hour antiquarian bookstores and catacombs of lost classics hidden underground - to find a publisher. The author disappeared. On his deathbed, godfather sends godson to find the author. I'm not terribly far in, but I'm hooked.

Oh,and by the way, the protagonist is a dinosaur.

How Cool is This?

2007-10-18T10:44:00.000-05:00

Chronicle Books sent ten employees to New Orleans to work with Habitat for Humanity.

A lot of publishers will match their employees' charitable donations. This is a step above. I would love, love, love to do something like this.

Check out their blog from the experience. It's touching and funny, and reminds us that there is still a ton of work to be done, post-Katrina.

I don't know that I'd ever be able to do something on this scale when I open a store, but I will certainly support my employees' involvement in the community - local, national and global.

Nobel Prize for Literature - Doris Lessing

2007-10-11T08:13:00.000-05:00

I've been hearing the announcements all week, and this morning, caught the news that Doris Lessing has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She's the 11th woman to be awarded the prize, and in the committee's words is "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."

I'm adding Mara and Dann to my to-be-read list (which is already several miles long, but still...) Hooray for more far-future/post-apocalyptic fiction!

Also, her agent said she was out shopping when the prize was announced. For some reason, this is making me grin - chances are, she was out shopping for food or clothes, but imagine being in a bookstore and hearing it there.

To Add to the To-Read List

2007-10-05T11:31:00.000-05:00

November's Book Sense Picks have been announced. I very much need to get my hands on a copy of How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, just from the title alone.

I very much wish that I could link to a blurb about the book over at Booksense, but unfortunately, the way the site is set up, you have to pick a local bookstore before you can see book info. If they ever do an overhaul of the site, that's the one thing I'd love to see them change - let us peek at the book, then choose a local store to buy it from. There might be rhyme and reason as to why it's not like that currently, but I haven't gone asking.

I owe so many book reviews on here. I haven't forgotten, honest.

Kindred Spirits Across the Pond

2007-10-04T08:57:00.000-05:00

These two booksellers found out in August that the Waterstones they worked at was closing, and they decided not to let that be the end.

They put their heads (and a business plan) together and are in the process of opening their own bookstore. You can be damned sure I'll be following their progress.

Stephen King is a Wise Man

2007-10-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

When I was looking for something to read on my way out to GLBA, I blinked up at the Best American Short Stories 2007 collection for a moment. Edited by Stephen King, how could I go wrong?

But I already had two books in my hands - Neuromancer and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The latter came highly recommended here, and since three of her favorite books - The Stand, The Time Traveler's Wife, and The Handmaid's Tale - also make my own top ten list,** I passed up King's choices for The Road. I wasn't disappointed.

King's piece in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review touches upon short stories in the present day, and how it's getting harder and harder to find them, or at least to find them easily accessible when you're poking about in a bookstore. Magazines that carry great fiction have been relegated to lower and lower shelves as flashier celebrity-filled pages demand more space.

It's something to think on, for when Books That Don't Suck opens its doors. Our magazine shelves at my old store had three sections. You could probably take a look at what was displayed where to see the interests of the employees - Fangoria and Zoetrope were in places of reverence, in the top two sections, while fashion magazines and things like Teen Beat hung out on the bottom shelves.

I know a hypothetical magazine section in a hypothetical bookstore doesn't do much for the state of short fiction collections right now, but this is definitely something I'll keep in mind in future days.

And I have to go pick up a copy of the Best American Short Stories 2007, sooner rather than later.

**The other three I just haven't gotten around to yet, but I loved Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides, so we'll call it three and a half.

Banned Books Week

2007-10-01T10:27:00.000-05:00

This year, Banned Books Week 2007 runs from September 29th through October 6th. We're two days in - my apologies for not posting on Saturday (I was off being a bookseller.)

These next few days celebrate our freedom to read and raise awareness about who would try and take that freedom away. Every year, all over the country, people are challenging books because they've deemed them inappropriate. Sometimes it's a parent who doesn't want his/her child reading a title for school. Sometimes it's someone who doesn't have kids, but wants to "protect" young minds. Others, it's not even a book on a school reading list - it might be a book that someone doesn't even want on the shelves of a bookstore for anyone - of any age - to read.

American Booksellers for Freedom of Expression has a list of banned books (and the stories behind the bans/challenges) here.

The American Library Association has their own page for Banned Books Week, and a list of events for Banned Books Week with a shiny interactive map for finding events in your area.

A quick list of ALA Banned Books links:

If you haven't spent an afternoon in a bookstore this week, now's a good time to go to your local indie and ask them to recommend a banned book for you to go home and curl up with.

If You Don't Think I Suck

2007-10-01T10:15:00.000-05:00

...and want to see non-book related ramblings, I've set up a little home away from home called L'esprit d'escalier over at my much neglected, never really used website. I figured since I'm paying for the hosting, it should maybe go to some kind of good (or at least mediocre) use.

That way, when I want to blog about things that have nothing to do with bookselling, I don't feel so guilty going off on a tangent here. So, there's not much there just yet, but go on over and take a peek if you'd like. You don't even have to bring a housewarming gift.

MORE Shiny

2007-09-26T11:57:00.001-05:00

My productivity level is fast approaching zero, thanks to OfficerGleason over there.

Just before lunch, he introduced me to Goodreads. Now, I've been avoiding this kind of site - there's also the intriguing and Gaiman-touted Library Thing, and I'm sure there are others along the same lines. I suppose the user profiles at Amazon and the like count as well.

It's not that I'm avoiding them because I don't like them.

Quite the opposite.

I'm avoiding them because I love the idea of them - listing books I have, seeing what other people are reading, finding recommendations...

That noise you hear is me going "squee" (ignore the softer "thud" of my productivity hitting the floor - I'll clean that up later.)

So, now that I'm friended, well...

There's me. Just a list for now - far from complete, and still a work in progress. Reviews on some of them soon to come, I hope. I feel odd having so many that are four and five stars, but that's also because (I think) these are books that I do love, so of course my favorites are coming to mind. I'm sure there will be more twos and threes (and, yes, even the occasional one) when I'm actually sitting in front of my bookshelves and inputting from home.

The one complaint I have so far - always, with the links to the chains. Goodreads can even pull the list of things you've ordered from your Amazon profile, if you want it to. Part of me wants to boycott sites like this that don't link to indie stores, but that feels like cutting off my nose to spite my face.

I wonder how indie bookstores can best take advantage of sites like this. Most likely, the best way would be for a bookstore to start its own profile, and in every review, link to its own website. I'm just not sure how keen Goodreads would be on that - they very likely make a profit of books that are purchased through an Amazon referral. Something to ponder, at least, while I'm on my uploading spree.

Classics + Technology = WIN

2007-09-24T09:32:00.000-05:00

I have this running list of classics I want to read that I didn't get around to in high school and college. Sometimes it feels like I'll never get around to them. My job requires me to live almost six months in the future when it comes to books - I'm reading and selling things that don't come out for another season. Plus, there are so many books by writers I love out on the shelves already, even when I'm reading current titles, I'm playing catch-up.

So, while I'm thinking half a year ahead and trying to keep up on good things from other publishers that are hitting the shelves now, I also have one eye on the past, and keep wishing I had time to read all the books that, for one reason or another, never made it onto my required reading lists in school. Part of that's my own fault - I spent most of my college years in the 17th century. So, Milton? Check. Shakespeare? Check. Jonson, Marlowe, Donne? Check, check, and check.

But Mark Twain?

*crickets*

I have no idea how I made it out of ninth or tenth grade without ever being assigned The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Now that I think about it, my high school English classes were a ton of Hawthorne, Dickens, and the Brontes. We read some of Twain's short stories, but never the books he's most famous for.

Then, once I started college, I took a course - British Authors to 1800 - with the most amazing professor ever. From there out, I tried taking at least one class of his each semester: The Metaphysical Poets, the Cavalier Poets, Shakespeare's Tragedies ("Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:/ Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so/ That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!"). I probably could have (and probably should have) added a concentration in that period to my major, but I never got around to asking what it would require.

I did take other lit courses, including at least one in American lit, but again, no Twain. Maybe the professors figured that we'd already studied him a thousand times and wanted to expose us to other writers - I have no issue with that. (Although, if there's one work I was assigned more than any other, it's Beowulf. I swear I read that for at least one class a year from freshman year in high school up through my college graduation.)

So, because there are apparently other people in the world like me - wanting to read these things, but never enough time in the day - the folks over at Daily Lit have come up with a brilliant plan. They've broken up books into 500-word chunks. You choose a book,they'll email a fragment to you each day. You can set it to arrive daily, weekdays only, or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. If you read your piece and have time for the next one, you can have it sent immediately.

I have the first installment of Tom Sawyer sitting in my inbox. Time for a test drive.

A Failed Attempt at Humor

2007-09-18T15:56:00.000-05:00

This PW poll on banning books made me twitch.

I assume it's supposed to be a light-hearted sort of question: if you could ban a book, which would it be and why? Whoever came up with it is playing off of the OJ controversy and (it would seem) is not a fan of Rosie O'Donnell, either.

Normally, that sort of thing is a party game, an icebreaker, or something you do to allieviate boredom on a long car ride - if you could have dinner with any historical figure, living or dead, who would it be? If you were trapped on a desert island and could only take five CDs, which would you choose?

But... "What books would you ban?"

It chills me to think someone in the industry is entertaining the idea at all, and encouraging others to do so. The majority of the responders seem to be as horrified as I am.

Not only is it an invitation (no matter how tongue-in-cheek) to promote banning - some people will take it as an endorsement of such - it's also mean-spirited, calling on readers to throw out titles of books they didn't like and presumably trash them.

I know. The name of this blog is "Books That Don't Suck." Chances are, at some point, I'll say something mean about those books that I believe do suck. I hope that when that day comes I can balance my snark with honest criticism, not just bitchiness for bitchiness' sake.

Actually, as the title states, I'd much rather talk about books that don't suck - titles I enjoyed, that I think others could fall into and pass around ("Hey, have you read this? You should!")

But I will never, ever, encourage the banning of a book. Will I question why this or that got published? Or why fifty thousand readers are drooling over something I find to be complete drivel? Yes. I still won't suggest a book be banned, no matter how bad I think it is. Chances are, if I think something's bad, it's either poorly written (by my admittedly snobby standards) or in poor taste.

Perhaps the person who thought up this question for the daily talkback poll thought readers would chuckle and have a good time with it. What he or she neglected to consider, though, is what banning a book implies.

If you ban a book, you're saying no one should be able to read it. No one should be allowed to crack it open, read the words, and make their own decisions about the material contained within. You're saying it shouldn't be in libraries, it shouldn't be in bookstores, it shouldn't be in any place people can find it. You're deciding what is appropriate or inappropriate for someone else, taking that choice away from them.

Had the poll question been "Which book do you wish you'd never read?" I wouldn't be so peeved. There are several books I've read where I've turned the last page and said, "I want those six hours back." But for someone to ask us to suggest that books should be banned because they weren't to our liking? Never.

That's not okay. That's not cute. That's not funny.

Till Shade Is Gone, Till Water Is Gone

2007-09-17T10:16:00.000-05:00

The sf/f world suffered another huge loss. Robert Jordan died yesterday. He'd been fighting amyloidosis and was, as he said in his blog posts, determined to beat it and to finish the series that's held so very many fans' imaginations over the years.

According to the webmaster of one of his biggest fansites, the series will still continue. What form it will take remains to be seen. Right now, the community is busy grieving its loss and celebrating his life.

I picked up the Wheel of Time series in college because my friends were all talking about it. They had theories about what would happen in the next few books and kept censoring themselves or referring to things in the vaguest sense they could so they wouldn't spoil it for me. It must have been either just after A Crown of Swords was published or in the months leading up to The Path of Daggers - by the time tPoD hit the shelves in hardcover, I was all caught up and theorizing right along with them.

Back then, I wasn't much of a fantasy reader, unless it was an Arthurian setting. I was a horror girl, burying my nose in the newest King (and tossing out Dark Tower theories the way the guys did with WoT), tearing through anything that might give me a scare. People had been recommending Jordan to me for years - there were a couple of avid fans among the bookstore employees and customers who insisted I'd enjoy them. So, when I finally broke down and started reading The Eye of the World, I didn't know if I'd like it.

Turned out, my friends, co-workers and customers were all right. I was hooked. The Arthurian references were probably a help - characters named Elayne, Gawyn, Galad, Lan, Nynaeve, Morgase, a city called Caemlyn. A sword in a stone. By the time I finished the first book and moved on to The Great Hunt, I was enthralled by the characters, the story and the world.

My favorite book in the series was the sixth, Lord of Chaos. Egwene, easily my favorite female character, comes into her own. Nynaeve finally breaks through her block. The next few books bogged down for me. I won't pretend that I've loved them all or that I haven't bitched about too much time spent on clothing descriptions, or that I wasn't tired of the Aes Sedai acting like frightened novices when other women stand up to them. The later books got slow. The world is huge; there are more than five main characters now. What started out as the story of Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene and Nynaeve has expanded far beyond them. There are whole nations and factions swept up in the plot, and I can't imagine being able to keep a tight rein on them when they're all vying for a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter of their own.

Even with my nitpicking, I'd have been in line for the final book's laydown to find out what happens to the world that first pulled me back to fantasy. He's had the last chapter written since the book began, and reportedly recorded many, many notes. Perhaps I'll still see that book.

If I hadn't read Jordan, I don't know that I'd have found George RR Martin, or Steven Erikson. Both came highly recommended from the fans at wotmania. I read the RJ newsgroup for a while, and from there discovered Making Light.

I'm not sure what it is that sets the sf/f community apart from other fandoms (although, perhaps I should expand this out to mean the whole speculative fiction world, because I don't know that I'd call Stephen King an sf/f author, even though the Dark Tower books and The Eyes of the Dragon are certainly fantasy, not horror...). Other bestselling authors, who are what I guess you'd call mainstream, sometimes forget that their readership makes them successful. There are nightmare stories about these men and women being horrible to booksellers, fans, anyone, simply because they're rockstars in the world of popular fiction.

But then you look on this side of the fence, and there are people like Martin, King, Michael Connelly, Christopher Moore, and, yes, Robert Jordan, who are so very involved with their fans and are so very beloved for it. You can tell the difference between authors who see fans only as "people who buy my books" and ones who remember that we're real people.

It's been a long time since I've really kept up with the WoT community - I was always a lurker, never a poster - but I'm there today, reading the condolences and farewells at Making Light and Wotmania and Dragonmount, and getting teary when I see how positively he affected peoples' lives. Some people met their spouses through the community, some people were having tough times in their lives and the books helped them through. That, right there, is the greatest measure of his success.

I know I'm about to echo what I said last week, for Madeleine L'Engle, but I've nothing more eloquent to say:

Farewell, Mr. Jordan. And thank you.

And the fire with all the strength it hath

2007-09-07T15:57:00.000-05:00

I am currently in a bit of a funk.

Madeleine L'Engle has died.

I remember picking up A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door and losing large chunks of my days as I devoured them. It was summertime when I discovered them - I remember sitting on a chair in my mother's office, reading while she did her work. I had to have been... ten? Twelve? I couldn't have been much older than that, or I'd have been allowed to stay home by myself.

My father worked nights so he'd be home when I got out of school. He was home all day during the summer. But some days, he'd be gone before we woke up, off to drive the trains for overtime pay. I'd pack a pile of books and make sandwiches for my mother and I, and go into the office with her. I spent my day reading or helping her with some of her duties - faxing, filing, photocopying. There was this old typewriter at one of the desks, mostly used for invoices that needed carbon copies, but no one ever really needed it.

When I started reading A Swiftly Tilting Planet, I spent an afternoon on that thing memorizing Patrick's Rune and banging it out on the keys. I think fifteen-year-old Charles Wallace Murry might have been the first character from a book I had a crush on. (I'd say he was my first crush on a fictional character, but I'm pretty sure I had a thing for Green Lantern when I was a wee lass watching Superfriends. Shut up.)

Somehow, other books came along and pushed Madeleine L'Engle off my radar - I read Arms of the Starfish some time later, and then no more of her books for at least a decade.

Only a year or two ago did I learn there was a fourth book in the Time Quartet. I know, I should hang my head in shame. I was afraid that something would have changed from when I'd first read her books, way back in elementary school, that now that I was somewhere in my mid-twenties, I'd find the books childish, that some or all of the magic would be gone. I opened the pages of Many Waters with a mix of excitement and trepidation, not wanting a fond memory to be tarnished.

Turns out, I had nothing to fear. The twins Sandy and Dennys transported me along with them to the days before the Great Flood. I was just as enraptured by her words at twenty-seven as I was at ten.

I realize, too, that I have yet to read the last book (as far as I know) of the series, An Acceptable Time. It was rereleased earlier this year, and I'll be picking it up this weekend. Actually, I'm fairly certain I gave away my copies of the whole series a long time ago, so I'll likely be buying several of her books.

Farewell, Mrs. L'Engle. And thank you.

So Much for That

2007-09-04T12:25:00.001-05:00

Oh, well. Barnes & Noble is selling it after all.

It's in response to customer demand - the book was up at the top of the preorder list on their site, so it follows that they'd see a reason to bring it into the stores.

And since this seems to be the first time Beaufort has done anything this on this scale, I can also understand wanting to get the books in stores for the first wave - yes, publishers can get reprints in pretty quickly, but for someone new to the game, better to have it in stock to start than wait while everyone else sells it.

Still, though, I'd appreciated what seemed like them taking a stand of a sort.

Now, granted, it's awfully hard for a national corporation to declare itself on one side of an issue or another - the last thing a retailer wants to do is alienate its customers. Some places can - you can see CEOs endorsing candidates, or making donations to a cause in the company's name - but for a bookstore, where you're supposed to be able to walk in and find shelves and shelves of information, it's an interesting conflict.

Do you refuse to stock books whose views you disagree with and, in a sense, prevent your customers from deciding for themselves on an issue? Or do you carry them and put money in the pockets of people you sneer at when they're panelists or guests on news shows you watch?

Indies have a bit more leeway with that - there are bookstores across the country whose whole existence is based on a political leaning. They're situated in communities who share similar views. B&N, Borders and Amazon can't do that - and really, their employees are scattered all across the country; there's no way to declare a corporate stance without potentially alienating your staff as well as your customers.

So, nice try, B&N. I won't say I agree with the decision, but I understand.

Still Doing It

2007-08-28T12:53:00.000-05:00

I know, the play on the title's getting old. I'll stop, I promise.

Anyway, color me surprised: Beaufort's announced a 125,000 copy first printing on the OJ book. For reference - 125,000 is a large first printing, something about on par with other celebrity books. Expect bestselling authors like John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks or Stephen King to have between 500,000 and a million for their first printings. A new, unknown author could call 10,000 to 25,000 very respectable. A book from a small press might have around 5,000 for a print run, or maybe less. There's no shame in any of those numbers - just showing that 125,000 is nothing to scoff at.

And considering one of my first reactions to the announcement was "hey, smartass, what's your announced first printing?" I thought I should address it. (And hey, I was close - I guessed 100K.)

However.

He also claims to have 116,000 preorders, despite the fact that Barnes and Noble won't carry it.

That loud clanging you hear is my bullshit alarm going off. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? I have to say no. There are some books whose demand will far exceed their first printings - if you were a bookseller looking for a copy of America: The Book when it first came out and you didn't order enough, you were SOL for several weeks while the publisher scrambled to get reprints in. But there are other titles whose hype far overreached the actual interest in the book, and they've tanked.

As I've said, all of Kampmann's claims and statements so far have made me raise an eyebrow. Publishers don't disclose how many copies of something one store or another ordered - I don't know if it's a legal thing or something that is simply not done, a taboo along the lines of asking an acquaintance how much they make in a year - so unless Borders and Amazon and the big wholesalers admit how many they're taking, we won't know until press-time whether or not this 116,000 is real.

Different Planets

2007-08-23T12:08:00.000-05:00

It's a sobering thing to see that one in four adults read no books last year. The idea of going a month – hell, a week – without reading is completely alien to me.

Unless I'm reading it wrong, or the article doesn't mention it, this poll takes into account only literate adults, which means that it's not people who can't read that aren't reading; it's people who just don't care to. The idea of it boggles me. I've always surrounded myself with people who like to read. Every time there's a gathering of my friends or family, there will at some point in the evening be a book discussion - what I'm reading, what they're reading, what we liked or disliked about certain books. It's not uncommon for those of us in the middle of a series to sneak off into another room and discuss theories about upcoming books.

But then there are statements like this one: "Richard Bustos of Dallas, Texas...a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool."

Uh, why not read while you're poolside? The two activities aren't mutually exclusive.

And this one: "'Fiction just doesn't interest me,' said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Alabama. 'If I'm going to get a story, I'll get a movie.'"

Pardon me, what?

Now, I understand there are people who prefer non-fiction to fiction, just as there are people who prefer, say, Westerns to mysteries. Maybe Ryan is one of them. Although, most of the time, movies lose something in the translation from page to screen. Even Stardust, which I thought was wonderfully done, is less than the experience of the graphic novel.

Reading is more active than watching a movie. You have to do some work - letting the author lead you around while he or she reveals the story, imagining the characters and settings, hearing their voices. But done right, when a writer transports the reader, it's ten times better than anything on the screen. A hundred times.

The average person read four books last year. Or, excluding the ones whose total was zero, the average number is seven. How much of this can be attributed to there being more and more demands on peoples' time? More responsibilities at work, kids' extra-curricular activities, shiny new technology, things like that? Is there a measurable number of people who once spent their lunch hours reading and now poke through blogs instead? How about the amount of people who work through lunch because their jobs demand it?

Here are the rest of the AP-Ipsos Poll results for the curious - I don't think I can link directly to the PDF file, but it's easy to find. Go take a peek.

There will always be readers. So many people aspire to be writers, and part of what sparks that desire, more often than not, is their own love of reading. Bookstores aren't going to go away, publishers aren't going to shut down their presses. Maybe as the kids who grew up with Harry Potter achieve the august title of Adult, the next poll will show an increase in these disheartening numbers.

So, informal poll here, for the hell of it - how many have you read in the last year? Do you think you read more or less than you used to? What's changed?

If They Actually Do It

2007-08-16T11:52:00.000-05:00

OJ's getting published after all. Ugh.

Although, it seems like we might be able to put published in quotes. Like this: "published."

When Sharlene Martin, the agent, announced that a New York publisher was interested and a deal had been reached, I wondered who on earth would pick it up, after all the hell that was raised when Harper tried putting it out late last year. I couldn't imagine, even in these days where any sensational news story seems to lead to a book being crashed into the list, that any of the big five would go anywhere near it.

Turns out none of them did. The book is being published by Beaufort Books, a small press who, up until this book at least, splits the cost of publishing with the authors.

Splitting the cost is a pretty way of saying the authors pay to be published. Yog's Law: Money flows toward the writer. (Yog is author James D. MacDonald, who is always watching out for new writers in danger of being scammed over on the Absolute Write forums.)

It seems pretty shady - they took the splitting-the-cost blurb off of their website. The publisher, Eric Kampmann, won't even throw out a ballpark number for the announced first printing when asked in an interview with Publishers Weekly. Something like this, I'd expect at least 100,000. I don't know how many Harper pulped, but it was at least that.

I have immense respect for Denise Brown. How Kampmann could sit beside her on The Today Show and not be horribly ashamed, I can't even begin to fathom.

The next question is, what are booksellers going to do with it? It's a tough question for all of them - whether or not to carry it, and if they do, how many copies? Should it stay behind the counter or be put on display? If they choose not to bring it into the store initially, will they be willing to special order it for customers?

There is absolutely a morbid curiosity factor to the whole thing. I'd imagine there would be a good chunk of customers who would come into the store, flip through to the chapter where he describes the murder, and put it back on the shelf without buying it. I also wonder how many people who would normally buy books from their local indie would instead order it through Amazon or B&N rather than be seen purchasing it.

This book was a bad idea. It's still a bad idea, no matter how much they're trying to spin it as benefitting charities and becoming the Goldmans' book. Personally, I wouldn't bring it into my store, if I had one. I think I would special order it for interested customers, simply because I hate the idea of telling people what they can and can't read, but I'd be uncomfortable doing it.

This Takes Some Serious Balls

2007-08-13T12:17:00.000-05:00

Or, How Not To Run a Bookstore

Quick summary - an Australian bookstore chain is demanding that small publishers pay the store ridiculous sums of money to keep their books in stock. Small publishers' reponse: "Uh, no. Idiot." Only much more eloquent.

I don't think there's anything I could say on this any better than Michael Rakusin, Teresa Nielsen Hayden and the commenters on Making Light. Just go read.

It's going to take more than a wee bit of google searching, but I'm fairly certain I remember a U.S. publisher doing something along these lines ten years ago or more. I want to say it was McGraw-Hill, or MacMillan, but I don't remember which and I don't remember what the demands were. I just remember Laurie running a report and pulling every book that we carried from that publisher off the shelves and returning them.

Vague recollections are making me think they sent a letter saying "As of X date, we're not selling to independent bookstores anymore." If they were going to sell exclusively to the chains, that would have prompted Laurie to pre-empt them and send their titles back at least a month or two early. (Thinking about it, I also realize there's an easier way to find this old information than a google search - I have some booksellers with long memories. I'll ask one of them today.)

A Ramble Before Caffeine

2007-08-10T08:04:00.000-05:00

Poking about a bit and updating the links over to your left there. I'm trying to keep a blogroll that has sites I actually trust and read on a fairly regular basis. Resisting the urge to fill it with every blog/site that makes me go "Ooooh, shiny" is tough. So, if there's a site you think is missing, or one you'd like me to peek at, please holler. There are tons and tons of book blogs out there and I'm trying to find the gems.

One thing I realized was missing was a link to American Booksellers for Freedom of Expression. They're fighting not only against banning books, but also against the USA PATRIOT Act and other legislation that threatens free speech.

I used to have this bumper sticker which read "Free people...publish books, buy books, sell books, read books...DON'T BAN BOOKS." I actually still have it somewhere because when I found it, I was driving this monstrosity that was just waiting to head off to the junk yard and couldn't bear to put it on a car I knew I wouldn't have for long. The sticker is from a long ago Banned Books Week and was most likely my first exposure to ABFFE. 2007's Banned Books Week is just over a month away. Expect ramblings and recommendations.

Three-quarters of the way through King Rat by the way. Over half of that list read...now I have to actually review them.

Housekeeping

2007-08-06T09:10:00.000-05:00

Before I digress, an update on posts to come:

1. On On Writing: never before have I underlined so many passages in a book, thinking to myself, "Yes, oh, he's so very right." I've loved King's writing since I was in junior high, so maybe I was predisposed to clicking with the book, but still. He is a genius.

2. I do not recommend reading King Rat when one is eating. The book is brilliant, I love Mieville's descriptions. However, I was having lunch while reading about Saul's first breakfast. Eep.

Okay, now I digress.

In part of my crusade to get more things accomplished, I'm trying to keep on top of housecleaning. I live in a perpetual state of clutter - junk mail waiting to be shredded or used as fuel for our chiminea, books that need to be put away, comics waiting for a new long box, clean laundry waiting to be folded, stuff everywhere.

I have in my mind this idea that everyone in the world is neater than I am, and while I know it's not true, going to family parties and seeing spotless houses doesn't help. (Yes, deep down I know that chances are the place was a mess twenty-four hours before, and the host/hostess frantically shoved anything that doesn't have a place into closets and under beds to be dealt with later, but still.)

Which means that this post from Bitch, Ph.D and the resulting flickr community make me feel a whole lot better.

Now, I know that having a neat house won't magically open a bookstore for me, or make a manuscript spring forth, complete and edited, from my forehead, but it's strangely related in my mind. Get the house in order, other things fall into place. Plus, if there's nothing to clean, I won't be vacuuming cats when I should be writing. No, I won't be abandoning that hour of writing I mentioned in the last post, but I will be tacking some extra straightening up onto the evenings.

As a matter of fact, I can tie this into bookselling. At the end of the night, when the store is quiet, you straighten the shelves. Walk around, look for the books that have been shoved back in on top of the others, alphabetize, find the stack of books someone left on a stool and put them in their rightful places. Replace the books that have been bought from displays and fill in gaps. Sweep the floor. Clear away the coffee cup that someone left balanced on a shelf - whether it was forgotten or left because he or she couldn't be bothered to find a trash can, it's trash now.

You do that because it's your store, and you're proud of it. When books are in their rightful places, you can find them for customers without having to cast about muttering, "It's supposed to be right here..." A cluttered store isn't very inviting.

So, without a bookstore to straighten, looks like it's the house. And the same philosophy applies: I straightened one section at a time - what good is it to alphabetize the top shelf and walk away if the six beneath it are still a mess? So. One section at a time, one room at a time.

Onward.

Devil's in the Dreaming

2007-08-02T11:41:00.000-05:00

Five years since I last worked there, two years since it closed its doors for good, and I'm still having Booksmith dreams.

Usually it's the one where I want to close the store but I can't, because there are still customers browsing. There's probably some deeper meaning to that, something about unfinished business or things getting in the way of stuff I want to get done, but I never really stop to examine what's going on in my life when I have them.

Last night, though, it was about going back to work there. I was in the back room, and Pat was sitting at the supervisor's desk doing something. Laurie was standing on the stairs, or maybe she was over by the back door, receving books. Maybe both. I don't know. Dreams are fluid like that.

I stood there shooting the shit with Pat and pulled the schedule (a hand-drawn, photocopied grid on an old clipboard, which was suspended by a rubber band hanging on a nail) towards me. There were empty spots on it, places where I knew they needed someone else on the shift, and I said, very casually, "You want me to come in? I can."

That was it, really. Nothing exciting, just me offering to fill in some shifts, come in 6-9:30 some nights, or work Saturday mornings.

It's pretty obvious that I miss it a hell of a lot, but it's more than that, too. I seem to start feeling restless over the summers, like there's more I could and should be doing. I like my current job very much - good people, a place I know and a company that treats its employees well, customers I get along with. The only thing dragging me down is all the lost time - I leave my house at 7AM and don't get home until 6PM. That's an eleven hour day, and I only get paid for seven.

It's the kind of job where I could absolutely justify working from home two or even three days a week. Hell, I could argue for working full-time at home, but I'll admit it's helpful to be able to get up and walk over to the credit department, or our shipping person, or someone in customer service, and get an answer right away. I know that it won't happen; it's wishful thinking.

That desire to work from home, or closer to it, makes me start poking through the classifieds. There are a couple of small presses near where I live. Sadly, there are no indie bookstores close to home (until I open one...) Nothing, though, compelling enough for me to put in a resume.
Another thing that probably prompted the dream was that I am, finally, reading On Writing. Stephen King had short stories published before he was out of his teens. I'm fast approaching 30, with lots of things started, a couple things finished, and nothing submitted. Believe me, I am not wearing rose-colored glasses and thinking I could make a handy bit of pocket cash through writing. I know it doesn't work that way. You write for love of the craft, not for the piles of cash you might rake in if you get lucky. Same thing with bookselling - you don't do it because you're going to make millions.

But if I have to have a part-time job, it's going to either be in a bookstore or sitting my ass down and writing more.

Do I need a part-time job? No. We do all right for ourselves. It's simply something I toy with from time to time. Money is one of those worries always hanging out in the back of my head. What if...? What if...? What if...? My current job prevents me from working in a bookstore - it's considered a conflict of interest. And really, even if I could, where would I find the time? I know there are people who do it all the time, working 40 hours at one job and 20 at another, or working one job during the week and another on weekends. That's not something I'm willing to do right now.

Which leads me right back to writing more. My availability might suck for a retail position, but dedicating an hour or two a night to writing, that I can do. Plus, it's something immediately tangible: this is what I've done today, this is the progress I've made towards a goal. It's hard to measure my progress towards opening a bookstore in any sort of terms besides "Sent in monthly student loan/car payment." Writing - whether it gets published or not - feels like doing something.

Two different goals, but the rewards of one - the sense of accomplishment I get from writing - will help make the other seem more achievable.

On Spoilers

2007-07-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

I'm not quite ready to review the last Potter book (notice how I haven't quite lived up to my other self-imposed reviews. Must structure time better...). However, this time last week the issue of spoilers came close to rivalling, if not overshadowing, the book's impending release.

Fans asked that people keep the details to themselves. J.K. Rowling asked that people let those who have waited ten years for this book find out how it ends on their own. Bookstores, newspapers and online newsletters made pledges that they'd avoid spoilers. And yet, when it came down to keeping that promise or getting the scoop, many chose the scoop. Most often, in the follow-up apologies sparked by the fans' outcry, the contrition has an asterisk - "We're-sorry-but..."

"We're sorry, but we didn't think any of what we said was a real spoiler."

"We're sorry, but why are you even reading reviews if you don't want to know what happens?"

"We're sorry, but this is news."

The parties in question seem genuinely surprised that anyone got offended, including at least one industry publication which sent out its newsletter with Harry's fate in a headline and quickly sent another message warning people not to open the first one.

And of course, all over the internet, people are gleefully spoiling the books - threads on forums with plot twists in the titles, sneakier ones where the subject seems innocent, but the message inside holds the revelations. What's the point of it? I suppose the cynical answer is simply that some people are jerks. What I really need to do is rephrase the question.

Why is it that this series in particular draws such maliciousness?

Is the amount of people looking to ruin the ending for others disproportionately large, or does it just seem like there are more because of all the hype and because the series is so successful?

I don't remember anything like this happening when Stephen King finally released The Dark Tower VII. I never felt like I had to hide myself away from message boards and media in the days and weeks leading up to its laydown. Granted, the audience for the Dark Tower books is very different - you probably wouldn't want your ten-year-old doing a book report on it. (I read The Gunslinger for the first time when I was twelve. My mother was afraid one of my teachers would see me reading it and take it away.)

When the season finale of Battlestar Galactica aired, I was away from home and the hotel didn't get Sci-Fi. It was only a day's wait for iTunes to make the episode available, but I wasn't worried that anyone would post the names of the Final Five on any websites I frequent - at least, they wouldn't post them without hiding them behind spoiler warnings. I know that, again, the audiences are very different between Battlestar and Harry.

Are there any better examples? Did this happen with the last Lemony Snicket book? What other series might have the same potential for asshattery in the future?

Still mulling this over. Thoughts and theories welcome while I better flesh out my own.

Cue Queue*

2007-06-07T08:50:00.000-05:00

All right, so the list is a wee bit overdue. I have so. many. books. on my shelves (still not organized) that I've finally decided to suck it up and pick five - the three that always seem on top of my mental "I'll get around to it" list, one lent to me that has to get passed on in a timely manner, and one that's currently being buzzed about - sure, I have five years of catching up to do, but by the time 2012 rolls around, I don't want to say I skipped the books that were hot in 2007...

1. Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rackhoff. I'm slightly cheating here, as I'm already about halfway through it.

2. King Rat by China Mieville. I started it a long time ago and had to put it down for other things, but I know I was enjoying it.

3. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. We had a book club at work several years ago. It met three times and then never again, although the books and the people were excellent. The first book we read was Murakami's Underground, a non-fiction examination of the 1995 sarin gas attacks in Tokyo's subways. I ride the trains to work every day. It was a sobering, chilling book, especially in the wake of September 11th. Murakami's coverage made me a fan.

4. On Writing by Stephen King. I own it. I've read passages of it. I can tell you any number of points he makes in the book. I've never read it cover-to-cover. King is one of my favorite authors - I was remarking the other day that I haven't reread The Stand in far too long. I hang my head in shame.

5. The Kite Runner by Kalid Hosseini. I mentioned it in the "hot books I haven't read" post, and it just came out in paperback.

So, there's my next month's worth of reading. Well, I'll read more books than the ones on the list, but those are the ones I'm promising to write about. Keeping it simple to start. My literary preferences are probably pretty easy to figure out, although I'll try to mix it up a bit, read outside of my genre every now and then.

I'll let you know what's good and what sucks.

*the gamers that read this are wincing.

Lilacs: A digression

2007-05-15T09:49:00.000-05:00

My bridesmaids held a trivia contest at my wedding shower. It was a game of "How well do you know the bride?" and they set up a list of twenty or so questions about me. I don't remember very many of them - did they ask what my favorite book was? Anything about music? I don't even remember who won. But there's one question I always remember at this time of year.

After everyone had filled out their responses, the bridesmaids plunked me down in a chair facing the room and asked me for the answers. I was a bit flustered by this day full of people fawning all over me, and there I had something like fifty relatives staring.

They wanted to know what my favorite flower was.

I forgot. And, in a panic to say something, I blurted out "Calla lillies." They were what I wanted in my bouquet, and I do like them. I heard my mother-in-law squeal at getting it right.

My dad sat at his table, grinning and shaking his head. (It was a co-ed shower - most of my friends are male. Thank god for my bridesmaids and my mom insisting it was okay to invite the guys.)

"Not a Calla lilly?" I said.

"You know what your favorite flower is," he said.

Still, I drew a blank.

"What do we have growing right beside the house?" he asked. "What kind of bush?"

It dawned on me. "He's right," I said, "It's lilacs. Purple ones."

I don't know why I love them so much. Whether it was a little girl obsession with anything purple, or whether it was simply their scent that attracted me to them, they've remained my favorite part of spring over the years. Partly, they remind me of home - my parents still have the bush of purple lilacs beside the house, and another bush of white ones in the far back corner of their yard.

I know they make my dad think of his own mother, who also loved them. She died in May, when I was small. His last call to her was on the way to go see her in the hospital. He told her he was bringing her lilacs. She was gone when he arrived.

We have a bush here, at our house. It takes me by surprise every year - suddenly there's this burst of color in the back yard, and there they are. I noticed it Saturday morning, while sweeping pine needles, and put the broom down to go see. They're not fully open yet, but it didn't stop me from cupping one in my hands and inhaling its scent. I'll take a cutting soon, when they're fully bloomed, and set it on my desk.

Certain things signal the seasons for me. It can't be Christmas until I hear the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" on the radio. Fall doesn't have a song or a flower, but a feeling in the air - a change in temperature, the earlier fading of daylight - one day it's summer, the next, something in the breeze tells me to dig out the jackets and give up sandals.

Spring's not real for me until the lilacs bloom - even though they don't come until it's nearly summer. The equinox is at least a month gone by then. Leaves are coming back on the trees. They just don't seem as green until there's that burst of purple to go with them.

The lilacs are here. Spring has arrived at last.

Still here, still planning

2007-05-10T10:07:00.000-05:00

Now that the nice weather is finally rolling in, I might see productivity increase. I got hit hard with a case of the winter blues that pretty much lasted into and through April. I don't usually get them; I don't know why this year was different. I can't really call it any sort of real depression (not that I'd even know how to diagnose it), just... a general feeling of being down.

It didn't help that winter stayed through April, and just when it should have started getting sunny and warm, instead it was cold and rainy for what felt like weeks on end. We had a few bouts of nice weather, but the best of those came when I was stuck inside at sales conference for four days - in rooms with no windows, or when there were windows, the views were of other buildings.

I was sad without a reason to be, and it got all the more frustrating because every time I tried to put my finger on why, the best I could come up with was clouds-and-rain. How do you say to friends who have much more tangible problems, "Listen to me bitch - I'm sad because the weather sucks?" You don't. Or I don't, anyway. I'm reluctant to cry Seasonal Affective Disorder - like I said, this isn't a recurring thing. Whatever it was, though, it killed my desire to get moving on things - planning, writing... hell, I haven't read nearly as many books as usual.

Enough of the woe-is-me. This is about bookselling.

I've recently done a whole flurry of housecleaning - call it the spring cleaning I've been postponing for a few springs. In the room I call my study (which feels kind of pretentious, but "office" doesn't quite fit), I have three huge bookshelves. Two I sanded and stained myself last year, one's a Wal-Mart-special sort of deal. I transferred books from smaller shelves to them, but I'm only just getting around to the books that sat in bags, or on various piles on the floor.

My big accomplishment last week was getting them out of bags and off the floor, but they're not yet sorted on the shelves. As a matter of fact, looking at them makes my inner-bookseller cringe. Things stacked, not in any sort of order, spines turned towards the backs of the shelves. I need to take an evening and go through them - what to keep, what to give away, what to sell.

I know there are books in there that I bought with excitement and never got around to - one of the curses of my job is having so little time to read other publishers' books. At my desk, I have a journal of sorts with titles of books I want to read. Some I've purchased, some I'm telling myself I need to wait on until I have time to catch up.

Part of being a good bookseller is not just knowing what's hot right now, but also being well-versed in older titles. Frontlist's great, but how many frontlist titles make the transition to successful backlist? If a customer comes in and buys The Book Everyone's Reading This Month, what can you suggest that they read after? Sure, there are always books trying to cash in on the success of what's popular - not necessarily copycats, but books published to tie-in, or ride the other bestsellers' coattails. Take a look at how many pirate-themed books are out this summer.

But when someone's read all of those, and wants recommendations, a bookseller needs to be able to fall back on her knowledge of what's come before. I figure I have about five years' worth of lost time to make up for. I could spout backlist titles from this company, but what have I missed from outside while most of my reading has been within the same ISBN families?

I haven't read The Kite Runner. Or The Secret Life of Bees. Or The Dive from Clausen's Pier. Sure, I've made time for new Harry Potter books, and A Feast for Crows. I read Cell but not Lisey's Story. Would I have read any of those first three, were I working in a bookstore? I don't know. But at the very least I'd have a better grasp on them than simply knowing their titles.

The plan is this: at least one book a week from outside of my company, starting with the things on my shelves I've been putting off, and working through the journal of stuff to read. Continuing to books I've missed. I'll review them here, and I reserve the right to say "This sucked. I don't know what everyone was thinking."

I'll digress a moment and explain that last sentence. One of my pet peeves about some of the review sites out there is that they love everything. Not a single "the plot was weak." Not a hint of "The dialogue tags ripped me out of the story." Just praise, praise, praise, because (I suspect) publishers are swamping them with advanced copies, and who wants to piss off the publisher and stop receiving books?

So. Here, I'll let you know what I'm thinking about old books and new, as I read them. While book reviews aren't really getting me closer to owning a store of my own, they're at least tangential to the purpose of this blog. Because, really, what right do I have to call myself a bookseller if I don't know anything about the books I'm selling?

I'll post a list of titles in the queue when I've stared at the shelves and chosen some.

Sunlight. Warmth. Getting back into the swing of things. Clock's a-ticking.

Progress, of a sort

2007-04-04T15:47:00.000-05:00

I have this habit of making a list of all the things I want to accomplish, trying to attack all of them at once, and getting (unsurprisingly) overwhelmed. ("Let's paint the kitchen! And hang curtains in the living room! And clean out the garage! And bring about world peace! Let's do it on Saturday!") This ambition (foolhardiness?) doesn't mean that at some point I up and abandon all of the projects, but it does mean that I'm likely to procrastinate on one or all, and let one or all of them slip by the wayside for a while.

Until I pick them up again in another moment of frantic energy and I-think-I-can optimism.

This five-year-plan for opening a bookstore makes it at least a little easier to deal with. I have five years to clean up finances and save money, five years to cobble together a business plan and learn all I can about...well, everything. Still, it's daunting. Most likely, it's a case of Winter Blues talking (I know, it's April, but right now, I can see snow coming down outside), or a bit of self-doubt rearing its head, but I find myself wondering how much of it is just a pretty dream.

Now, that's not me being defeatist. I will still go through with it - it's way too early to walk away from, and truly, the idea of giving up hasn't crossed my mind. Wanting something like this for ten or fifteen years means it's a pretty hard dream to shake. I'm just saying that there's this little part of me that wonders if I have the stuff.

I'm pretty sure I do. I know that bookselling isn't all warm and fuzzy connecting people with books, or intriguing conversations with brilliant customers. There's credit and accounting, stacks upon stacks upon stacks of catalogs and trying to pick out which books are going to be sleepers, and which you really can skip even though your sales rep says you need at least three (no, really, you can skip it.)

Bookselling is hard. I know that, and I'm ready for it. It's funny, I feel ready for the future, even though I'm aware that I certainly don't know everything about running a store.

What I'm bemoaning is the now. The waiting. Knowing that I'm not ready, really, to start thinking about small business loans (not in the sense of filling out and handing in the paperwork, that is) and setting up accounts with publishers, and deciding what kind of shelving I need, or what inventory system I'll go with. All I can do right this second is read the books I bought on small businesses, and save money where I can. Paying off bills is a long, slow process. I know I'm getting there, but watching month to month feels useless.

Ah, well. Patience and virtues and all.

I should think instead of actual tangible things I've done, and start considering them as progress, no matter how insignificant they seem to me.

So, look out, I'm going to give this a try.

-Earlier this year, I paid off two credit card bills. Two down, two to go.

-I actually cracked the covers of one of the small business books and started reading. Now, the first chapter devotes a lot of time to people who don't know what kind of business they want to run, and helping them figure that out.

Chapter two is a brief look at money - finding out where you stand now, personally, and ways to fund starting a business. I'm fairly certain it will go into more detail later on in the book, but one exercise I know I need to do in there is the worksheet of income vs. expenses. I'm putting that off for the moment because I know looking at those numbers is going to depress me and discourage me. I'd like to be on better footing before I actually do that. I know I'll have to do it soon enough, just...not right now. I do still have time, and I'm aware that I need to save more. That'll have to be good enough for today.

Chapter three gets into mission statements and business plans. I'll be going over that in the next couple of days, and posting my rambling reactions to them. Somehow I doubt rejected mission statements will be a source of high comedy (or any entertainment, really), but again, it will feel like I've done something.

Four years, eight months to go.

Oh, Murphy, You've Done It Again.

2007-03-15T11:16:00.000-05:00

This is exactly the kind of thing I need to join and get involved with. When I saw the link, and read about the first gathering, I started making plans to go. The booksellers involved in this are names I've known for a long time - they've always been heavily involved in the bookselling community and own/have worked at incredibly successful indie stores.

"I shall go," thought I, "and glean knowledge from giants."

Then I realized I'm away that week.

If there are any good cloning programs out there, someone let me know.

For now, I'll have to hope that the first is a success so there'll be a second.

Too Long

2007-02-26T12:03:00.000-05:00

Just realized it's been a month since any kind of post on here, and even though there isn't a whole ton to report, I was aiming for something a bit more regular.

Of course, this is the time of year when most New Year's Resolutions have fallen by the wayside. It's probably helpful that Lent falls around now - so those of us who gave up our resolutions can use the forty days while we're waiting for the bunny and the dying on the cross to happen (not to mention the rock rolling away from the tomb) to pick back up on the things we've let lapse.

Or something. I haven't given anything up for Lent this year. I figure, instead of dropping bad habits, it might be better to pick up good ones. (And come on, am I really going to go forty days without swearing? coffee? Chocolate's always a wash - the best damned candy of all only comes out this time of year. Cadbury Mini Eggs, o heaven, o stars...)

So, better habits, then. Continued thinking and planning about the future-store. Writing, writing, writing. Possibly poking at my resume, since I'm not entirely convinced I'll still be here in a year (hooray for my incestuous industry. We're #5, which means #1-4 are always eyeing us and our distributees like vultures).

At the very least, for positive things, I was able to pay off two bills at the beginning of the month. Neither of which were very big, but both being gone will let me throw some extra cash towards the larger ones. Faster those are gone (or more manageable, anyway), the sooner I can start saving more towards the grand opening party.

Which, even though it could fall in January, will have Cadbury Mini Eggs.

Bookseller Mnemonics

2007-01-26T09:11:00.000-05:00

All right, enough of this easing into the new year. It's nearly February.

Robert Gray writes an article for Shelf Awareness about the strange kind of free-association booksellers have to hone when finding books for customers.

You must be able to play "the game" to work in a bookshop, and here's the first rule: When a customer has a specific title request, assume (but never let the customer know you assume) that the information provided is flawed. In any three-word title, at least one word will be incorrect; sometimes two; sometimes all three. I've heard titles that were close (Snow on Shingles for Snow Falling on Cedars) and not so close (Peggy Sue and the House of Hair for Patty Jane's House of Curl).

It's one of those skills that sets good booksellers apart from great booksellers. It's not a matter of figuring out the right title in the blink of an eye, or even getting it right every time, but being willing to give it a shot in the first place.

When you're around books day in and day out, you tuck away little bits of information even if you're not reading every title. You know which books are in the news (because even if you don't see the news report, you can bet a customer will come asking about it). You know what's on the bestseller lists, what's on local school reading lists, and which book Sawyer was reading on Lost last night. You learn cover art and author photos and subtitles, and where customers will "reshelve" books they decide not to buy. (Could you kids please stop putting The Necronomicon next to the Bibles?)

There are doomcriers out there, suggesting that with the advent of Amazon and other online bookstores, bricks and mortar stores will become obsolete. The actual experience of walking into a bookstore and simply being surrounded by all those pages is another rant. What's relevant here is the advantage that flesh-and-blood booksellers have over every search engine out there.

As Gray says: "A lot of time and money is invested in some very powerful search engines, but even high tech logic often meets its match when confronted with the low tech intangibles of consumer bewilderment and impatience."

One night near closing time, a gentleman came into the store and did the circuit of the shelves. He wasn't walking like he was browsing - he was scanning, looking for a particular title, but determined to find it himself. Eventually, he gave up and made his way to where I stood beside the inventory computer.

"I know this sounds weird," he said, "but I'm looking for a book that was on the bestseller lists a couple of years ago."

We went through the usual - no, he didn't know the title. No, he didn't know the author, or even the subject matter. He couldn't even tell me what color the cover was.

"All I know," he said, looking chagrined, "is that there's an E in the title."

Before I could even start wracking my brain for likely candidates, my co-worker Ted looked up from his pile of shelving and said, "The Celestine Prophecy?"

I thought the customer was about to hug him. That was it exactly.

Try Googling that.

Those requests are the most satisfying. They test your knowledge of the world at large and your intimacy with your store and bookselling as a whole. And when you match your customer with the book, you know exactly why you're in this business.

(Robert Gray's blog is Fresh Eyes Now, and his Shelf Awareness articles are here.)

4 Years, 361 Days to Go

2007-01-04T15:59:00.000-05:00

The holidays sort of broadsided me this year, hence, the unexpected hiatus. I could wax all poetic on Christmas in a bookstore, but I'll hold off on that. Christmas is over. It's January, which means resolutions.

Although, I thought I gave up making New Year's resolutions for Lent a few years ago. Hmm.

Ah, well. Semantics making all the difference, I won't call them resolutions, but instead...housekeeping.

1. Time to take a serious look at finances - I know that I have three years to go on my student loans and almost two on my car, and then comes everything else. Things aren't getting paid off any faster through sheer willpower (wouldn't that be a great superpower, though?) - what can I put more money towards, and what can I start saving?

2. Suck it up, get out a highlighter and a cup of tea, and start reading those books I bought on small businesses.

3. Mailing lists. Newsgroups. They're out there, filled with booksellers talking shop. I just have to find them. "Shelf Awareness" and "PW Daily" are great starts, but bookselling is about communities. If you're going to make it, you need the support of not only the community in which your store is built, but of other bookstore owners as well. I could, very easily, ask two or three of my buyers to mentor me. When I'm closer to actually opening the store, I will. But for now, a place to lurk and see what other indie storeowners are saying would be good.

4. It follows from #2, but... write a business plan.

5. Attend BEA or a regional show as a bookseller, not a publisher rep. Go to the workshops and classes for booksellers. The question is whether or not my work schedule will allow for that. This year? Outlook seems hazy for BEA. Soon, though.

Just a handful to get working on. I'm sure there are more things that will occur to me, but I don't want to get overwhelmed, either. Number 1 is scary enough as it is.

However - I can dream of the future and sigh over old memories all I want, but not much will happen if I don't start doing something tangible.

Sometimes, the Right Thing Just Takes a Little Longer to Get Done.

2006-12-16T15:14:00.000-05:00

Bye bye, Judith Regan.

Just a Little Further North...

2006-12-13T10:24:00.000-05:00

Le sigh.

If only a town around here would put out a call like this (from "Shelf Awareness" 12/13/06):

Town Seeks Bookstore, Must Be Independent, Energetic
Haddonfield, N.J., which has 12,000 people and is 15 minutes from Philadelphia, is looking for an independent bookstore "to enhance their downtown business district," the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association reported.

Haddonfield has "outstanding demographics, one of the best school districts in the state, parents who care deeply about education and a growing population of young families. Not to mention the fact that virtually every woman in town over the age of 25 is in some kind of book group!" Lisa Hurd, retail coordinator for the town, wrote to NAIBA. There is a Barnes & Noble 20 minutes away; Haddonfield's Cabbages and Kings bookstore closed some five years ago.

The Partnership for Haddonfield, a business improvement district for which Hurd works, offers "significant financial incentives to targeted stores [which would include a bookstore] that take the form of rent subsidies and fit-out grants."

Chemistry, Luck or Savvy, Probably Need a Little of Each

2006-12-08T15:04:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting at my desk, trying desperately to find my list of speed-dial codes for our fax machine so I can show the new girl which buttons to push, when I come across an old print-out. It's five - no, wait, almost six years old, printed on one of the dot matrix printers from back in my customer service days. So old that it has my maiden name on the to: line, and the domain name for my company was actually the name of the publisher, not the parent company who was just about to merge with us.

It's from a friend of mine - "Top Ten Ways to Celebrate Your Birthday" - and suddenly I'm waxing more nostalgic about the bookstore than I have in a long time. Because goddammit, I miss you, Matt.

One of the best things about Booksmith was its crew. Somehow, we always managed to hire people who just clicked together. There was the occasional employee who never quite found a niche, but for the most part, you could look at the schedule any night of the week and think, "that's going to be an excellent shift." Seven years later, and a lot of my favorite people have scattered across the country, in pursuit of other dreams. But when they're in town, I know we can go get a cup of coffee, and suddenly it's just like they've never left. Most of them are people I'd never have met if we hadn't shared those years at Booksmith.

There are very few jobs where your coworkers are also your friends. If Books That Don't Suck gets big enough for employees (aka, people who aren't related to me), I hope I can find that same sort of formula for my own crew.

Call Me Old-Fashioned

2006-12-04T15:35:00.000-05:00

If I may go all industry-jargon for a hundred words or so...

I am so very proud of some of my current customers who are already making the conversion to ISBN-13, and not waiting until the last minute to let go of the old ten-digit ISBNs.

But can I just say that after, oh, thirteen years in the book world (hello, coincidence!), it's a bitch getting used to typing those three extra numbers? My fingers just refuse to do it. After a while, you get used to the rhythm of ten-digits. You know when you've keyed one number too few or too many, or when a customer gave you an extra number somewhere.

I know, six months from now, I'll be using ISBN-13 as though it had been here all along. So in five years, at the grand opening of Books That Don't Suck, the great 13-digit crisis of 2007 will seem like nothing.

But ugh, muscle memory is so very hard to retrain.

Shuffling towards progress.

2006-12-01T16:05:00.000-05:00

I stood for a half hour this afternoon, staring at a wall o' business books. This other gentleman and I would occasionally do the polite I-step-forward-and-to-the-right/you-step-backwards-and-to-the-left shuffle to switch places, while we both were simultaneously overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books on the shelves.

No, that wasn't an intentional pun.

Okay, maybe a little.

Anyway, I noticed two things:

Thing the first: there are books on opening all kinds of stores - coffee bars, restaurants, florist shops, car washes - but there wasn't a single book on opening a bookstore. I saw books on opening generic retail businesses, which I realize would mostly apply to a bookstore, but others got so specific, I just sort of figured... well.

So, of course, I'm thinking, "What, are you scared, Borders?* Where are the books on opening a bookstore?" (No, I haven't gone searching for one, but I'm sure such a book exists. Although, it's not an easy time to be an independent bookstore, so I doubt there are very many new books out on it.)

In the end, I walked out of there with a general how-to on starting a small business (the one whose table of contents seemed to best apply to me, for now) and another on actually writing a business plan.

Now, of course, that means I have to make use of them, and not let them gather dust on the Shelf of Good Intentions.

Thing the Second (and this one can go in the eventual employee handbook): Borders failed the One-finger Rule. To wit: on a shelf full of books facing spine-out, you should be able to place an index finger on the top of a single book, and slide it out easily. If you can't do that, or two books slide out instead of one, the shelf is packed too full. Employees of Books That Don't Suck who overstuff shelves will lose one finger for every extra book that comes out during the test.

*I know, I know. I'll do my penance for not buying from an indie this weekend. I promise. I just wanted to have some kind of tangible step taken towards 1/2/12.

So you can see what I see

2006-11-29T12:43:00.000-05:00

A friend started a thread on a message board we're both on, asking what our dream jobs were. This was my response.

It's that bookstore where you go and browse and find the book you came in looking for, plus books you didn't know you wanted to read. And the person behind the counter knows who you are and what you like, and you shoot the shit with them for a few minutes before you go. You recommend books to them, they tell you about the new This or That Author coming in the fall, and you know there'll be a copy waiting for you when it comes out.

Coffee? Sure, but not anything pretentious. None of this Grande/Venti half-caff mochaccino shit. Coffee. Pure and simple and good. You wanna fancy it up? You're in the wrong place. We sell books here, not java.

Decent-sized floor space or even an attached building/room for events. Local musicians, poetry slams, book groups (for good books, obviously). Author signings - local authors and some of the big guns. I'm not talking Grisham or Patterson. They don't quite follow the store name, do they? I mean Christopher Moore, George RR Martin. And hey, dream store, yeah? Neil Gaiman, Stephen King.

We don't sell Cliff's Notes. Nor do we sell candles, or any distracting sidelines that aren't book related. You want Beanie Babies and kitsch? Go to the Hallmark store.

But, before you go, have you read Inkheart?

I know it's a thankless job. I know in reality, it's really fucking hard to get an indie off the ground and keep it in the black. You work long hours - sometimes ten, twelve, sixteen - for not a lot of pay. You argue with publishers, customers, authors, other bookstores. B&N wants to build across the street and steal your business. The bestsellers are 30% off at Wal-Mart, and Amazon's offering free shipping. All the authors get sent to the Borders two towns over and hey, why does Books-a-Million have the new mass markets a week before I do?

I know all that. I know it.

I still want it.

Words, words, words...

2006-11-28T23:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not big on how-to books. Not so much a fan of self-help tomes that all say the same things only with different names in their example stories. I don't even remember the last time I read an advice column looking for anything beyond a giggle. I've read forums for people looking to save money, or lose weight, or achieve any of hundreds of goals, and seen the same posts reworded weekly as newbies ask old, old questions.

Suppose you can't really be exposed to all of that without taking something away from it, though. One thing I actually found useful was this (reworded, of course, by me):

If you're trying to accomplish something, don't keep it a secret.

It's so very, very easy not to tell people you (for example) want to lose twenty pounds by the holidays. If you do it, great! Your friends will notice, and compliment you. But if you don't, the only person you disappoint is yourself. Makes it awfully easy to pretend you didn't really fail. "Oh, well, twenty pounds by January, then." "Valentine's Day." "Easter." "I have plenty of time." Until you're back around to the holidays again.

But if you tell people, if you stop letting it only echo through your head, and start actually saying it out loud and in the presence of others, well. Now you have a goal, and something they're going to ask you about. How's the job search? How's the diet?

How's the bookstore?

It's never been a secret, this aspiration of mine. My friends know. My family knows. Hell, my boss brings it up now and again. But it's always been such a nebulous thing: someday, I will open a bookstore, and I'll call it Books That Don't Suck, and it will be good. It's the "someday" that sets it up to fail. That sets me up to fail.

So, what good does blogging about it do? It puts the idea out there even further, I suppose. Announces it to even more people, should anyone stumble across this little corner of the internet, and like it enough to peek back every now and then. It will make me think about it every day, reminding me that, well, the idea's not going away - what have I done today to make this dream a reality?

And, since part of the reason I want to have my own bookstore so badly is because I miss working in one, some of my rants might actually come in handy for the Books That Don't Suck employee handbook. (Chapter 1: Ten things that will make the boss grit her teeth.)

So. I want to open a bookstore. It will probably not really be called Books That Don't Suck, as most communities would frown on that, but it might be something like "Books That Don't Suck LLC, d/b/a "[Insert Clever Bookstore Name Here]." Oh, and since "someday" is weaselly, let's say...

Books That Don't Suck. Grand Opening January 2, 2012. Guest list sign-ups for the opening bash start...

...now.