Archive for the ‘bookselling’ Category
e-ARC follow-up
After this article in Shelf Awareness last month, about the potential of e-ARCS for reviewing and especially indie bookstores, I got a number of very thoughtful responses. Several people wrote in to affirm that they definitely were not interested in e-ARCs at all and have concerns that for booksellers to start to work with e-books puts the future of the book at greater risk. Several others wrote in to say they were very interested in e-readers, even though they love physical books. And a few introduced thoughts that had never entered my mind! Below is a selection of voices that I think are crucial to the discussion:
“Let me say I would dearly love an e-reader for ARC’s!! I will be anyone’s guinea pig on this! I find the amount of paper products in my office overwhelming. Publisher’s catalogs, toy catalogs and then what-have-you catalogs. I have been known to purge so severely that my new catalogs are recycled with the old! (My reps just bring them now.) The book sorting and sharing is never ending, as you say. But you forgot to mention the book that has been out on the floor for 3 months and the ARC mysteriously reappears on the shelf to be re-sorted and weeded.” —Andrea Vuleta, General Manager, Mrs. Nelson’s Toy and Book Shop (CA)
“The aspect that isn’t being discussed is that, as a collector, I like having ARCs in my collection. Yes, fewer of them are printed and, to me, that makes them more interesting. There are often changes in the art between the ARC and the finished book and I like having those differences represented- often I prefer the artwork of the ARC. There can be changes to the story or some other aspect of the text between the ARC and the finished book and, to me, that’s worth keeping. Being in the bookworld, I am lucky enough to be able to be many of them signed by the visiting author, so I have sets – the ARC and the hardcover – and I like that. Makes my shelves jammed, but I like it. In fact, if there are gaps in my collection, they are the ARCs of author’s earlier books that I don’t have.
“I recall one author bemoaning how some faceless copy editor decided that the last three paragraphs in the author’s book really weren’t necessary so they were omitted from the finished book. Until the paperback, the only way to read the full book, as written by the author, was in the ARC.
“In another case, an author was horrified to find that an earlier and inferior version of the manuscript was mistakenly issued as the ARC and thought reviews and reactions to the book were hurt by it. He wanted anyone who had read the ARC to read the book again, in hardcover. Otherwise, you hadn’t really read ‘his book’.
“These kinds of stories, along with the artifact itself, makes me value ARCs as a collector. And, for that reason, I’d hate to see them go.” —JB Dickey, owner, Seattle Mystery Bookshop (WA)
“Being one who tends to see both sides of an issue simultaneously, I can certainly support your reasoning about reducing waste and being more ‘green.’ But I’m also concerned that booksellers need to ‘walk the talk.’ If they’re reading books — even if in galley form — on an e-reader, why shouldn’t more customers do the same?
“One alternative solution that came to me is for publishers to use the same model with booksellers as agents do with acquisitions editors: present a one or two page summary, along with a sample chapter. Since we can’t possibly read all the ARCs that we get anyway, we could at least get a feel for the content, style of writing, and whether any of our customers would like the book. Publishers could then produce galleys with print-on-demand technology, should there be some requests for the book.” —Mark Kaufman, Paz & Associates
“The moment I heard of e-readers I thought they would be an excellent tool for me as a bookseller. Imagine seeing a book promoted on a television show, website or actually meeting the author that interested me. I could IMMEDIATELY go to the publisher website, enter my super secret spidey code and download a copy to start reading. If I didn’t like it… no problem… delete it. If I DID like it… start the buzz.” —Deb Hunter, Chicklet Books (NJ)
And here’s a helpful link from Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media Partners, about a study they did for netGalley that looks at the costs to publishers of making e-ARCs available.
Any other voices out there in the ether that want to chime in?
Get back to where you once belonged
A small conversation on Twitter sparked this question: what books are now out of print that you would sell the hell out of if they were still in print?
I’ll start with three of mine. They’re all kids’ books, I’m guessing in part because I’m too young to have loved grown-up books that are now OP, and in part because it’s the books I grew up with that really imprinted themselves on me and follow me around all day.
1. The A. I. Gang trilogy by Bruce Coville (originally published by Minstrel Books, part of S&S). Fantastic work of sci-fi for older middle grade that I was completely obsessed with. I have no idea why this isn’t available anymore, especially because I thought it was a given that Coville rocks, but I’m really glad I still have my copies. Great characters, includes fantastic female characters and characters of color without being tokenist, hilarious, and so, so smart. This is a series that made me seriously think about nuclear war and the stupidity of Mutually Assured Destruction when I was all of, like, 10. Still re-read them everytime I move and have to re-pack them. This series has perhaps the highest badge of honor I can give it: as a kid, I regularly pretended I was one of the characters and/or had extensive daydreams in which I re-wrote myself into the story. I can say that about maybe two other books (The Dark is Rising series and The Egypt Game). I really wish it was still around, I think it would delight fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society and E. L. Konigsberg but would also be great for reluctant readers, male or female.
2. Nobodies and Somebodies by Doris Orgel (originally published by Viking). This book was YA before YA was cool and before I was old enough to know what YA was. Actually, I guess nowadays it would be high MG as well. No matter, it is still great. Story of a girl who moves to a new area and new school and gets caught up in the craziness of the cool and the uncool, but that looks at several points of view rather than walking the well-trod “man, those popular girls sure are bitchy” route. Would love to be able to sell this book again. One character lies about having swum with dolphins to be cool, and the popular girls paint their nails in a really weird way that’s actually impossible, and there’s lots of kicking heels against the heater to protest popular girls even though it disrupts the class pet. This should be re-released as a TPO as MG so I can sell it to tweens who want a more sophisticated read.
3. Ash by Lisa Rowe Fraustino (originally published by Orchard Books). Another book that would still be in print if it had been published after the onset of YA madness. A very real look at what life is like when your sibling is mentally ill and your family is just a normal family. I love this book so much, I can’t count how many times I’ve re-read it. (Full disclosure, I think my mom and she were once in the same writer’s group, but as it happened so long ago that I can’t remember for sure, I doubt it’s influencing my mentioning it here.) In voice, it’s an early King Dork, but telling a totally different story. You know what, I’m going to type out the prologue so you can hear the voice, see if you get drawn into it the way I get every time I read it:
“The Last Will and Testament of Wesley Willian Libby, age 15 (cause you never know when a truck’s gonna hit you)
“Being of sound mind and body, not counting pigeon toes and baby flab, I hereby declare this my 1st and last will and testament so far.
“To my beloved month Bonnie Lynn Tibbetts Libby I leave my Bible. But 1st my best friend Merle R. Daigle’s gotta go through and erase some stuff. Merle, you know what I’m talking about.
“To my beloved father Stefan Edward Libby, known to the rest of creation as Steve, I leave the violin you never wanted to buy me. Sell it and buy the CB you was always after us to pitch in and get you for Christmas. And if you dig deep in my closet you’re gonna find an old G.I. Joe wearing them army medals of yours you LOST a few years ago. Don’t get all mad that I didn’t confess this when I was alive. You woulda killed me.
“To my once-in-a-great-while beloved sister Deena T. Libby, OFFICIALLY known on her birth certificate as Dayna Theresa, which I personally think is a better name, I don’t leave nothing.
“No, just kidding Deena–you get the dust balls under my bed and the snotty handkerchief in my pants pocket when I die.”
“No, no, DEENA, just kidding! You can have my breadbox. Guess I should cross that out and write “CD-radio,” but Mama told me it was a breadbox under the Christmas tree and now that’s what it is. Also, my entire CD collection, except for the Roy Boys Grammy Ethyl give me for my birthdays, and Grammy had better take them back cause Deena would overreact if she had to share her room with Acuff, Rogers, Orbison & Clark.
“To the aforementioned best friend Merle R. Daigle, who’d get embarrassed if I called him beloved so I won’t, I leave my entire comic book collection except for the 1961 Green Honet and the ‘62 Wonder Woman and the ‘65 Superman cause them’s worth money and Mama & Daddy can sell them to pay for my funeral. Better clean out my college account at the Fleet Bank of Maine and use that for the funeral too. Only about $142.67 in there, so don’t get no expensive casket. Cremate me. But that don’t mean to keep my ashes around the house in no sicko urn. Bury them out back next to Togo, or put them in the cemetery with Grampy Libby. Even better, use them to fertilize Millard Worcester’s blueberry field, which’s got sentimental value to me but I can’t say why cause it’s Merle’s secret too.
“Merle also gets the personal effects in my locker if I die during the school year, but DON’T let NOBODY else in the locker, Merle, or I’ll haunt you, I swear.
“To the Calvary Bible Church I leave all my clothes to put in a gar(b)age sale or to give to the homeless cause Mama wouldn’t have the heart to do it herself. Except my Knights of Sisyphus T-shirt—that goes back to Ash. The church can also have my baseball equipment, Scrabble, books and junk so the kids will finally have something to do when the parents are fellowshipping at covered dish suppers.
“To my beloved brother Ashton Allen Libby I leave a composition book with some stuff written in it ONLY for him. Merle, you gotta get it for Ash out of the Shibboleth, and nobody else nag Merle to find out what the Shibboleth is cause that’s just between him & me. Now Merle, don’t get all mad, but the book’s in a secret compartment that YOU don’t know about. Take a hammer and pull up that floorboard with the big knothole, the one you always call Mrs. Fish-Lips’ belly button. Then paw around in there till you find the book, but don’t you dare read it or I’ll haunt you WITH CHAINS, I swear. If it ain’t there, that means I changed my mind and already give Ash the composition book.
“If there’s anything I left out then it ain’t important and Deena can have it.
“Just kidding! I didn’t leave nothing out.”
So, there’s my tribute to some books I wish were still around so I could sell them all over the place. What about you? What books do you try to recommend or sell but they’re out of print? Include the publisher name if you have it, maybe one of these days someone will stumble across this post and try to bring the book back.
Amazonfail
It’s all over these interwebs, and my store has a response! Cutting and pasting the whole thing here, since I was the author and I give myself permission. You should click the link to see the picture of our bestseller list with IndieBound logo hovering above, though.
Over the weekend, you may have heard something about a controversy over recent changes to Amazon’s ranking system that are primarily affecting books with sexual content, and especially books with GLBT content, by removing their rankings and thus impacting their visibility on the site. More information is easy to find, as the internet has basically exploded about the whole thing.
Though it’s not clear yet what’s happened, here at WORD, we wanted to take this opportunity to assure our customers that the problem of books with “adult content” not being ranked is not endemic across the book industry. In the interests of transparency, our bestseller list is calculated as follows:
1. On first day of new month, run sales report for previous month.
2. Type top ten bestselling titles on a list.
3. Print out list on yellow paper.
(Possible glitch: the manager forgets how to count. If this happens, we’ll be the first people to let you know.)
As you can see, it is a simple process and any book can be a part. We invite customers to test this assertion by buying dozens of copies of whichever adult title they like best to drive it to the top of our bestseller list. No one would be more amused than we by an April bestseller list composed of gay erotica and perennial bestseller Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
This should clarify our position nicely, but if you have any other questions, you are welcome to email us at info@wordbrooklyn.com, call at 718 383 0096 (no extension, no phone tree, and definitely no hold music), or for direct human contact, visit us in person at 126 Franklin Street.
What do comic book stores and book stores have in common?
Wow, I have put a multi-paragraph book review together for once! It’s for Tilting at Windmills, vol. 2, by Brian Hibbs (IDW, $19.99). Brian Hibbs is the owner of Comix Experience, in San Francisco.
I bought this at brand-new Brooklyn comic book store Bergen Street Comics, which I highly recommend to any and all NYC comics-lovers. The store is beautifully laid-out and so, so organized, which I prize very highly in any bookshop but especially comic shops. NYC people, think Rocketship-level of blissful organization and shelving. And they’re also on Twitter as @BergenStComics, and here’s the great review on the Greenlight Bookstore Blog that put them on my radar.
The book, I would recommend as well, but as I was told when I bought it, it is HEAVILY about Direct Market comics-selling and very little else. You would have to be, like me, a huge nerd about retail AND comics in order to love this book despite it being just about the nuts-and-bolts of comic retail.
But I am, so I loved it. Hibbs’ style is perfect for what he’s writing about—for those familiar with bookseller blogs, this book (which is primarily made up of columns that have run on Newsrama over the last several years) is very similar to Kash’s Book Corner in tone and content. Both focus on a lot of specifics of their job, and neither are afraid to point out the emperor has no clothes, and it’s clear in each that this comes from a place of great love for their profession and for what they sell.
And in fact, there’s more in common in Direct Market comics retail and independent bookstore retail than I had thought. Most Direct Market stores fit the profile of being local and indie, and it seems we can all agree that Diamond has…well…issues, sometimes. I also found a lot to identify with in Hibbs’ excellent descriptions of the buying game, especially as comics stores have it a lot rougher than us, because they are usually ordering non-returnable. Of course, bookstores try to minimize returns, because freight ain’t getting any cheaper, but it did help me to appreciate what we have. On the other hand, as trade book publishers start to get more serious about giving a seriously better discount to accounts that order non-returnable (and by serious I mean more than a 3 or 4 point bump, if any publishers are listening), it’s good to get a look at how that might change our buying patterns.
One of the more interesting things Hibbs has been doing for the last five years is comparing how comics/GNs sell in bookstores (using BookScan numbers) to how they sell in the Direct Market (using Diamond’s numbers). Interestingly, this appears to have initially been a response to a fear on the part of Direct Market retailers that comics publishers were putting too much faith in the salvation of the general bookstore market for their medium. I must admit I’d never considered bookstores a threat to comic stores. I’ve been working in bookstores for years, and despite the fact that I have gotten a discount at those stores, I’ve usually bought my comics full-price at comic stores. Mostly because they had a better selection, and because I could depend on the people behind the counter for great recommendations. If anything, I’ve come to see bookstores selling comics/GNs as good for comic stores, because at a certain level of interest, I’m going to send people to a comic store. We’ve got five shelves at my store for GNs and it breaks my heart what we can’t carry, but really, comics are a medium, not a genre. So it just makes sense that they have their own stores owned by people who seriously know what they’re talking about.
At BEA last year the phrase on everyone’s (and I do mean, to the point of nausea, EVERYONE) lips was, “graphic novels are a gateway drug!” As in, for kids, to keep them interested in books in general. The same might be said of general-interest bookstores. In that sense, one could see bookstores as the sleazy people who hang around playgrounds to get kids started, and comic stores as the actual drug dealer’s house. In the nicest possible sense, of course. (Now you perhaps see what “graphic novels are a gateway drug!” drives me so crazy. The metaphor goes right off the rails without too much push.)
Anyway, I found myself getting a bit defensive at the BookScan numbers and Hibbs’ conclusions. Hibbs freely admits that the BookScan numbers blow, which is good, but does not always take that into account when comparing Direct Market figures to bookstore figures. At least the way I see it, as I would interpret his findings a bit differently. But that makes sense. I’m bringing bias to the table when I look at them and so is he, and we both know it. And overall, the message is the same, and shouldn’t surprise anyone: comics and graphic novels work better at comic stores. Indie booksellers in particular shouldn’t be shocked by this—we already know that specialists and people who love reading what they stock are best at their jobs. That is, after all, the main argument we are currently making to justify our existence.
Two things that really surprised me: Hibbs only just got a POS system in 2007! I quite literally CANNOT imagine running a store without a POS and was, frankly, assuming throughout the book that he had one until he said he was just getting one. Especially with what seems to me like a buying process that is at least twice as complicated as ours! The other is that, until recently when Hibbs and a few other lead comic store owners started one, comic stores did not have a trade organization. This was obvious to me early on—when he would talk about a general grievance that many fellow store owners shared, I kept thinking to myself, why don’t they get their version of the ABA to work on that? Answer: they didn’t have one. Again, much admiration, and MUCH realization of how luckily we are to have the ABA.
So, now that they have one, though (ComicsPRO), I started thinking by the end of the book that it and the ABA should work together, or have some sort of informal link. Perhaps this already exists, or has been tried before, but if not, it seems like we have enough in common that something good could come of it. It seems like they derive the same sheer joy we do from meeting with likeminded retailers and hearing new perspectives, and I think it could be fun. At the least, I think comics retailers would be a great addition to IndieBound in a more formal way. Also, moving from a suburban to an urban store recently, I’ve become very conscious that the various differences between bookstores have as much to do with location (urban, suburban, rural) as with size, which is how it seems we’re more commonly divided right now (small, medium, large). I wonder if there are certain topics with which I’d have more in common with an urban comic store of our current size than a rural general bookstore of our current size.
I can’t just generally recommend this book because I recognize that most people do not dig detailed discussion of buying. Especially if you are not into comics, and therefore the content he’s talking about will make no sense to you. If you don’t have a passing familiarity with concepts like Marvel’s Civil War, or DC’s 52, then the experience might be sort of like watching a Harry Potter movie when you haven’t read the books—you’ll get something out of it, but if you don’t know the backstory, there will be places you’ll be pretty confused (or bored). But to people with weird and oddly specific interests like me, and I suspect there are a few of you reading this, I can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s good to see what other people are up to, especially when they are this interesting, funny, and good at making complex situations easy to understand.
(And of course, if you are reading this in NYC, I recommend you go get it at Bergen Street Comics. It might even still be on the front counter!)
ARCreader; or, ARE YOU LISTENING, SONY?
Quick post to link to advanced.reader’s post suggesting the potential for publishers to help pay for e-readers for booksellers, with the understanding that they would primarily be used for reading ARCs (and thus cutting down on the ARC mountain). She calls it a modest proposal and I think it’s definitely something that should be considered. In fact, in my case, I think it would lead to increased sales–books I really loved I would go out and buy, instead of just keeping the ARC. Lots of pros and cons discussed in the post.
I will definitely second the shout-out to Sony at the end.
Sony, if you’re listening? Get a booth at BEA if you don’t already have one. If you can’t, get a sidewalk permit and sit next to the falafel stands outside the Javitz Center. Offer anyone with a badge $100 or $150 off an online purchase of a Sony Reader in the next two months. You’ll never have a better opportunity to get in good graces with some of the most prolific readers in the country. As a side bennie, all the indie booksellers attending have a vested interest in your reader becoming and staying more popular than the Kindle. And we read A LOT.
Thinking the unthinkable
This blog entry by Clay Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” was floating around Twitter all day today, and I just can’t get it out of my head. I’ll post some of the quotes that I’m really fixated on, though you really owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.
“The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several.”
“Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know ‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.”
“The hard question Eisenstein’s book asks is ‘How did we get from the world before the printing press to the world after it? What was the revolution itself like?’
Chaotic, as it turns out. The Bible was translated into local languages; was this an educational boon or the work of the devil? Erotic novels appeared, prompting the same set of questions. Copies of Aristotle and Galen circulated widely, but direct encounter with the relevant texts revealed that the two sources clashed, tarnishing faith in the Ancients. As novelty spread, old institutions seemed exhausted while new ones seemed untrustworthy; as a result, people almost literally didn’t know what to think. If you can’t trust Aristotle, who can you trust?
During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change — take a book and shrink it — was in retrospect a key innovation in the democratization of the printed word, as books became cheaper, more portable, and therefore more desirable, expanding the market for all publishers, which heightened the value of literacy still further.
That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.”
“Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.”
Shirky is very clearly talking about newspapers and journalism here, but I have to say, some of these quotes cleanly struck me as things that we might be saying about books someday soonish.
In particular, in the first quote I selected, I’m struck by the truth that newspapers did, in fact, see change a-comin’, and they spent a lot of time thinking about how to deal with it, and they failed anyway. This reminds me a lot of the conversations the book industry is having within itself right now—how much do we charge for e-books? should TPBs have a simultaneous release with HCs? are large advances totally and completely insane, or are they just a necessary-evil level of insane? &tc. We know things are going to change and for the most part, we’re trying to figure out what we need to change in order to keep the jobs we love. But this quote makes me wonder: are we so busy devilling with the details that we’re not considering that our jobs as we know them now might not exist someday? Perhaps we’re not considering that trade paperback originals may not be the full answer—the full answer might involve a wholesale change in how booksellers, editors, writers, and other book people do their jobs. Keep in mind that I’m in my twenties. If I stay in bookselling until retirement age, whatever that’s going to be after Social Security nosedives, that’s at least four more decades. I can’t even concieve of what the book industry will look like in one decade, let alone four. Will it include the opportunity to make a living selling books to other people? What sort of changes will I have had to make to get there? What things can’t I see from my seat inside the inside of books?
Shirky: “Society doesn’t need papers. What we need is journalism.”
Would it be too much of a stretch to say:
“Society doesn’t need books. What we need are stories.”
Books have been around longer than newspapers, and I personally don’t think they’ll go away soon, or ever. (For proof I offer up the sheer joy on a kid’s face when you hand them a new book.) But reading Shirky’s entry did make me think that, if even for a little bit, I need to sit with the notion that books are not, in fact, crucial to existence. This is nearly impossible to fathom, especially living in New York, where everyone I meet is connected to books in some way, I read twice as much, and I’m pretty sure there’s something in the water that is causing me to have dreams related to the publishing industry every night. However, it might be the sort of thinking I need to open my mind to the possibilities that could keep my job around, in one form or another.
The world has proven it doesn’t need newspapers. Will it do the same thing to books?
LinkIndie is about keeping your eyes open
Filed under: book thoughts, bookselling, meta, read review linkindie |
Comments(2) Thought I’d share a little success story. Time Out NY recently linked to a WORD employee’s trailer for an upcoming film and talked about a great event we had last week. He also referred to our selection as “solid,” which is awesome, and talked about the two books he bought here. All of which is great, except–he hotlinked the two books he bought here by sending readers to the Amazon page. Ack.
So, I wrote to the email listed on the page:
“Hello,
I’m writing to thank Drew Toal for his mention of WORD yesterday. We appreciate the publicity and are always glad to hear that people have had a great experience in our store!
However, I do have one small favor to ask. In the future, when your blog writes stories about any of the fantastic independent bookstores in NYC, would you consider sending any book links to IndieBound? I’d hate to think that someone might have seen the books you bought at our store by clicking on the Amazon link, and then bought them on Amazon instead of with us or another indie bookstore. For example, the link to HOME LAND would have gone here.
Thanks for your consideration, and thanks again for the shout-out!”
Another reason to love Joe Hill
Filed under: book links, book reviews, bookselling, read review linkindie |
Comments(2) I thought I only loved the guy for his fantastic fiction, including what may be one of the creepiest ideas I’ve ever read in a book. The crazy scribbled-out eyes on dead people in HEART-SHAPED BOX still haunt me. *shiver*
But now I also love him for declaring March “Love-Your-Small-Bookstore Month.” He says, go pick up a mass market paperback—I say, pick up HEART-SHAPED BOX, if you haven’t already. It’s in mass market paperback and totally worth it, even if you think you don’t like horror (I thought I didn’t, and this book just knocked that perception away completely).
Thanks, Joe!
Why indies can’t ignore online shopping
Filed under: book links, book thoughts, bookselling, read review linkindie |
Comments(19) I know there are a number, perhaps even a lot, of independent bookstores that are very reluctant to take part in e-commerce—the reason is usually something like: “we want people to actually come IN the store” or “this is a neighborhood bookstore.” Which are both very good reasons, and independent stores generally have a strong sense of mission and purpose that drives the people who own and work in them. Many stores have, even though they feel like it’s giving in, put up an e-commerce website. But very few indies (although there are notable exceptions) have done a solid job of harnessing their websites to really increase sales. IndieBound has been helping with this in terms of getting the word out, but it feels to me like there are still a lot of booksellers who are on the fence about being online in a serious way.
I have been thinking for some time that this is causing indies to lose business, even among their best customers. People who love to read tend to spend more time online—and most of online is littered with Amazon links. In fact, there are a number of compelling reasons why people choose to shop online, whether we like them or not. Of course, I am just one person and there’s no compelling reason to believe me, so instead, I invite you to listen to your (potential) customers. Read the comments on this post on litpark, “Question of the Month: Amazon, B&N, or Indie?“ Resist the urge to chime in for a minute—I think this post is better off with customers stating their true preferences and booksellers not jumping in.
You’ll see that the majority of the commenters, as of this moment, really like indie bookstores, and do shop there when possible; many consider Amazon “a backup,” as Susan puts it. They seem aware of how awesome a good indie store is, the benefits of shopping local, and the joy of browsing a well-stocked bricks & mortar store. We talk a lot about needing to educate customers about the good things about keeping it local and indie, but these folks could teach a course in it.
They also almost all buy books on Amazon. Why? Well, there’s a lot of reasons—read them.
Too many customers don’t know that they can have essentially the same experience on your website, if you have one. They can have the instant gratification of BUY IT NOW and also support their favorite indie bookstore–why don’t they know that? They can order a book online for in-store pickup, so they never have to worry if the book they want is in stock. They can have all the convenience of shopping online AND all the things they are telling you they love about our stores. Why aren’t we telling them?
The bricks & mortar experience is an important one, and I’m confident that with the right tools, we’ll get through this latest downtrun, and we’ll keep having the stores we love to go to every morning. But it’ll be a lot easier to keep those stores open if we start re-capturing sales that we are losing everyday by stubbornly over-emphasizing our physical presence. Show people how our in-store presence and service will extend to online purchases—show them they can have convenience AND service AND curated selection AND support their communities even when they’re too tired to go downtown—and we’ll see a change. Go read the post. You’ll see why I’m convinced that this cannot be ignored.
As an aside, one of the ways we can work towards this is to keep encouraging bloggers, publishers, authors, and other bookish folk to LinkIndie. Utne Reader blogged about it yesterday—how cool!
(h/t @AnnKingman for bringing the link to our attention on Twitter, h/t also to many various tweets I’ve been reading by people who like indies but also use Amazon–I appreciate getting a peek at your thinking!)
Tween books HELP
I was just looking through my blog stats and I realized that there are three searches that lead to my blog almost everyday:
1. bookavore. Shocking, que no?
2. book tattoos (or some variation thereof). Also not shocking.
3. tween books OR books for tweens OR is [TITLE] good for tweens OR please god help me I don’t know what book to buy for my 12 year old daughter OR something like that.
People, searches are turning up at my doorstep everyday looking for a good list of books for tweens and I am failing them, dismally.
So, help me out here. Leave in comments the best/your favorite books for tweens, and if so, why and which tweens. For the purposes of this list, tween means 10-13, and any books with “mature content” are excluded because so many parents of tweens are looking for books without it. If you’re so inclined, please offer a link (remembering, of course, to link indie).
Go!
