WiNot: Blog edition

Minions of Isidore is spot on. (On so many things. I don't know who's behind this blog, but s/he is brilliant.)

This is the third year now that I haven't been at Winter Institute, and oh yes I miss it.  Two years ago, those of us in the Boston area who didn't make it to the main event in DC met up at Porter Square Books for the #WiNot Tweetup. This year, I just followed along via Twitter.

It's not the same as being there, especially when nuance is required. But there's still quite a lot to think about.

Can I flirt with my bookseller?

With Valentine's Day around the corner, this is the question that is naturally on every book lover's mind: When I go into my local bookstore, am I allowed to start flirting with the staff?

Short version: Of course! Booksellers are lovely people (not that I'm biased), and often enjoy chatting with other book lovers. Many of them are also single and looking. But even if they're not, they may well be open to innocent flirtation.

Longer version: As long as you're not stupid about it. Aim to amuse yourself and others, not to get yourself banned from the bookstore. Please review these examples of what not to do if you are in any way uncertain as to what constitutes inappropriate behavior.

1. If someone encourages you to get a room, you're doing it wrong. Listen to Miss Manners:

"The tone should be 'Ah, had I but met you earlier -- had I but known that someone like you existed,' as opposed to 'How about giving it a whirl and seeing if it works?'"

Which is not to say that the bookseller is necessarily averse to giving it a whirl, at some future point.

2. Buy something. The ideal time to begin the flirting process is when you hand over your item to check out. You've got a solid thirty seconds or so to make an impact, more if you do a good job and the bookseller isn't swamped.

3. Be aware of your surroundings. If there's a line behind you, your chance for flirtation is over as soon as you've collected your change. The bookseller's going to ignore you and move on to the next person waiting to give her money, because that's why she's there. (Hint: If there's already a line, spend a few minutes wandering the store. There's often a herd tendency around the cash wrap area, with everyone deciding to check out at once, followed by a five-minute lull.)

(Corollary: If you're attempting to flirt shortly before Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, or major school vacations, it's probably not worth trying. The bookseller may be too swamped to even realize your intent, and even if she does, she'll be too overwhelmed to manage an appropriate reply until ten minutes after you've left the store. It's a missed opportunity for everyone.)

4. Talk about books. Not only is this appropriate to your surroundings, it also gives both you and the bookseller an easy starting point. You both like books. You both know books. Surely you can find a way to talk via books.

5. Be funny. This is banter, not Don Juan's greatest hits. Funny is charming, especially when it involves books.

6. Watch for signals. If the bookseller looks ready to end the conversation, let it go. Don't make her resort to "Sorry, I've got to go organize books in the back room" to get away from her. It's always easier for you to walk away than it is for the bookseller. (Assuming you've already paid. Don't forget that step.)

7. That means positive signals too. If the flirtation is going well, there may well be an option to extend it. If you mention that being single leaves a lot of time for reading, and the bookseller's response doesn't include "Well, somehow my husband finds time for it" or "I've got to go organize books in the back room," that may well be a positive signal.

8. Take a number. Remember Point 1? Don't push things too far in this first round. If you think the flirtation has a chance of moving on to bigger and better things, ask for the chance to try for it later on. As in "Hey, maybe we could get together sometime and see what 90s sci fi we've both read. Can I give you a call?" Which gives the bookseller an easy way to say "No, I really only want to talk to you when there's a substantial wooden barrier between us," or else "Sure, but texting me's the best way to get a response. Here's the number."

At that point, you're on your own.

The paper that occupied the spring

This semester I had a rare opportunity to do something practical in grad school.

I took a class on the history and practice of publishing, and wrote a paper on the future of independent bookstores.

I've gotten my professor's feedback, shared it with a few people, and finally decide to release it into the wild. It's up on Scribd, and embedded below, for anyone who wants to check it out.¹

Modernizing the Cultural Elite

¹ My professor commented -- in a good way -- on the fact that the style here is not what one generally hears from academics. Which does not mean it's just a longer version of my usual posts. Consider yourself warned.

Maurice Sendak at the bookstore

Oh, Maurice Sendak.

I read his books, of course, but to be honest I don't remember all that much about them. What I do remember is Sendak as a crotchety bookstore patron -- and I mean that in a good way.

The first bookstore I worked at was Sendak's local. He wasn't a frequent visitor, but he came in several times while I was behind the counter. Not that I ever spoke to him -- I don't remember him interacting with the staff at all.

(Note to authors who are not Maurice Sendak: Do not interpret that as advice. You should continue to be polite to the booksellers you meet. If you can manage charming, that scores you even more points.)

So Sendak, whenever I encountered him, was usually pretty quiet, with the possible addition of some grumbling.

Except for one time.

Sendak was in the children's section, in the back of the store, when another customer recognized him. (I suppose I should refer to her as the other customer -- it was late, and the store was empty.)

From my spot at the front counter, I could overhear bits and pieces of the conversation. And it was a conversation, not just a fan meeting an idol. There was even laughter, lots of it, on both sides.

The woman, it turned out, had grown up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood as Sendak. They'd never met before, but that was enough of a commonality, and they started trading stories, sharing memories, having a little reunion.

It was a good ten or fifteen minutes before Sendak left the store, and he went out, as usual, without a glance at the booksellers.

And I loved him for it.

From Bob Edwards to Alexander Hamilton, with a rant in between

I made a mistake last night. I was supposed to go to bed when I set down Bob Edwards' A Voice in the Box, not scroll through Twitter and click on infuriating links.

Especially not when I'd just gotten to the dumped-by-Morning-Edition section of A Voice, which is seething with controlled fury. So that may have shaped my reaction to "Six Ways Amazon Book Streaming Could Help Small Business."

Maybe. Just a bit.¹Vlad's a smart guy.² And it's morning now, and I still think it's a dumb article.

First, it's total SEO-bait. The headline calls out small-biz benefits, but the article doesn't actually make the case for any.

Item 1: "We're going to take a leap of faith here and assume that what Amazon is offering goes beyond the usual Project Gutenberg titles that every e-book reader and service has made available for free, since they will need to do so to attract subscribers to their service."

• "the usual Project Gutenberg titles" -- nitpicky it may be, but this phrase grates on me. The works in question are mostly public domain titles. Because their copyrights have expired,³ these documents are often available for free in digital format,⁴ or in a variety of formats from any publisher who cares to put them out.⁵
• "need to do so to attract subscribers" -- I'll be curious to see what percentage of new Prime customers sign up for the service because of streaming book access.

Item 2: "Google Books is Not Enough."

• Maybe the service should claim this as its tagline, with all the current and former James Bonds doing voiceovers.

Item 3: "which is still a big 'if' at this point"

• In fact, it's a huge if. Everything in this article is speculation, and a whole lot more verbs should be in the subjunctive mood.

Item 4: "To obtain e-books from Amazon right now, you must go to Amazon’s website, search for what you want, and download it. If Amazon’s purported service does it right, you’ll be able to tap an app on your smartphone or their forthcoming tablet and stream a book directly to your device."

• Which is pretty much what you can do with the Kindle app on any of these platforms, no? The key difference between the-way-things-are and the-way-things-might-be is that in the latter case, there would be no payment component to the transaction -- something the article overlooks.

Item 5: "Streaming Model May Bring Down Price Points."

No, you know what? I give up. It's not worth it, and I don't want to spend any more time on this.⁶ I could have been writing a post on Alexander Hamilton instead.<sup>7


1</sup> Standard disclaimer applies: I'm an indie bookseller, a fan of indie bookstores, and a former employee of their trade association. So my perspective on who these moves are likely to help is neither unbiased nor disinterested.

² For reference.

³ Or, in the case of government documents, they're simply public domain.

⁴ Except for the many $0.99 versions. Why? If you're going to spend the money, get a good annotated edition!

⁵ Which is why we were subjected to the Everything and Zombies nonsense two years ago.

⁶ Plus, the month is still young, and I don't want to waste my one officially-sanctioned outrage just yet.

⁷ TK soon. Preview here and here.

The James Herriot of bookselling

Or something like that.

Once upon a time...

See the March Carnival of Independent Bookselling roundup at Omnibus.

Once upon a time there was a girl (she was an adult, true, but she still wasn't used to calling herself a "woman") who wanted to come home. She thought it would be easy to find another job, so she packed up her apartment into a trailer (which her father drove across the country, something he'll never do again) and came back to Connecticut.

The quest for a job proved more difficult than the girl had expected, particularly because she didn't know precisely what she was looking for. ("Anything but software testing" was accurate, but not much of a career path.)

After finishing a temp assignment that required her to face the occasional ogre and wring toner from an empty cartridge, the girl found something. It was admin work, and it was only part-time, but the office was ruled by a benevolent queen - and anything was better than another rejection.

The part-time job left the girl with a lot of free time, and when she wasn't battling her way through the enchanted forest of job listings, she started spending time at the bookstore where her mother worked. (It didn't hurt that the bookstore shared the parking lot with a pretty good coffee shop.)

While the girl hung around the bookstore, she often ended up pointing customers to the right section and cleaning up the shelves - she just couldn't help herself.

Before long, it was time for the bookstore's annual inventory, and a call went out for workers. The mother saw a way to put her daughter to work for a few more hours, and so the girl got to put her scanning skills to work. Even though the inventory went late into the night (and took up a good chunk of the next day), the girl enjoyed herself.

Not long after the inventory was completed, one of the booksellers left to become a servant in one of the biggest publishing palaces in the land (okay, an editorial assistant). The girl still wasn't having any success in her job search (she ran into more ogres, and some trolls too), so she decided to take the servant's place in the bookstore.

And so the seasons changed, and the girl worked her two part-time jobs, assisting the benevolent queen in the morning (and often at night) and selling books the rest of the time. She was tired of taking minutes and writing letters for other people to sign, but she loved the books (especially the ARCs).

But the girl continued her quest for a full-time job, because her health insurance was about to run out. One day she turned to the Bookselling This Week classifieds, where she applied for a job with the booksellers guild.

The guild hired someone else, but after a few weeks one of the guild masters called the girl to talk about a different position. Almost before she knew it, her quest was over: she had a real job.

The girl bid farewell to the benevolent queen, but she hesitated before leaving the bookstore behind. With her mother still working there, she was never going to get away from the place. (Conversation at the dinner table often turned to work.) "Besides," she thought, "I've forgotten how to have a social life. What would I do with all my Saturdays free?"

So the girl works for the guild now, encouraging bookstores throughout the land to band together for protection against the dragons. But if you happen to mention that you're looking for something to read, she won't be able to resist. Somewhere within she has the spirit of a bookseller.

Ooh, I had one of my moments of brilliance Thursday night.

For context, this also happened to be a night of torrential rain, because the clouds decided that after ignoring us for more than a month, they were really going to let us have it. So I was pretty well soaked when I got to the library.

I was there to sell books at an event I'd been trying to avoid - the author of What You Don't Know Can Keep You Out of College was speaking to the over-stressed parents of the college-bound. Not exactly my idea of fun. But Eliza, who had volunteered for the event, has never actually done one before, or closed out the store, so Ellen asked me to keep her company.

This is by way of saying that I really didn't know much about the book beforehand - I didn't even have the title until I got there and saw the books. All I knew was that it had to do with college admissions.

I got to the library before Eliza and Darwin showed up with the important stuff, like books and money and charge slips, and sat down with Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, which has been on my TBR list for ages. I got a few pages into it, and then I was joined by a man who wanted to chat while he hung out by the program room.

We had a nice talk about the bookstore, and he took down Angier's name for his wife, since he thought she'd enjoy the book. (Fabulous book, by the way. Not so much for new information as for new ways of thinking about sociobiology.) And then, assuming he had come to listen to the talk, I asked if he had someone heading off to college.

He said, "No, I wrote the book."

I didn't do very well on coming up with excuses. Luckily, he didn't seem to mind.

Another bookstore day

Today's handselling:

The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch
Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Crystal the Snow Fairy, by Daisy Meadows
Weslandia, by Paul Fleischman, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes

The week in books

First, I'm borrowing from the lovely Sarah Miller, and keeping track of my handselling victories. Unlike her, I'm in the store one day every other week, so my list is a lot less impressive. But I had two yesterday:



Weslandia, by Paul Fleischman, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes


Vegan Virgin Valentine, by Carolyn Mackler (there's a semi-sequel coming out soon!)




I also managed to get through two new books this weekend - and even more impressive, I read the ARCs before the release date. I'm not usually that on top of things.



The Monsters of Templeton is a debut novel by Lauren Groff, coming out in early 2008. It's a good book. It's not something I would have picked up without prompting, but I love how she converted Cooperstown, NY, into Templeton. (According to the author's note, she began research for a history of Cooperstown, but Templeton emerged, and she went with it.) This is the story of Willie Upton, trying to figure out the complicated genealogy of Templeton - complicated because many of them are her ancestors, on both sides - and in the process figure out who her father is, because her mother decided not to tell her. And she gets occasional help from the house ghost. Yeah, not my usual fare, but I stayed up much later than I should have to finish it. And I sent Rick off to Akron with a copy, so we'll see what he thinks.



Slam is Nick Hornby's first YA novel, about a teenage skater who also becomes a teenage father. The story didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, but that's because it's not fantasy. Sixteen-year-olds don't often make good choices about who they date, particularly because you're not supposed to be looking for your long-term partner at that age. And the ending is still happy, if not quite as romantic as I was looking for. (Yeah, along with stars and unicorns and all that. I'm not usually a romantic, but sometimes I surprise myself.)

This should be an interesting one to sell - the main character is a boy, and I'm always looking for more of those, but I can just picture myself recommending this to the mother of a reluctant reader in the right age group: "It's about a teen father. But it's funny, and it has a happy ending. Yeah, it's got sex in it. Not much, since the narrator swears off sex after he finds out his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. But how do you think she got that way? Yes, it's a good book. Yes, I'm recommending it for your son. Somehow I don't think I'm going to win him over with Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, as much as I like that one."