Category Archives: bookstore management

Shopsitter Janelle says Farewell

Posted on by
1

We’re running a bit behind on timing because of the author humiliation contest – more entries posted Friday! This is our first shopsitter of the summer’s farewell post, and Kelly, our second shopsitter will be sending a post next week. (BTW, if you’re interested in shopsitting, we are looking for a week in October and a couple of weeks in December.)

Sadly, our shopsitting visit is soon coming to an end already.

We are excited about the potential of our final day sitting the shop, and we are tickled to have company coming for lunch tomorrow, too…folks that moved from our home area near Green Bay, Wisconsin, to Chuckey, Tennessee, several years ago. We just now realized how near to them we are while here.

To be honest, this shopsitting gig has been far more like a vacation than work. We have come to feel far more like family than “hired” help. And we have done more reading and relaxing than we have work. The latter I understand, I think. If I were home I’d find plenty to do (I’m pretty sure I have weeds waiting for me in my yard, taller than I am) but no matter how much work I invent for myself to do here (like re-organizing book stacks or putting sections of books back into alphabetical order or sweeping the front porch or doing dishes or laundry) I’ve still been getting to read and visit with guests (and Facebook) more than I would if I were at home this week.

And as for relaxing vacation, I’m not completely sure what to make of that, but I think it’s the Wendy factor. She has told her local people to make us feel welcome, and they sure have. We have been included in invitations to dinner and swim aerobics and church and told where the local walking/running trail is numerous times…and been included in pretty much all else that has gone on while we have been here. We have eaten nearly every meal offered (that will need to be addressed when we get home, too!) and, when I think about it, taken up very few of the exercise offers presented us. But Wendy threw out on Facebook that we wanted to do some local hiking, and after all sorts of suggestions for where we should/could go, kind friend Destiny simply said she would come and lead us, and she and her son Jack did!

I learned a lot while we were here; there is no question. I go home no less eager to one day have my own bookstore, no less eager to have Natalie bake and maybe cook for me like Kelley does in the Second Story Cafe here. Wendy and Kelley make that all look like a very easy, symbiotic relationship, not a “tough” job at all.

Wendy does, indeed, make it all look enjoyable and easy…although I do fear that I’d find in my own shop lots to do instead of this relaxed “I could do that” style. We prevented Wendy’s work from getting done sometimes with plenty of conversations, several good meals, a mutual glass of wine or bottle of beer here or there. Sometimes I really wanted her to go “make stuff,” assured that we could manage things here, and when she did, that’s when I felt I was contributing the most.

Otherwise, let’s be honest: I’d far prefer to hear her conversation with a guest to the shop–the exchange of local chit-chat, or updates on pet adoptions or procedures, or discussion of a new book, or valuing of books brought in for trade. If she wasn’t really “gone” from the shop, it was too easy for her to step in and do those things, and I seized the opportunities, then, to learn from the master.

I’ve very much enjoyed this adventure with my two youngest daughters, watching them melt kitten hearts and make new friends, devour books (Natalie stayed up until 2:40AM Saturday night…err, Sunday morning… finishing Water For Elephants, which she had started only the night before. It’s one of my all-time favorite books! How can I be upset with that activity?!) And I loved us getting to see, together, parts of the country we had not previously visited. Delaney’s determination to be THE one to get to “do the Square” any time a customer paid with a card or to be the one to take their cash, for that matter, showed me she has those super original cashier skills, communicating clearly and doing math in her head to make change (rather than NEED a cash register to do it for her). We go home with a new bond of mutual adventure and with many memories to share.

It’s like reading a book with someone, only better. The girls and I have shared a tremendous adventure, and I can only imagine how soon we’ll all talk about coming back! I imagine it will come up in the thirteen-hour ride home.Janelle on porch
Thanks for your hospitality, all. We have had a great time!

 

Author Humiliation Contest Winning Entries

Posted on by
1

Our first winner is Suzan D. Herskowitz, an attorney from Winchester, VA.

Sometime in the late 1990s, I was asked to speak about my scintillating book, on writing your own will (yeah, I know, didn’t even make the top 1 million list for non-fiction). I showed up at a mega-bookstore that is still in business somewhere in South Florida and 1 person showed up…and it was my mother.

Thanks for letting me share.

And in equal first place is Steven Friedman, of San Rafael, California, whose entry is titled

Infamy

My first (and only) book was published in 2000 by a small press in South Carolina, owned by a bigger concern in England. Their marketing and sales team arranged for the book to be sold in a few large bookstores and even one notable big box store. But the responsibility for promoting Golden Memories of the San Francisco Bay Area was largely mine.

So I arranged a speaking engagement at a national book chain in Berkeley, CA, on December 7, a perfect day of history and infamy to showcase a book of oral histories from nine Bay area elders of varying ethnic and religious backgrounds.

It was a Thursday evening, rain slashing outside, as I arrived at the store. There was a 20×30 poster with a photograph of me on it, advertising my book talk, and I heard someone announce over the loudspeaker that tonight’s event was going to start in 30 minutes. I felt the chill of excitement.

There were probably ten rows of chairs and a podium in front. At 7 PM, there were two men, who I guessed to be homeless, dressed in torn overcoats, warming themselves away from the frigid late autumn air, seated in the middle of the room.

I had a copy of my book, which was filled with several yellow post-its, so I could read a few passages. I’d picked one from Berenice, who’d been a civilian during WWII, about how she’d kissed her then boyfriend, an officer, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. And I’d picked a second story from a Japanese-American woman whose family owned a hotel in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Her husband had later served in the Army after Pearl Harbor and after being forced into an internment camp.

So I was ready to share history and discuss history on a day when we remember such a tragic time in America’s past.

I started talking with Karen, the author-events coordinator. She was, like me at the time, the parent of a toddler, so we exchanged war stories.

By 7:30, the two homeless guys had left and the room was empty. Karen and I kept talking and talking and talking. Until 8:30 when I decided to drive home. So I ambled out there door, carrying the poster of my ‘book talk’, and returned to my wife and sleeping son.

I was bummed out for sure, but I realized or rationalized later that why would anyone go out on a Thursday evening, a school and work night, in a downpour to hear an unknown author?

I’ve passed that bookstore in Northern California many times and have even been in there with family and friends. And I always tell them about my day of not actual infamy when I gave a book talk and nobody came. And they chuckle a bit, and so do I. But it still stings, too, even after 14 years.