Tag Archives: used book stores

12:01 The Day After

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Book launches are funny things – and fun ones. You spend a year going over with a fine tooth comb every nuance and gerund of what you’ve written–first with your editor, then with the copy editors, then with the publicity team–and then there’s this short period of silence, followed by more bleedin’ marketing work than you ever knew could exist.

Amid the flurry of learning the secrets of social media (that there aren’t any) and the hoopla of “getting your web presence increased” you find that the book drops back to a distant reason for why all this is happening, but not the core of what you’re working on.

And then, this date that’s been on your calendar for weeks and months, or even a year, is tomorrow, and you haven’t got party hats or a plan. But you just move through the day, and then it’s midnight and your book goes off into the world. (Since we own a bookstore, and since some friends asked us to, we stayed up until 12:30 so we could sell books at midnight. I don’t recommend this as a lifestyle, but it sure was fun as a one-off brief party!)

And then the eye of the storm passes directly overhead…. all through the weeks leading up to publication, there are bloggers and GoodReads reviewers and other worker bees in the publishing world, getting your book presence in the big world. But once anyone can buy it, who does? How?

Sitting in that eye, the day after publication, it’s good to know a couple of things: that you meant what you said, and that what you said means something to others; and that you are part of a vast eternal library of all people, in all time, who have put out words that can be read by other people.

That first one makes you happy, especially when you see reviews from readers who have identified with, understood, even challenged what you said in a way that you think opens a healthy discussion. I feel like I’ve contributed something nice to the bookselling world. That second one keeps you balanced, and reminds you of your place in the grand scheme. Like the machine Douglas Adams invented that tells you your importance to the proper functioning of the universe (.01%) all you have to do, the day after your book gets published, is walk into a bookstore and look around.

As Masha Hamilton said in The Camel Bookmobile, “You are a part of this dance. You are not its center.” That’s a good thing to remember, because to your friends and family, you are the center of something, and it’s all too easy to mistake your small world for the big one. That would hurt. And be unwise.

So, my little book about our little bookstore is even now, knapsack over one shoulder, wending its way through the twists and turns of the Great Wide World’s path. It is navigating the mountains of China (got a foreign language contract in Mandarin!). And it is, I think, whistling a cheerful tune. Because it says what I meant, and it says things that mean something to other people.

Good.

The Perils of Alphabetizing

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Shopsitter Andrew guest blogs today, ruminating on his first week amongst the bookstore shelves….

Bookstore shelves trend toward chaos. I’m not sure if people are to blame… or if it’s some law of physics. Like the weather, small changes in the system can lead to big distortions. Mix up a Mailer and a Mann and somehow you’re only hours away from Nora Roberts popping up in the Westerns.

On some level I had suspected this. But as I started tackling the shelves one by one, re-alphabetizing and stacking, the emotion I was surprised to feel again and again was guilt. My favorite British television personality, David Mitchell, has a joke about how he feels guilty when he doesn’t wear certain pairs of underwear as often as others. “Sorry blue striped, but you’re just too tight,” he’d sigh. Well, sorry Frank Herbert, you just won’t fit there.

I found myself amongst piles of sci-fi paperbacks, wracking my brains to keep from snubbing John Scalzi and to ensure justice was dealt to L. Ron Hubbard, who had held a prized eye-level slot before my gerrymandering. I probably wouldn’t have given as much thought, or poured as much heart, into such considerations if the actual living, breathing authors were sitting in front of me waiting for a seating assignment.

I had several triumphs and a number of failures. I relegated L. Ron’s pulp-schmaltz to a dark corner. But in doing so I had to shift Heinlein and the entire Dune series into equally unfavorable light. All of Asimov is together in a prime display area, but it meant pushing Pierre Boulle down (I’m a sucker for anything Planet of the Apes).

The absolute worst was when I found myself running out of space, which forced all sorts of horrors I’ll never be able to forget. Beloved books are now mid-stack, lost in forbidding towers of flashier spines. I hope one day Game of Thrones and To Say Nothing of the Dog can find it in their hearts to forgive me. But probably nothing can forgive the dreaded double stack, with a pile of paperbacks directly in front of another. It’s fine when it’s Anne McCaffrey obscuring more Anne McCaffrey, but something is deeply wrong with the world when David Weber blocks out A.E. Van Voght.

The amount of emotion we’re capable of projecting on to things that could never emote back could power decades of mediocre day-time soap opera hand-wringing. But it must just be in our nature to attach baggage to even small choices. Or maybe this is just a revealing look at one man’s particular neuroses. Whatever it is, I’ll be tackling paranormal romance next, so watch out Stephenie Meyer.