There’s a really good trend happening in our store right now. Adults are reading kids’ books. Not picture books, but novels written for young adults.  Slowly the awkwardness, the need to almost apologize for buying a kids’ book for themselves is dissipating.  Instead, it’s something the adults seem to be reveling in.  And really, isn’t it about time that adults realized the young adult section was chock full of riches, new and old, to read and enjoy?

There are several books this past year that seem to have spurred this trend. The first is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak — while not a new title, it continues to be an excellent seller for us to adults. At last count, five adult book groups have read The Book Thief. Several women have called me immediately upon finishing to say how much they just loved the book. There is still an occasional adult reader who resists even holding a kids’ book in their hands, as if something horrible will happen if they read the back cover.  I’ve actually had to place it in a customer’s hand with a declaration. “You will love this book. Just read it. Trust me.”

Elizabeth had the best handselling moment I’ve seen, ever.  Two women had overheard me talking about The Book Thief and they were resistant to buy the copy I placed before them. They looked to Elizabeth for a second opinion, and all she did was arch her eyebrows with eyes bright and alert and that said it all. They bought two. 

Grown women are marching straight up the counter and asking for “that book.” Admittedly, they are a little sheepish about buying the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer. But I don’t think it’s because it’s written for young adults. It’s because they love it so much. They can’t wait to read more about Edward and Jacob, who they are more than happy to talk about, at great length with other women in the store. One thing I particularly enjoy about these Twilight women is they tend to buy the whole series at one time. Sure, they tell daughters to wait, space out their purchases, save some money, and maybe even borrow from a friend. There’s none of that with the adults. No borrowing, no waiting for the book at the library, no, they need it, they need it now and they’re going to pay for their immediate gratification. And I love them for it.

Another book that has adults happily clutching it is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  A real page-turner of a dystopian adventure set in a future society that deals with larger themes that adults are really sinking their teeth into.  This is a challenging book to book talk, as on the surface it deals with kids killing kids at the behest of the government. Adults look askance when I say that, but then I put the book in their hands and say, “Read it. It’s so much more than that.” Again, adults are proving to be less patient than kids. I had a woman who was actually whining about the release date of the sequel. “I’ve got to wait until September?!"

Lastly, there is an anecdote I must share. One of my favorite customers comes in every Monday to get her books for the week. Jill is the most vital, active, and vibrant 78-year-old I’ve ever met. She is a well-rounded reader with eclectic tastes. Last week she was struggling to choose a book when she went to the young adult section. There she saw I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. She had read the book when she was 19 and remembered loving it. Well, she took it with her last weekend and was still beaming when she came in Monday to tell me about reading it again. She sat in the sun in an Adirondack chair with Beethoven on in the background and a glass of Merlot nearby. She read the book she first loved 60 years ago. “It was just marvelous. Marvelous.”

Well, pickle my gears and blow me sideways, indie bookstores have made it to the iTunes app store! Hoot! Holler! Spread the word! Right this minute, I am staring at my little cell phone screen, and there, by gum, is that little red-and-white scribbly heart-ish "i"con staring back at me with the name IndieBound typed right there underneath. Clickable, leading to orderable. It’s enough to make an independent bookseller swoon.

Forgive my excitement, but it’s not often we bricks-and-mortar stores are this quick to embrace new technology (notwithstanding Powells’ innovative film forays and Northshire’s print-on-demand machine, "Lurch"). Of course, I immediately downloaded the free app and took it for a test drive.

Here’s what you get when you open up the IndieBound app: an initial screen titled Book Lists, which features a menu of the following: The April 2009 Indie Next List (divided into April 2009 Great Reads and April 2009 Notables); the Indie Bestsellers for the week (in this case, April 16), separated into the usual bestseller categories; the Spring ’09 Kids Indie Next List, with links for the Top Ten, Ages 4-8, Ages 9-12, and Teen Readers; the Spring ’09 Poetry Indie Next List Top Ten; and a cornucopia of themed recommendations under the banner of Winter ’09 Reading Group Recs, including Outstanding Debuts, Great Graphic Novels, Contemporary Masters, Mystery Marvels, Memorable Memoirs, and several more. (This last group doesn’t seem to be offered on the IndieBound website, or else is not easily found.) That is a lot of fantastic reading at a browser’s fingertips, and it’s designed very cleanly, very intuitively — that is, extremely user-friendly.

What happens when you click on a list? Let’s take Children’s Interest in this week’s Indie Bestsellers, shall we? The first several books are (not surprisingly) all four volume of the Twilight series and two of the Wimpy Kid books. Then there are a couple of stand-alone titles: Sherman Alexie’s Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, recently out in paperback, followed by The Book Thief and several other goodies in the top 15.

Let’s say you click on the Sherman Alexie. Here’s what you see:

Scrolling down, you get more info: and options to either buy the book online or find a nearby bookstore.

Either way, you get a screen of bookstore choices near you: (this is the BRILLIANT aspect of the iPhone, Big Brother concerns aside — it knows your location through GPS if you "allow" that function, so can find the closest indie source).

If you decide to order online, just click on the bookstore link and you’ll taken right to that book’s info and ordering page! Wahoo!

This really is a full-service application for finding and buying books online, and because it is based on indie bookseller recommendations from around the country, it offers more guidance and expertise than many other online venues. At the bottom of the screen are additional buttons for Book Search, Store Finder, and About (which explains IndieBound and how to use it).

There’s a terrific article in Bookselling This Week with more info about the app. Two suggestions to the ABA and the marvelous app maker, Matt Supko: 1) make book covers clickable links, especially since the image is so deliciously large it fills the screen (at first, users might not be aware that there’s more info below the cover); 2) trumpet the new app on the IndieBound.org home page!

I’m seeing all kinds of potential for this app, including regional recommendation lists, backlist promotions (like the ABC’s upcoming Summer Reading Recommendations), and links to book trailers. The ABA is already planning to add e-books — so we indies may have another chance at that piece of pie.

It’s a brave new world, and I have to say, I’m liking it. How about you? Comments? Concerns? Brainstorms?

This post is really for authors who come to bookstores. Authors tend to be readers and we love them for that. We love them for creating the works that we can so enthusiastically sell. But authors who just happen upon a bookstore act one of three ways: the upfront, the surreptitious and the sneaky.

Allow me to illustrate the upfront. The first summer we were open, in 1997, a very lovely man came into the store, strode right up to the counter, stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Steven Kellogg. Your store is lovely.”  I was trying to be a cool bookseller, as if picture book illustrating Gods just wander in every day. I kept my cool and we had a lovely chat. He was delightful and we’ve been friends ever since. Another upfront author was one other than Katherine Paterson. I had been cleaning the middle grade section on a slow day, and in walks this stately woman. She offered her hand and said, “I’m Katherine Paterson.” I was star struck immediately, responding with the cool of a seasoned bookseller, “Wow, I just dusted your face.” Perhaps this sort of thing should be kept to oneself. Katherine had a good laugh over that one and I stopped blathering and showed her around the store.

The surreptitious author drop-by takes place in two ways. The first is you have no idea the author is in the store or has even been to the store. This was the case with Daniel Handler about eight years ago. Elizabeth and I were at a BEA cocktail party and he read our nametags and said, “Oh,  I love your store.” To which, we both replied, “You’ve never been to our store.” He then proceeded to describe our store in amazing detail, having actually been there the weekend before. He was in town for his brother-in-law’s UVM graduation. Now, why he choose to be so quiet is beyond me. I would have loved for him to sign stock. Another surreptitious drop-by was Sandra Boynton who came in with a  large group. Her family was vacationing in Vermont. I have never seen a picture of Sandra before, but I sure did recognize her signature on her credit card slip. I gushed, “You’re Sandra Boynton!” She nodded politely. I asked if she had time to sign stock. She didn’t at that moment but vowed to come back after going to the Teddy Bear Factory. She returned several hours later and signed all our stock.

The second surreptitious drop-by is when authors just checks out the shelves for their book. Often times they will face out their book or somehow make them more prominent on the shelf. I don’t really mind this, except when family members take it upon themselves to actually re-arrange a whole area so the books can be seen better. I understand this urge, but it’s not really very considerate of how the store is set up at that particular moment. There’s nothing antagonistic about how we shelve — it’s often purely alphabetical, or seasonal, or local, or featuring upcoming events.

The sneak attack visit is my least favorite. This is when the author neither introduces themselves nor re-arranges. They come up to the counter and ask if you carry a certain book. So I look the book up and sometimes we have it and sometimes we don’t. I convey that information and then they say, “I’m the author.” Well, why didn’t you just say that upfront? This way, it’s just awkward all around. I’m put on the spot and the author is being disingenuous.

What’s worse are parents who come in, ask if you carry a book and then get mad at you for being out of the book. Or they berate you for not carrying it. This one is a no-win situation. I always get the book’s info and make sure they see me ordering it. Folks need to know that we try to carry as many books as we can, but it’s impossible to carry all books, and sometimes that means we don’t have your kid’s book, yet.

So, authors, please, please let us know who are. We love meeting you. Don’t be shy, just come on up to the counter and say Hi. If possible give us a head’s up that you might be in the area, so we can stock up on your titles, and bring a pen you like to sign with. Then we’ll sticker your book and shelve it more prominently as a signed book. You’ll be happy, I’ll be happy, and most importantly, your Mom will be happy.

There has been an explosion of cute kids at the store this past week. The arrival of Spring has brought these little ones out from under the layers of winter, and they are ready to explore. Little kids and books are a lovely combination. One thing about kids in the store that is particularly amusing is how they marvel at us having some, if not all, of the books they have at home.

"I have that. I have that one. Look, Mommy, Curious George." The familiar is comforting and surprising when it’s out of context. Little kids are still learning about things like stores and don’t understand that we sell books. They seem to know all about taking books, though. From the shelf, from the library. We had one little guy, maybe three and three quarters, who very casually dropped Jon Scieszka’s Trucktown in his mom’s already full and paid-for bag and just kind of walked away. The mom and I laughed and she said, "Honey, we don’t steal. Daddy’s a state trooper and we just don’t do that."

Watching kids under five pick out books is a lesson in cover design and placement. I feel sorry for authors in the higher-up A-F section of the alphabet, because their books never get picked by tots. Little kids just can’t reach those shelves. Color seems to be a huge factor for kids. And as much as I hate divide along gender lines, girls to tend to for the pink and purple tones, while boys head for blue. We had a little girl about three years old who hauled a chair over to this one section so she could take a copy of Purplicious by Victoria Kahn off the top shelf of a display. The Tushy Book by Fran Manushkin had practically been mauled by kids under three. There’s something about a bottom that kids just seem to love. Another book that has kids —  and it’s the boys again — begging to hear it read aloud, is Harriet Zieffert’s Mighty Max. 

Two books are easily spanning gender difference. Mouse Was Mad by Linda Urban has been an enormously popular toddler pick. I think the cover really draws kids in. There’s nothing like a non-threatening mouse who’s angry to get kids’ attention. This is a great book about emotions that I’ve heard read aloud just about every day. Duck! Rabbit!  by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld is drawing kids in.
The slight optical illusion about it has kids, and more than a few adults (myself included), staring at the cover trying to see the duck and the rabbit. It’s interesting with this book — sometimes I see the duck and sometimes I just can’t.

Reallly, regardless of what they’re picking out, kids getting excited about books thrill me. There’s nothing as heartwarming as a toddler hugging a book. I know that a book-hugging child often turns into a voracious reader who keeps me on my toes with thoughtful recommendations for years to come.

We have a customer who’s an audiobook addict. She comes in every couple of weeks to perk up frequent road trips with something new, and I’m always delighted to leap around the counter and chat with her, because we tend to love (and, sadly, loathe) the same kinds of books, and – equally important with audiobooks – the same narrators.

Handselling is always key in indie bookstores; we estimate that about 80-85% of what we sell is directly recommended by one of our staff, either in person or via our newsletter or staff picks. When it comes to audiobooks, that number jumps to about 99%. Since most bookstores don’t have listening stations, it’s really helpful to have heard an audiobook yourself so you know if the narrator is going to make you want to jump out of the car window or not.

I like to recommend audiobooks as an accompaniment to the printed book for kids who struggle with reading. When I was a school librarian in New York City, I discovered how effective it was to have kids listen while they read; it seemed to help them make the connection between written and spoken forms of words, and lifted them out of the struggle enough for them to enjoy the experience of reading. This was a huge relief and delight for them, and once parents get past the idea that it’s “cheating,” it’s helpful for them, as well.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that pretty much anything narrated by a British guy is going to be good. If the stories they narrated were mediocre, or if the performances were dull, I might blame their supremacy on my shelves on the embarrassing phenomenon whereby American women turn into puddles of goo when an English man opens his mouth and says, well, pretty much anything.

But there’s quality as well as beauty there; the British men have it all. They just make everything sound wonderful, don’t they? And fascinating. If Philip Pullman, Simon Jones, Stephen Fry, Anton Lesser, Simon Prebble, and Derek Jacobi (narrators of The Golden Compass, The Amulet of Samarkand, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Ruby in the Smoke, The Daydreamer [OP, more’s the pity], and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, respectively), ran waste management seminars, I would absolutely sign up for Sewage 101.

Also, there’s something reassuring about these sonorous British voices — a sage, grandfatherly quality, a sense of the world as a place where small people can accomplish great tasks if they work hard enough and have big hearts and believe, truly believe. Graeme Malcolm, who narrates The Tale of Despereaux so beautifully, can pull up a chair and read me a bedtime story any day.

Neil Gaiman, who has a sort of Alan Rickman-esque voice, is one of those rare authors, like Pullman, who actually does justice to his own work. Try The Graveyard Book or Neverwhere. And yet he gives over the reins when another narrator can do better: his 2006 YALSA ALEX Award-winning adult novel, Anansi Boys, is performed by the fantastic British actor Lenny Henry, whose Jamaican parentage gives him a richness in the various voices and accents that Gaiman rightly must have known he could not equal. (By the way, this is my all-time favorite adult audiobook, our bestseller at the store for a couple of years now, and a phenomenally funny, lively listen — an adult book teens love, too. Anansi Boys also won the Mythopoeic Award for Best Novel 2006, was a 2006 ALA Best Audiobook, and earned enough votes for a Hugo nomination, though Gaiman declined it. It was also short-listed for the Booker Prize. See? I just can’t shut up about it. Put me out of my misery: listen to it., please. I’ve heard it twice and will doubtless listen again.)

And do I even need to mention Jim Dale, whose vocal wizardry (har har, get it? wizardry?) with the Harry Potter audiobooks led him to become the first inductee into the Audio Publishers Association’s “Golden Voices” Hall of Fame. See The Audies for more info, as well as terrific lists of award-winning audiobooks and samples for your listening enjoyment.

Out of our Top Ten All-Time (since 1996) Audiobook Bestsellers, eight are by Brits. (Okay, seven of those are Harry Potter titles, so maybe that’s not fair. That darned series skews all the curves.) The non-HP titles are, if you’re curious, are: David Sedaris, Live at Carnegie Hall; The Golden Compass; and Philadelphia Chickens. Going further down the list yields many more Brits, too. There’s just something about ’em.

I promise to give equal time in future posts to the wonderful women of audiobooks, and to the American men. But for now, I’m happy with this British wave, and I’ll be surfing it for a long, long time.

What are the audiobooks you’ve loved so much you’d listen to them again? Narrators you’ll listen to even if the book is on crab-fishing and you’re a mysteries-only kind of reader? Which audiobooks have you found that turned reluctant readers into avid book lovers? We’d love to hear.

In my first return to ShelfTalker in the role of "guest blogger" I had hoped to tackle the subject of electronic catalogs, in a sort of "counter punch" to Josie’s terrific post this week about the perks of ditching the old paper standbys. I am finding nary enough time this week, though, to wrap my brain around all the complicated nuances of this debate and type them all out for you, SO… I’m going to make you wait a few days more to hear my thoughts on that heady matter, and in the meantime I will entertain you with bits and pieces of other (lighter) things I’ve been stockpiling for guest-posting purposes.

First, I want to call your attention to a pair of fantastic author/illustrator websites I’ve enjoyed exploring of late. The first is the new online home of Catherine and Laurence Anholt, which is chockful of fun goodies, many of them hidden around the site, so I encourage you to poke your mouse into its many nooks and crannies and see what you can find there. Catherine and Laurence ran an actual, physical bookstore for a time called Chimp and Zee, Bookshop by the Sea in Lyme Regis, U.K. that I dearly wish I’d been able to see before they closed its doors. The store now exists in an online form on the couple’s website, which is very handy, of course, but doesn’t allow one to stare in wonder at the shop’s window displays, like the one in the video below, or at its colorful storefront, visible in one of the many great photos of the shop on the ACHUKA Children’s Books site. Be sure to click on them to view them full-size.

The other website I’ve been charmed by of late is that of illustrator Sophie Blackall, whose work I L-O-V-E. It figures that I would, though, given that I also love the quirky list of things she cites as her influences on the bio page of her site:

Oh, where to begin? Japanese woodblocks. Chinese packaging design. Old photographs. Maps. Scientific diagrams. Jellyfish. Moby Dick. Iridescent feathers. Train journeys. Figs. Postage stamps. Foxes and giant anteaters and sea otters and pipe fish. Anatomical drawings. Poems and pieces of string. Clouds and shadows. You know, that sort of thing.

I don’t know when I’ve seen a prettier navigation page, for which credit goes both to Sophie (for the art) and to Catherine Hnatov, who designed the entire site, as well as the websites of Carin Berger and Brett Helquist, which are also delightful.

Sophie also has a blog and (of course!) it’s lovely too. And while poking around on her website I discovered that she’s designed a very fun set of greeting cards you can order and send to your friends AND that (be still my heart) she has a store on Etsy from which you one might purchase an original piece of art if one wasn’t, say, saving money for a forthcoming wedding (damn!).

Speaking of weddings… Many of you, in your comments on my "exit post" or in your personal messages to me, said you hoped I would keep you posted on the plans for Gareth’s and mine. I will. In fact, I promise to one day provide you with a full wedding recap even more spectacular than the one I did for that fabulous To Kill a Mockingbird wedding so many of you enjoyed reading about! For the time being, though, I am keeping relatively mum on the subject, as we haven’t yet sent out our official invitations, and it seems only right that our friends and family know what’s happening before, well… the rest of the whole dang world. I will soonish, though, let you see the design we’ve created for our "Save the Date" cards, because I know that many of you also enjoy it when I share my artsy projects with you. Stay tuned!

Stay tuned also for the promised cereal contest winners post (See? I hadn’t forgotten!) and (GROAN…) a lengthy post in which I bemoan my very conflicted feelings about the rise of electronic catalogs. It’s not half as much fun to write about these "big, important" topics, you know, as it is to introduce you to fun t-shirts, like this one designed by the always entertaining Adam Rex who actually has a whole store of tshirt and posters designs on Zazzle. (Who knew?)

Thanks for giving Elizabeth and Josie such a warm welcome! It’s great fun to peruse what used to be "my" blog and find new and unexpected posts for me to read there. I promise you THAT never happened in the "old days"!

I love the idea of electronic catalogs. I know I’m in the minority here, but what a great innovation whose time has come. I weighed six boxes of publisher catalogs I have at the store and it came to 60 pounds! Sixty pounds of paper that I’m going to recycle the moment those books are entered on my computer. Sixty pounds of paper whose journey to me was expensive, often redundant with needless multiple mailings and costly to the environment.

My store is small and only the two owners, Elizabeth and I, do the ordering for the kids’ and adult sections. We don’t have the organizational issue that many other stores have in terms of coordinating who needs to look at what catalogs. We just bring them home and share them. My biggest problem is remembering to bring the catalogs back to the store when it’s time for the meeting. Forgetting the catalogs at home and making the rep than run back to the car and scrounge another set of catalogs is not the best way to start a sales call.

There are two ways to find publisher catalogs on the web. The first is a website I stumbled on out of desperation when I needed a catalog I couldn’t find. Earlyword.com is an amazing site for librarians that has a downloadable link for a pdf or a direct link to the publishers themselves, for this current season’s catalogs for 80% of the publishers I deal with. Knowing I can find catalogs on-line means I spend less time tearing up the office and my house trying to find where I’ve put catalogs. The downside is I can’t order from the site — the upside is you don’t have to sign up to use the service.
   
The second is a new innovation called Edelweiss, from the folks at Above the Treeline which offers more interactivity than earlywords.com, but you must sign up in advance to use it. John Rubin, CEO of Above the Treeline, is offering it as “an online, interactive catalog system that will work across participating publishers so that booksellers need learn only one system.” I have yet to play with this, but from all accounts it could revolutionize buying. So far, 13 publishers have signed up to have their catalogs in the program. You can create orders and have them in a downloadable form for your POS. If it works the way they hope, with Edelweiss you’ll look at the catalog, make and read notes and then create the order right there, without once duplicating your work by having to manually add titles to your POS.

What’s led me to easier ways to find catalogs online is when I lose them, which happens a lot, I would try to go to the publisher’s websites. You’d think it would be easy to find catalogs at the publisher’s sites — well, not so much. I’ve found that most publishers’ sites make it hard for booksellers to find the bookseller’s portion of the site; it’s as if we need a special code to get in that secret section. I’ve tried to find catalogs at Random House and their bookseller portion of the site has a link for catalogs, but it leads to a byzantine search screen, and there’s no listing for Summer 2009 catalogs. I’ve had similar results with most other publishers.

HarperCollins is the first publisher to eliminate paper catalogs. Beginning with its Fall 2009 list, Harper will offer a full-service website for digital catalogs instead of paper catalogs. I’ve spent a lot of time on the site and I like it. It’s got all the information of the catalog with more features. One of the good things about it is you can click on the book and add to your list, so when you’re ready to order you’ve got them right there without having to skip past pages of titles you’re not ordering. There is a notes section for each title, which is a great idea if multiple staff members are logging into the catalog to make comments. I particularly love the backlist feature, though it’s not. as deep I’d like to see, and would be perfect if the book links were live, so I could add the books to “my list” For stores without computer access Harper is offering a booklet that will have the catalog information.

For me, someone who is literally and happily, attached to my laptop, my iPhone and the workstation at the store, e-catalogs are a godsend. I always know where they are. My staff and I can make notes on titles and in the case of Edelweiss, I should be able to make an order that can be converted right into my POS, saving me hours of data entry. The digital catalogs I’m looking at online are totally current. No more add-on sheets with every meeting.

I don’t know how many trees are used to create the average fall catalogs or how much carbon is used to print and transport these catalogs, but the cost savings the publishers can realize by not shipping catalogs to every store could be enormous, which maybe could go into co-op. I know booksellers can be resistant to change, especially when technology is involved.  However, I think it’s time we started thinking about the waste our industry produces, and embrace technology that can ultimately help us be more efficient booksellers who can spend more time selling books.

Just a quickie here. If you like bad-on-purpose poetry (and who doesn’t?), pop on over to author Lynn Hazen’s Imaginary Blog and vote for the worst! While you’re there, any intrepidly poor poets are welcome to try their hand at creating bad verse for the next round. The rules are here. Don’t feel intimidated, just because writers like M.T. Anderson have also contributed their wonderfully terrible tries.

The summer buying season is in full swing at bookstores all over the country. Whether your sales reps are in-house, commission, come to you or you do it over the phone, there are certain things that don’t change, and I call these things “rep speak.” It’s the subtle, mostly non-verbal cues reps use to try and get us to buy more, or to steer us away from making some pretty bad mistakes. I’d like a share a few that I’ve noticed.

The first kind of rep speak isn’t speak, it’s the use of silence. There is something about total silence after you say, “I’ll get two of that,” that makes even the most seasoned buyer start thinking, “Hmm, three. I’ll get three.” Silence is unnerving. When we first opened 12 years ago and I would pass on a book from a certain publisher, the rep would slowly pick her head up and just ever so slightly, with no malice intended, stare me down until I capitulated and bought the title. It was on-the-job training. She doesn’t do that anymore and I know better what to buy and what to pass on.

Then there’s the hmm that’s quiet, almost just a hum, a somewhat thoughtful sound with just a hint of judgment. They’re just letting you know that they know you’ve just made a mistake in quantity. And this can work both ways: when they think you’ve under-ordered or when they think you’ve taken too many. 

The hmm is related to the cluck with an ever-so-slight nod of the head. Take tongue and gently, but quickly flick on the roof of mouth. This noise I call the gentle cluck of disapproval. Usually this is followed by a rep saying something like, ”Are you sure?” Once my rep clucked very loudly and said, "Are you kidding? That’s horrible. Don’t get it." Okay, maybe not the best way to work for your company, but a great way to work for the small store whose owner sometimes likes books about bears a little too much.

One other thing goes with the cluck is the "skip." We don’t sell a lot of mass merchandise-y stuff at our store, so that means we can pretty skip dozens of pages at a time of certain catalogs. "Skip, skip, skip, skip" is a little like music to my ears: I don’t have to decide and I’m being told it’s pretty yucky. This engenders trust when a rep is pushing hard on a title that I’m on the fence about.

The part of me that likes approval always enjoys the nods of agreement with an ordered book. I particularly enjoy the “good” that has a hint of surprise in it. Confirming what I already know, that this book is an undiscovered gem.  I always love the real joy on a rep’s face when they talk about their favorite book of the season.

One thing I don’t care for, and I suspect most picture book buyers will agree, is when I’m looking at the sample and the rep is telling me the story at the same time. I can’t listen, read and call up my inventory in my head to see if I need another book about a duck who’s afraid to swim. So, hand me the F&G and let me read, quietly. 

Most buyers would say there is a rhythm to every buying session, but who knew it was a really just a bad song: Hmm, cluck, cluck, good, hmm, cluck, good. It can also be a very long song with some publishers, so at least now we can tap our toes and sing along.

Like all brand-new iPhone users, I went a little crazy at the iTunes App Store (a magical land where you can find everything from tiny handheld games—Air Hockey! Flight Control!—to downloadable art collections, playable musical instruments, song identifiers, "productivity" tools, travel apps, and more). I subscribed to something called AppSniper, a program that tracks brand-new applications and notifies you when something on your wish list goes on sale.

And that’s when I discovered e-books – loads of them, libraries of them – being added by the 01010101-load to the appiverse. Fully two-thirds of the new apps on the market seemed to be books – from the Koran to Shakespeare — most costing around 99¢ per download, though in truth most of those titles can be had for nothing. (More on that later.) 

Suddenly I had instant access to pretty much anything in the public domain – for a small fee or for free. This felt like riches, largesse, Alexandria. Never read the Upanishads? Well, here ya go! Want The Complete Sherlock Holmes in 30 seconds? No problem! And look – plenty of shelf space.

I’d always dismissed e-books as handy tools for business travelers. No one would really want to read fiction in pixels, would they? Book lovers love the artifact. I even said as much, all calm and confident, to a customer last month. No way, José. Not for me. Not for anyone who loves the feel and smell of paper and ink, the textures of matte covers and deckled edges, the heft of a heavy tome or the personal goodness of a little smooth square hardcover.

But then something happened, something unexpected, embarrassing, and a little worrisome: I read Peter Pan on a cell-phone screen the size of a playing card, and I loved it. I read it because I’d wanted to revisit the original story but couldn’t justify the time in the face of all the new ARCs staring at me from every tabletop and bookshelf of my house. And because I couldn’t sleep one night and didn’t want to disturb my sweetie by turning on a light, I found myself switching on this bright little beacon of an iPhone and beginning to read. All of those circumstances had to combine for me to try pixie dust in pixels, but once I did, it was, quite frankly, a micro-revelation. It didn’t matter what format the book came in; once I was reeled in by a skillful writer, I was lost in Neverland.

Fellow readers, if a fierce book purist like me—someone who actually ate the page corners of my books as a child—can be lured into liking e-books, well, then, I suspect pretty much anybody can.

I had started tinkering around with this topic when the Association of American Publishers reported its 2008 statistics: amid an overall drop in book sales for 2008, with some modest growth (children’s and adult paperbacks), and downward dives (hardcovers, audiobooks, mass market and religion, among others), e-book sales grew by 68.4%. And it looks as though e-book sales in January 2009 trumped January 2008 sales by 173.6%. Let me repeat that number: 173.6%. It’s clear that the time has come for me to face the digital revolution.

E-books are a hot topic in the industry right now, and there are many actual experts out there writing thoughtful articles on the topic who know a lot more than I do. Like all of us booksellers, I want to know how this tiny revolution will affect my store. For one thing, it will add yet another lasagna layer to the deep dish of competition for book sales. From my humble perch on the Flying Pig stool, it seems to me that apocalyptic prophecies are premature, but there will be some fallout. People will always want and need real books, and as long as there are trees, books will continue to be made and sold and read and loved.

I also think we’ll ultimately be stocking our shelves a little differently, emphasizing the kinds of things no e-book can touch: in the children’s department, that means beautiful editions of classic and illustrated titles, poetry, and art. But for many bread-and-butter staples on our shelves, the in-store demand for those "real" books may be quite diluted; e-books are cheap, instant-gratification additions (or substitutes, depending on how you see it) for eager readers.

And herein lies the problem. Mobile phone e-readers are free, and easy [update: as of April 27, the e-reader Stanza has now been acquired by Amazon, so the top two iTunes apps are now owned by the online mega-store] . You just download them onto your cell and presto – you have access to hundreds of thousands of books – 50,000 alone in the public domain and available free of charge, as well as new and bestselling titles. The money, of course, is in the selling of the book content. So what’s in it for indies? Publishers offer options; on one site I visited, a bestselling title offered in e-book format leads to a long list of possible vendors—but guess how many of them are independent bookstores? Right. Everyone is getting into the act, it seems, but us. There are moves afoot to allow us to sell e-books to customers (most likely online), as in the program here, but if readers are tech-savvy enough to use e-readers, are they really likely to use an intermediary?

As one of those tech-savvy-ish types myself, I’m torn. I love the instant access to obscure books I’ve always wanted to read, the security blanket of having the complete plays and sonnets of Shakespeare with me everywhere I go, the unexpected delight of reading
< a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=294773236&mt=8">Alice in Wonderland on teensy pages. But as an independent bookseller, I’m concerned that, with more and more competition, a difficult economy, and less and less market to share, we are looking at a very steep mountain. Yet none of these other layers in the lasagna do quite what we do: notice and champion the treasures, both small and large; build blockbusters not by hype and hope, but by word-of-mouth; write thoughtful reviews to share with colleagues and customers; and put books directly in the hands of children and adults, teachers and librarians, saying, "You’ve got to read this!"

How can booksellers convert our handselling expertise to have a role in recommending and distributing e-books, too, so that instead of losing sales to publishers and online vendors, we might earn a small piece of this ever-growing pie?

What do you think? I really want to know. Especially if you have solutions, or any e-book confessions of your own. And bonus points if you can identify the 1974 first edition I chewed on as a kid — but don’t post the title! Just the endearment the character at the end of the book exchanges with her sweetheart upon first meeting.