There are lots of strategies parents use to get their kids to read. Some have timers, some promise treats or toys, but yesterday I heard a new one. A mom came in with her two kids — a boy who was 11, and a girl who was about 8. These kids were nice, polite and seemed very well versed in books, especially the Newbery Award winners.
It turns out the mom paid the kids $5 for every Newbery medal book they read in the past year. These kids have been reading up a storm and collecting a small fortune at the same time. I asked if the $5 only applied to the medal winners, or did Honor books count as well. “Now, they’ll get $5 for book with a shiny sticker,” the mom said.  So, these kids can read an honor book, a National Book award winner, or finalist and when they’re oler, the Printz award winners.
I’m not really sure how I feel about kids getting money to read. This is a slippery slope that might wind up being counter-productive. I can see a little bribe here or there turning into kids not reading anything unless they get some cold, hard cash. Let’s face it, some people just don’t like to read, and why is that okay for adults, but not kids?  The flip side of this argument is, these two kids have read some pretty amazing books.

Handselling is something that I take for granted. The physical act of working in a bookstore and actually putting a book in a customer’s hand happens every day in indies across the country. The power of this act reveals itself almost every day in the summer.
We have a fairly large seasonal business, so we see the same families once a year during the summer. Folks come to the bookstore on their vacation and it’s always lovely to see them, as so many things can change in a year. Usually, we just get caught up and I help them load up on books for the whole family. This yearly ritual is often peppered with feedback about the previous year’s books.
Last week I had the good fortune to be working when a family came in that I had helped last year and they needed to share that the recommended books had a profound impact. Admittedly, I did not remember immediately what I had sold last summer (folks always expect that booksellers remember every book we’ve sold, we just can’t) but I recalled after we started talking about things. The Cassmans have a teenage son, who last summer was spoken about in terms of not being a reader. I like the challenge of this. I spoke with Thomas, who was 14, to find out from him what he liked. It’s not that he wasn’t a reader, he just didn’t like typical YA literature. This also proves the point that if you want to help a reluctant reader out with a book, separate the reader from their parents.
For him, I went to one of my favorite go-to books for teenage boys who are mature kids, but struggle to find things to read. I love recommending M.T. Anderson’s book Feed, which is just so good and a perfect book for a thoughtful kid who likes a complex read with a futuristic slant. I always start my pitch for Feed by saying that I don’t usually like this kind of book, but I couldn’t put this book down. I remember only recommending this book to him. I pitched it, saw that Thomas was interested and didn’t want to overwhelm him.
Thomas’s younger brother was nine and also a somewhat reluctant reader. Jeff struggled with the same issue as Thomas; it was hard to find a book that held his interest. He liked funny books and mysteries, so I pulled a Brixton Brothers book off the shelf and he seemed okay with it. I thought he would love the series, and I had faith that I had made a good choice for him.
The thing with handselling to seasonal folks is you never know how you did. You don’t get the feedback like with regular customers. You just pitch the books and hope somehow they’ve enhanced a vacation and made it a little more memorable. What I loved about last week was Thomas coming up to me and saying how much he loved Feed.  Then his mother came up to me and said that she’d never seen him enjoy a book so much. Then she added that Jeff had read all the books in the Brixton Brothers series.
So, this year I recommended Anansi Boys for Thomas and The Mixed-Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for Jeff. Now I just have to wait until next year to find out if they liked them.

With this week’s leak of J.K. Rowling’s pen name (one of them, at least), I thought it would be fun to share a lively piece of fan fiction. It’s one blogger’s re-written epilogue to the Harry Potter series. The writer’s name is Ailsa Martin, and her preamble to the alternate epilogue reads:
“So, we all know that the epilogue of the unbearably good final Harry Potter book is unbearably disappointing. I find it spectacularly unsatisfying, so this what I like to imagine happened; a satisfying conclusion that ties up loose ends, nods at the emotional aftermath of traumatic events and closes some character arcs, unlike the official ending. I like to believe that Harry played Quidditch for England and became a teacher at Hogwarts. It’s his home. Eventually he will become Headmaster and live happily there for most of his life. He gets married to Ginny, who becomes the business manager of Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes and makes it an astonishing success with George’s help as the inventor. Ron becomes a nurse and then a stay-at-home dad. It turns out he has a talent for domestic magic, which he never discovered before because he’d never tried. Hermione will become the first female Minister for Magic and is extremely popular, and never compromises her principles. She succeeds in liberating the house elves. When she retires from politics, she writes the next generation of Hogwarts textbooks. Neville goes to wizard university to get a wizard PhD and becomes a world expert in aquatic magical plants. Luna just carries on with her brilliant self. Teddy Lupin turns out a good hearted guy with a lot of girlfriends and a dragon leather jacket. He rides Sirius’s flying motorbike. Hagrid stays exactly the same. No one is named Albus Severus.”
[Hey, Ailsa, at least no one is named Renesmee.]
The rest of Ms. Martin’s epilogue, written in story form, can be found here at her blog, The Seabird Monastery, and it made me so nostalgic I feel like re-reading the entire Harry Potter series. That’s pretty impressive for a piece of fan fiction! I don’t know Ailsa Martin, but I thoroughly enjoyed her take on the story and it makes me wonder if you ShelfTalker readers have alternate epilogue thoughts of your own, and if so, hope to see them in the comments!

I’ve been buying books for the store for years, and I’ve noticed some changes in the publishing world. Primarily what I’ve seen in the last two weeks of frontlist ordering is the astonishing number of display dumps that are being offered by the publishers. A dump is a cardboard display for books that is designed to showcase or highlight certain books. This is great in theory, but there can be problems with these.
The first problem is it’s hard to keep track of how many displays I’ve ordered from the various publishers. Honestly, there have been so many dump offers for the fall season, that it’s hard to keep track of how many I’ve ordered just in one publisher meeting. I really need to keep a list of the number of dumps I’ve ordered and when they’re coming in. Space is always at a premium at any bookstore, and too many dumps can make the store look cluttered and ultimately defeat the purpose of the dump: to sell more books faster.
The reason displays are so tempting is often there are better discounts offered if you take them. Of  course a display usually means taking more books, so the publishers are smart to offer greater savings on them. I had a meeting with Scholastic the other day and there were at least five dumps I bought. That seemed like a lot to me, and it is, but 6% more of a discount swayed me.
There is a process I go through when I think about taking a dump and it’s all about knowing my customers. The chief thing I consider is will this display be something my customers want? Will a display of a new dystopian YA hardcover grab the attention of shoppers? Is it a well known author? Is it a book kids will already come in looking for? If the display is a mix of the newest book in a series in hardcover, did the earlier books in the series sell well? Thank goodness for computerized inventory to aid in some of these decisions.
The reason stores like displays is it allows to you to showcase books easily. Having a display set up telegraphs to customers: This book needs your attention, take a second look. The problem is more than one display per section is one display too many and then nothing gets looked at. In fact, too many displays can actually block the books on the shelves, so now, no books are easily seen. So, there is always a delicate balancing act.
Something to consider about dumps is how good does the display look? Not everything ships well. We just got a dump for a new, and heavy Star Wars book, that came sufficiently banged up that it couldn’t really hold up the books. This is obviously counter-productive. While this situation does not happen often, it happens enough that an ordered display cannot be used. This now means a shelf has to be rearranged to accommodate the books that should be in the dump. Hardly tragic, but it can cause a headache to staff and customers alike.
Lastly, I know I overbought displays for the fall because the publisher incentives were greater than they’ve ever been. Penguin had a deal if you bought a certain number of displays, you’d get more co-op, Scholastic gave a better discount. In this day and age, when every savings must be maximized, it’s easy to go for the dump. Every publisher wants us to buy more books and offering deals on displays is a great way to do that.
Here’s hoping that my store is not overrun with dumps in October in my attempts to save money. I’ll keep you all posted on the total number of displays I wind up with by Christmas.

Is it just me, or are even avid readers reading fewer books? Once upon a time, I would read several books each week. My annual reading numbered in the dozens, even hundreds, of titles. Lately, I am lucky to read one or two books a week. For a bookseller, that’s  not enough.
In part, I blame an unusually busy personal year. But I know there’s more to it: more media competition for my time, more technology-driven distraction, more white noise all around.
I don’t spend a whole lot of time on Facebook or Twitter or even YouTube, I haven’t developed a Pinterest, and I don’t Tumblr. I also don’t Instagram. But I know what all those things are, and that knowledge has to have come from time spent encountering and exploring them. Time that comes out of my reading hours.
I don’t have a television at home, but I don’t get to feel virtuous about that because I can and do access Netflix, Hulu, HBO, PBS, and just about any other video source on my phone, iPad, or laptop. I can live-stream Wimbledon matches and watch The Daily Show. It’s a cornucopia of visual seduction.
I have a thing for science and nature news, and it’s amazing how much time can pass browsing National Geographic or NASA’s photo archives, and reading articles about new discoveries.
If I, someone who has always read books about as constantly as drawing air, find myself struggling to read as much as I used to, how much less are people reading who have always been more casual about it? This worries me.
I’m also using audiobooks to catch up on my reading, which is helpful; even on my busiest days, I have my commute open for listening.  (Note to publishers: If only more titles were available as audio advance reading copies, you might get a much bigger pool of booksellers reading them! But I digress.)
I’ve resolved to pay much closer attention to my (admittedly rare) leisure time and adjust my activities accordingly.
Readers, are you also finding yourselves with less time (or simply carving out less time) to read? If so, are you planning to change that, and how?

Some of you know that in addition to co-owning the Flying Pig Bookstore, I also am a stand-up comic. I perform alone and with a group of female comics called The Vermont Comedy Divas. We have a charitable component to our group called Divas Do Good, where we put on benefit shows for organizations with a social mission.There are five of us and we usually perform in Vermont, until this past weekend.
The Divas had a meeting in March and we really wanted to create a road trip. So, I thought let me contact some booksellers I know and see if they can help. Kenny Brechner of DDG Books in Farmington, Maine, totally acted as our booking agent and brokered a deal with an organization called SAVES (Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services) and we had a benefit show on Friday night. So, Thursday morning we left Vermont in a friend’s friend’s 27-foot RV and headed up to Montreal for the night and then swung over to Maine for the gig.
Without the the help of Kenny, I would not have slept in Walmart parking lot in Montreal in the RV with four of the funniest women I know laughing until two in the morning. It is the closeness of the bookselling world that enabled me to email Kenny and get his help in introducing me to a wonderful organization that allowed us to get out of Vermont and do some good.
And a really fun part was having a drink with Kenny and getting caught up on the Common Core curriculum.
 
 

As much as I love schools encouraging their students to read over the summer, I’m afraid it’s true that nothing can suck the joy out of a great book faster than being required to read it. I don’t think there’s a child alive who loves reading more than I did, but I did not want to read books in order to do homework on them in the summer. I’m the only kid in my eighth-grade class who loved The Grapes of Wrath, and I still dreaded assigned reading, especially if I had to “journal” about it. (N.B.: I still haven’t gotten used to ‘journal’ as a verb.)
Kids who devour books by the bushel come into the store in June or July, and I can tell which book they’re requesting is assigned reading by the way the light goes out of their eyes. It’s tragic! I try to help them re-frame — or reclaim — the reading experience. “This is a REALLY good book,” I’ll say (if it is). “Just try to pretend while you’re reading it that it hasn’t been assigned, that you chose it. And then see what you think. Form your own opinion.” I don’t think this helps much, if at all, but if I can help even one young teen not dismiss To Kill a Mockingbird before cracking the cover, it will be worth it.
Anyone have good tactics for helping raise a book to “want to” as opposed to “have to” status?
I also want to know what summer reading assignment scarred you as a kid. Were you felled by The Old Man and the Sea? Sister Carrie? Heart of Darkness? Is there a book you might have loved, if only it hadn’t been assigned? Is there a book you were prepared to hate, but fell in love with by surprise?

This whole week has been Old Home Week for me at the store. I’ve seen three kids who I’ve known for the entire 17 years we’ve been open, or, in one case, her whole eight years on the planet. There is something lovely to me about reconnecting with these young people who have such fond memories of the store. These are the kids who walk in and I leap to hug them because I know they’re only home for the summer or they’ve just grown up so much.
Young Helen came in the other day with her mom. What I liked about this, was the mom, Melissa, just sat in a chair and looked at books while Helen first bought earrings, then books. Helen strode confidently up the counter, put her genuine Louis Vuitton wallet down and regarded the earrings. Her mother must have heard me thinking that that couldn’t be a real LV wallet, because she practically shouted, “It’s not a knock-off. It’s from her grandmother.” Why an eight-year-old needs such a nice wallet is beyond me. But what further amazed me was it was full of cash, not birthday or holiday money, but $67 of the weekend’s limeade stand take. Pretty impressive.
After the earring purchase I tried to get caught up with her mother, which was only moderately successful, until I told Helen to go pick out not the agreed-upon one horse book, but two. (I cleared it with her mom first, I never suggest getting more books than I know will be allowed.) Helen clearly is a shopper. After picking out her books she came right behind the counter to watch the money part. She was well versed on how to swipe a credit card in the machine. Honestly, I was surprised to not find a black American Express card in the LV purse. There is something amazing about watching kids grow up. I’ve known her mom well before she got pregnant with Helen and she loves to hear that. And I love that Helen picked out her horse books and clutched them to her chest with a broad smile.
The following day I was at the restaurant next to the bookstore and saw 17-year-old Julia bussing tables, home from boarding school for the summer. It was early enough in the shift that we could talk. I remember this young woman when she was a grunting eight-month-old who would sit on the floor of the old store while her mom picked out books. The old store building is now a deli and Julia said she just can’t go in there. “I sat on that floor and grew up in there. I just can’t go in.”  Then she totally surprised me by adding, “I still have No-Man.” I have to admit, I got a tiny bit teary when she said that. No-Man is actually a three-foot stuffed animal based on Raymond Briggs’s book The Snowman. That she still has it, and clearly still loves it, was simply wonderful. And then she said, “I still think of the bookstore as your house.” She called the bookstore Josie’s house for years because she honestly thought I lived there. To go from that to talking about where she’s thinking of going to college just about blew my mind. 

Then the final young adult came in at the end of the day. Virginia walked up to the register asking for journals and we started chatting. When she was younger, Virginia and her twin sister Kate would walk to the store almost every week during the summer to get more books. She had just graduated from college. Her response to my shock at that (why does it seem like college takes kids two years these days?, or is it just my perception of time?) was classic and very kind. “I know, I’m old, right? Can’t believe it either.” We both laughed. I asked what she’s doing now and her deadpan delivery almost caused me to spit my coffee out. “I’ve triumphantly moved back in with my parents.” We just laughed and talked about books and jobs and the economy. She bought 12 small Moleskine journals for her backpack trip in Canada. As she was leaving she added, “I miss being able to walk here.”
Whether they’re becoming independent shoppers or they’re home for the summer, seeing them in the store and sharing fond memories with these young people just reminds how much the bookstore is a part of the fabric of their lives whether we know it or not. For so many kids, the neighborhood bookstore is the first place they go to by themselves. So, today, when a kid comes in with a ball of sweaty money, I’ll remind myself that this could be the very first time they’ve paid for something themselves, and hope in 10 years to see them about to leave for college, and reminiscing about that.

If you’re having a hard day at the office, you might be able to shut your door for a little privacy, or take a long lunch, or hide out in the bathroom for five minutes. In a small retail store, if you’re the lone clerk on a shift, your headache or heartache has to wait. Or not.
At the end of the day the other week, I was alone at the store. It was about eight minutes after closing time, but I’d had customers right up until the last minute and hadn’t had a chance to grab our “Open” flag from its outside standard and lock the door behind the last person. I was at low ebb, exhausted from a couple of weeks of my dad being in the midst of a medical crisis. (He’s fine and back home now — yay! — or I wouldn’t be writing this post.) That and another medical scare in the family had left me pretty spent. On top of it all, we were four staff members short, with two folks on vacation and another two recently having retired from bookselling.
As we’ve mentioned elsewhere in this blog, running a bookstore isn’t a job involving a whole lot of peace and quiet. It’s more like constant triage in a E.R., though happily without the life-or-death consequences. It’s still a busy day, full of chasing down details, answering innumerable questions (few of them predictable), dealing with any number of personalities (some of them challenging), and putting out small fires. The variety makes bookstore life fun and interesting, but you do need energy to carry it off.
So there I was, heading to the front of the store to lock up, when the front door bell jingled and a woman and young boy walked in. My body responded before my brain did, sending traitorous tears springing to the backs of my eyes. I almost never mind staying late for customers, but I just didn’t have it in me that evening to deal with one more question, one more need, one more anything. “I’m sorry,” I called up the aisle, “but we’re closed.” I’m fairly sure my desperation and crabbiness were thickly evident in my throat. Then I looked up and recognized Cheryl, a lovely customer. “I know we’re late,” she said apologetically, “but we wanted to say goodbye to our favorite bookstore people before we move to Colorado next week. I’m not sure we’ll have time to come back in before we go. We’re also really hoping to get a few thank-you gift cards for our friends.”
Here is where I need to share another truth about retail: if you’re having a bad day and let it show, you will let it show at the worst possible time, or to the worst possible person (i.e., the person you least wish to dismay in any manner). So of course my grumpy self met, not a jerk or insensitive yahoo I could have at least felt less guilty about, but one of the kindest, most thoughtful people on the planet. She made space in her crazy-busy last week in Vermont to come to the store and say goodbye. And she spent $150 — a significant sale at any retail shop, but especially welcome at a small independent. And she gave me a big hug.
There’s a lesson in all that, of course. I think it has something to do with opening one’s heart and being welcoming despite one’s petty moods, etcetera. I’m not always in the mood for those lessons. Sometimes I feel the universe spends a little too much time doling out these kinds of game changers that make you feel like a heel, or an idiot, when it could be expending that energy on world peace. Oh, wait. On second thought, maybe that’s exactly what it was doing, in a very small, very indie way.

It’s obvious, of course, to speak about independent bookstores on the eve of Independence Day, but it makes sense. While our nation’s independent spirit is celebrated with fireworks and cookouts, most indies are closed to enjoy some time with family and friends. I thought I’d share my thoughts on why indies are such great places.
– We know your dogs’ names.
– We welcome every request, even when you’re not sure what you’re looking for.
– If you’re having a bad day, we very well might give you a sticker.
– We love that you continuously introduce to authors we’ve not read.
– We will patiently talk with you until you find the right book that suits the mood you’re in.
– We will take your special order at the supermarket.
– We love to meet your babies.
– It makes us happy that your children grew up in our store.
– We will send a condolence card when someone in your family passes away.
– We will encourage you to use the library.
– We will always want to talk with you about books.
– We will enjoy meeting your extended family when they visit, on July 5th.
Have a happy and safe holiday!