I know some folks think it’s wonderful to get galleys and I agree. But every so often I stand in my office amid the galleys and I want to scream, just a little. Over the weekend I was confronted by the sheer number of books I have in my house. I have galleys from 2009 forward, and that’s a lot of books.
Galleys are truly one of the best perks of working at a bookstore. I get these yummy books months before they come out. They’re like great secret candies. The problem is every season there seems to be hundreds of galleys. These galleys need a home, and often that’s my house. But before the land in my office they have a long life at the bookstore.
Galleys come into the store in droves this time of year. I just got a box of galleys for books that are coming out in November and December. I feel as if I’ve barely read the galleys for books that came out in January. We have a stack of boxes five feet high with all the galleys arranged by month, just through May. Each staffer initials when she’s looked through the box. So, now I’m stuck with boxes that have books that either they didn’t want to read, or have read and returned.
Sometimes we take galley boxes to the store basement after everyone has looked at them. I’m trying not to do this, as the basement seems to be the place where things go to die. Because galleys can’t be sold, and I refuse to recycle or throw out books, the galleys can hang around for quite some time.
I literally had no place to put the newest crop of galleys anywhere other than my dining room table. After a week of that, I couldn’t bear it anymore. I took boxes from the store and cleaned out my office of any galleys that weren’t 2012. First, I moved all the galleys from the dining room table to the kitchen counter. While not my first choice for storing the books, it had the advantage of being in a place I wanted restored to its original use, so I knew I wouldn’t drag my feet on this project.
It took my trips to and from the office to empty the spinner (we had one extra when we moved, so brought the store case home, a lovely benefit of owning a bookstore). Finally, I was done. I was looking an entire dining room table covered entirely by books. Elizabeth and I sorted them by age and then put a bookplate in them that reminded folks the books couldn’t be sold or placed in a circulating library (this step is the slowest part of the whole process). Then we boxed them up by age and labeled them for various schools, prisons and hospitals. I feel good about giving galleys to charitable organizations; they have limited resources and almost always desperately need books. The Ronald McDonald House is a great place for a box mixed with all kinds of books. Some for the kids and some for the parents. Six boxes later and we’re still not done with the young adult books, which seem to be 65% of our galleys.
I then got to set the spinner by publication month. I’ve left plenty of room for more galleys, but the case is surprisingly full already. It is so nice to have the all galleys in one place and thoughtfully organized. If I were truly organized, they’d be organized by publisher for every month. But honestly, I don’t have that kind of time.
So, now as I admire my handiwork, the hardest part of this process is going to be choosing what to read, as there a lot of exciting books coming out this year. What books are you excited about this year?

As Elizabeth mentioned in her post yesterday, this is vacation week for most of our customers. Curious things happen during vacation week. Kids are home more and parents are often looking for things to do. One thing that kids do during this time off is call the bookstore. Part of it is because they have time on their hands, and part of it parents are getting them used to using the phone.
These phone calls vary greatly, usually by age. Obviously, the younger the child, the cuter the call and the less information conveyed. I’ve learned that calls with heavy breathing are not necessarily dirty in nature, it’s usually a small child making her first call to a store.
I answer the phone, “Flying Pig Bookstore.” If I’m greeted by silence with breathing in the background, I usually repeat the name of store. Sometimes I hear a parent in the background urging the child to ask for their book.
“Um, hi. Um, do you have Fancy Nancy?” The voice is impossibly high pitched and  I say yes and then the inevitable happens, the child has no idea how to end a phone call, so we’re back to the breathing. “Would you like me to hold it for you?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I realize this four-year-old moppet has no idea what I mean. I try not to resort to asking for their parent, so I ask the little one her name and as sure as the sun rises in the east, I cannot understand what she said, so I just leave the on the counter with a note: for the child who called in.
The calls from eight-to-ten year-olds involve fast breathing and often shouting. I answer the phone, “Flying Pig Bookstore,”  and am greeted by fast talking kids searching for a particular book. “Hi, doyouhavetheWimpyKidbook?” It takes my brain a few seconds to parse that sentence, as the only thing I’ve heard is Kid and book. I ask the boy to repeat himself and he says it just as fast. But this time I’m prepared for the speed of the question. “Yes, we’ve got that.” This is the moment I never remember to move the phone away from my ear because the next thing I hear is a shout, directly into the phone, “MOM THEY HAVE THE BOOK.”
And then, they hang up.

Whether it’s a crazy summer Saturday packed with Shelburne Museum-goers, or a slow holiday-week Saturday where half the town has gone skiing or left the state in search of fun, Saturdays at the bookstore are always fun and full of surprises. I thought I’d give readers a few highlights from last weekend.
1) Most Enthusiastic Reader Award

Flying Pig bookseller Sandy First has been telling me for a while about an adorable three-year-old girl who has been coming to the store for the Mercy Watson series one at a time (do click that link, if you get a chance; Mercy has her own website, and it is adorable!). “I wish you could see her,” Sandy said. “I’ve never seen a child so happy to get a book.” Apparently, she jumps up and down and practically levitates with joy when handed the next volume of the buttered-toast-loving pig’s latest adventures. When I came to work at 11, Sandy said, “That little girl you passed on her way out is the Mercy Watson fan I’ve been telling you about.” I zipped back outside and watched this blonde-ringleted little tyke “reading” the book as she walked, chattering, clearly narrating the story as she walked on the deck between her parents, who carefully guarded her on either side, tall swans around their happy duckling.
2) Most Confusing Customer Call
One of our longtime customers is a fantastic, sharp woman who always orders interesting books. Her father was in publishing, in fact, and she has excellent taste. Rarely, therefore, does a discussion with her go as awry as the one we had this Saturday morning, when she sent her (adult) son in to pick up The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships, Volume 1. Our customer called us when her son arrived home. “This isn’t the right book,” she said. “I’m looking for The Company We Keep. I’ve already got The Company They Kept.” I remembered having been able to get volume 2 of this series from the distributor, but needing to order volume 1 directly from the New York Review of Books. I was sure I had the title correct. As I scurried around online checking our records and the NYRB website, our phone call became a veritable “Who’s on First” sketch. It didn’t help that the NYRB site doesn’t do a great job of linking the two books; not only are the book jackets dissimilar in style and tone, but the web pages for each title don’t refer to or link to each other. And there is a red herring of a book called The Company We Keep from another publisher altogether, which has nothing to do with these two. It turned out that we had in fact sent home the right book, but it was a pretty funny 15 minutes. (Wonderful books, though. I recommend them!)
3) Blast from the Past
Three tall teenagers came to the store, looking for a photographic book on Vermont to send home with an exchange student. We helped them find a lovely one, and when they came to the register, we asked what name we should ring it up under so that they would get their book club credit. The tallest of the kids, who must have been about 6’2″, gave his parents’ names. I gasped. “You’re baby Oliver?!” I said, making him blush to the tips of his ears. He is now 15, but used to come to the bookstore all the time as a teeny tot when our store was in its old location, within walking distance from his house. We talked for a bit, and what was so extra-wonderful about seeing this grown-up version of the baby/toddler/little boy we had known those years ago was not only that he was a smiling, confident young man, but that he seemed absolutely delighted to be recognized. He could have hunched into himself, mortified beyond reckoning, at being called baby Oliver — I mean, who could have blamed him?! — but instead, he warmed to the pleasure of being known and remembered.
4) Teachers Stocking Up
School break is this week, and often teachers use some of their found time to come in and fill gaps in their classroom collections. We love this; they plant themselves in a section and raid the shelves. Sometimes they want help and suggestions; other times, they come in with a list and get right to it. We have a lot of very slightly psychic moments at The Flying Pig: thinking of a customer we haven’t seen in a few years, only to have them pop in the next day; guessing a kid’s name we’ve never met; suddenly deciding to restock a particular author we’ve been out of for a while, only to get a request for their books. This Saturday was Leo Lionni day. I hadn’t sold a Lionni title in a few months (I know; sacrilege!), but restocked everything this week, and on Saturday, a teacher marched up to the counter asking for — yep — Leo Lionni. She bought the entire collection. Kismet!
5) Busy Budding Readers, New Friends
Two 16-month-old cartoon toddlers, strangers to one another, rushing busily through the store, one followed by grandpa, the other by mom, both toddlers following each other around. There were the usual toddler events, pulling multiple balls out of a ball display and knocking everything else off the shelf, exuberantly spinning card racks, (supervised) climbing on our soft cubes in the picture book section.
6) The Book Aunt
A woman came up to the counter with a stack of picture books. I so love to see a stack of books at the counter, I must say. I said, “You found great books. Are you a teacher?” (She had chosen some authors who aren’t mainstream for the general public but are well-known and beloved in school circles.) “Nope,” she said, “I’m just the ‘book aunt.’ ” “I’m one of those,” I said. “Isn’t it the best?” We agreed that it was, and I expressed admiration for her excellent choices. “You’re all set?” I asked. She nodded, then said, “Unless you have some must-have books for four-year-old boys.” I got that gleam in my eye and showed her Chris Barton’s Shark vs. Train, Kevin Sherry’s I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean, William Steig’s Pete’s a Pizza, and Mini Grey’s Traction Man Meets Turbo Dog. That stack grew by four books, and she left having earned a canvas tote bag.
7) Long-Distance Regulars
Another growing child pleased to be recognized was Lauren, the granddaughter of a customer who moved out of state but has recently returned. That’s great news for us, because our customer’s family is wonderful and we have missed seeing them! One of her sons came in with his daughter (Lauren), who shyly came up to the counter, smiled, and was so happy we knew who she was. Now in sixth grade, she’s still an avid reader, and we had a blast going through books, talking about which ones she’d read and loved, and finding new ones for her to take back home after the weekend. (Princess Academy, Ice, and Chalice.)
Then came another family, who visit once or twice a year. Mom, Dad, a son and a daughter — all of them science fanatics who also love books. Our conversation ranged from comparing chemistry flash cards to sharing favorite science-y websites (I pointed them toward the video of Theodore Gray’s making of The Elements for the iPad, and told them about the Elements Vault: Treasures of the Periodic Table with Removable Archival Documents and Real Element Samples (which we were out of stock on, but which led Sandy to show them
Solar System: A Visual Exploration of All the Planets, Moons and Other Heavenly Bodies That Orbit Our Sun (also published by Black Dog & Leventhal), which they happily bought, along with Ronia the Robber’s Daughter, Emmy & the Incredible Shrinking Rat, Cool Science stuff and The True Meaning of Smekday. One of the kids said, “We were going to the museum [the wonderful ECHO Center in Burlington] but the bookstore turned out to be so much more fun today!” And the best moment may have been when the mom said, “You changed our family’s lives several years ago,” telling me about recommending audiobooks the whole family would love, which changed long car trips for them forever.
It was a good Saturday, fairly quiet (lots of locals fled town for school break) but very fulfilling. Plenty of time for chatting with every customer (and leaving alone the folks who like to browse in peace, of course). Our lowest dollar sale was $3.71; our highest, $153.11. People bought as little as one item and as many as 20. But what lingers long after the day’s reconciliation are those conversations; those are the sparks, the fuel, the grist for our mills that keep us opening Saturday after Saturday, all year long.

Score one for the little guy. After an e-mail to Google, and several e-mails with the ABA about why Google was going to rescind my affiliate status, I received an e-mail late last night from Google. “We mistakenly sent you this notification – your affiliate status will be unaffected. We apologize for any confusion this might have caused.” While I’m not entirely certain what actually happened, I’m thrilled that I can continue to sell e-books without interruption.
I think Google might be revamping its affiliate program, but it seems at least for now, independent bookstores can still compete in the electronic book market. Here’s hoping that being an affiliate keeps our customers from going to Amazon and keeping their e-book purchases local.

On Friday I received an email from Google. I was told that as of March 15 I would no longer be an affiliate of Google, thereby unable to sell e-books on my website. Needless to say, I was a little stunned. I had seen the letter in a PW article saying that Google was no longer accepting affiliates, but I had no idea there were going this far. Neither did the other independent bookstores that were also recipients of this letter.
I am a member of the American Booksellers Association, but I don’t have my website through them. I have a Booksite website. I had to apply to become an affiliate of Google to be able to sell e-books on my site. I applied several months ago and was approved within a day. From that moment on we began to educate our customers how they could buy e-books from us. This has been a slow process. And now, finally every day, someone asks how they can buy e-books on our website. Sales, admittedly, have been lackluster, but these things take time to grow.
Now it seems we are not going to be given the chance. Google’s reason for dropping is couched in these very vague sentences: “We are constantly evaluating our Google eBook affiliate program, searching for the best mechanisms to create value for our partners and users. With our most recent evaluation, we’ve decided to narrow the scope of the program to a smaller number of partners to create a better experience for our customers. ”
So, apparently, Google doesn’t view us as being capable of creating a better experience for their shoppers. I have not been told if I can work toward providing a better experience, nor do I know what that experience is. I am frustrated and pissed.
But being mad at something as big as Google seems pointless. However, at the suggestion of Kenny Brechner, owner of DDG Bookstore in Farmington, Maine, I wrote to the Google affiliate program and asked to be reinstated. I told them I was an independent bookstore and a member of the ABA whose e-book program was just starting to grow. I have not heard back.
I wrote to Oren Teicher, ABA CEO, to ask for the ABA’s help with this matter. My ability to sell e-books via Google should not be dependent on my having an ABA-sponsored website. I am a member of the ABA and I fully expect they will help me be able to sell e-books on my website. All members need to support of the ABA for help dealing with a giant like Google. After all, the ABA brokered the deal for the Google to allow Indie Commerce stores to be affiliates in the first place and to work with Google Books. I can happily report that Oren wrote me back late Saturday night and told me the ABA was aware of the situation and is working with Google to get the other displaced indies back to affiliate status. It’s awfully nice to have a trade association helping with this, as I do feel at a loss with Google’s size.
Google’s actions have soured me a little tiny bit on bookselling. Perhaps it’s the slowness of the season, but just when my e-books program seemed poised to make inroads with my customers, it might be taken away and I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. I’m sure Amazon has nothing to do with it, but I feel like it’s another thing that I can’t compete against. I don’t want to just roll over and give up selling e-books. Being able to sell them makes my store look current and vital. Customers who don’t have Kindles don’t need to look elsewhere for their e-books. Come March 15,  I don’t want to tell them that they have to go somewhere else to buy products they clearly would rather buy from us.
As I continue to wait patiently for an email from Google letting me know that I’ve been reinstated, I face the conundrum of how to market the e-books I can sell at least through March 15. I’m not really sure how to handle this. This all does beg the larger question of why is Google Books the only way I can sell e-books? If the publishers produce them and I sell their books, why then can I not just sell their e-books without having to go through the very capricious Google?
I think the best thing I can do between now and March 15 is sell a phenomenal number of e-books so I can create the kind of experience Google seeks for its customers.

What I’m requesting here is a book organized like a baby-name book, but one that lists picture book characters by name. There’s no huge profit in it, really, except that you’d probably sell a copy to every bookstore in the country, and possibly to every library. And grandparents. Oh, grandparents!
I can’t tell you how many times people come in — at least twice a week — looking for a book for a baby or toddler named Oliver, or Ellie, Stephen, etc. Now, this request is disenchanting on principle, since it is a shallow pond from which to fish a book — and yet, as a former child, I do have to admit that it can be delightful to discover a book about someone with your very own name. (Mine was Princesses’ Tresses, about which I have blogged, and which has a rather wonderful story.*) So there is a place for such a resource, since not all picture books are as obliging as Owen, No, David, Bedtime for Frances, Olivia, etc., to be eponymous by character.
This project would be ideal for someone who enjoys creating practical, sortable databases, perhaps while watching Deadliest Catch or Downton Abbey marathons. It’s the kind of task I myself tend to enjoy. Hmmm.
If the picture book character name book goes over well, then a chapter book / MG edition might be in order, because we do also get requests for those by character name, although not as often as for picture books. (I’m happy to report that there is no call for a YA volume; by the teen years, adults seem to have come to their senses and realized that children can in fact think beyond their own names to enjoy a darned good story about somebody else.)
Enterprising Database Creator, whoever you are, you could fashion a little web database in addition to the book. A book would be handier on the fly in a bookstore, but a website would be easy and quick to update, and parents and grandparents would be able to use it.
The sad thing is that I am only partly kidding about this project. I sort of want this book to exist, if only to make my life easier 104 times a year.
*A codicil to the “kids like books with their names in them” is that this is only true, of course, when the character is a good egg. Classroom read-alouds can be harrowing; imagine being a first-grader named Camilla and hearing Hooway for Wodney Wat during share circle. Aieeee! This is why characters named Murgatroyd and Parsimony are especially appealing — but not to certain grandmothers with a list in hand.

Every day it seems like I’m reading more and more doom and gloom articles that are heralding the death knell for the independent retailer. The battle against the chains, the online vendors, book fair companies, etc., continues — the list is long and constantly changing. One thing hasn’t changed is the power of working with others to strengthen local businesses.
The beauty of a good partnership is the real feeling that you’re not in it alone. Someone is there to help with the planning and executing of an event, and that is a lovely feeling. Yesterday morning we had our first author enhanced story hour. Liza Woodruff, a great local illustrator, came in and read her book, Ten on the Sled. Normally our Wednesday morning story hour draws anywhere from two to eight kids. But this event saw more than 30 people! How did we get so many folks to come to an event at 11 a.m. on a weekday? We worked with a local preschool that was within walking distance. We knew about this preschool because one of our staffers sent her kids there. So, again it was all about reaching to folks we already know and love and hope they feel the same about us.
At 10:45, I was just back from throwing out the trash when 18 little kids came up the deck to the store. This story hour was a fun adventure for them. It’s not every day they get to walk around town and see an author. Honestly, is there anything cuter than a pack of little kids in snow jackets, hats and gloves holding hands and traipsing into the store? I think not. The kids had a great time watching Liza draw and equally important, Liza had a ball. So this was a great event for all. Did we sell a heap of books? Not so much, but this event was more about getting the preschool used to coming to us for midday events. Perhaps next time we’ll send home an order form, but I really wanted to stress the fun of the event without anyone getting the feeling that we were hard-selling them about the event.
Part of the success of this event was Liza helping to promoting it on her Facebook page. She has a lot of friends and several folks came to the event because they saw it mentioned in her Facebook feed. The store mentioned the event on our feed and I really feel like everything worked well together.
As the year progresses we have more and more partnership possibilities awaiting us. These excite me because of the potential of cross-marketing with other businesses and creating a demand for our bookstore and whatever the other business sells. It’s funny, but I always assume that all the folks in my town have been to my store, and that’s just not true. Every day someone comes in and confesses that it’s their first time here, and that delights me, mostly because they’ve actually come in, but also because something, usually our being out in the community, has gotten them to pop by.
My motto for this year is to say yes to working with more folks, because the more people we can partner with, the better business will be for everyone involved.
 

Two publishers and five authors are celebrating being named finalists for the L.A. Times Book Award, the winner of which will be announced on April 20, the evening before the kick-off of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a huge (and by all accounts fantastic) two-day annual event.
Scholastic has three books in the final five: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray, The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman, and The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (which also received a Printz Honor and an Odyssey Audiobook Honor from the ALA in January). Candlewick has two finalists: Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet, and A Monster Calls: Inspired by an Idea from Siobhan Dowd by Patrick Ness (which also just won the U.K.’s child-chosen Red House Children’s Book award).
I hope a newspaper as large as the L.A. Times will decide to recognize excellence in literature for readers younger than a YA audience, as well, since they are not only the nation’s most enthusiastic readers, but also the paper’s future readers. Perhaps next year….
Congratulations to the finalists — this is a terrific list of novels!

Throughout the year, I have promised to give updates on some posts. So, here’s a smattering of things that needed follow-ups.
– A Determined Dad was about a dad who was thoroughly fed up with his twin boys’ reading habits. He was fixated on reading Huck Finn with the kids. We urged him to start with something a little easier and lighter. Did he follow the advice? Nope. Sadly, two days after the blog went live the dad broke his leg skiing. Feeling the loss of several weeks to perhaps build up to Huck Finn, he leapt right in. I asked one of the boys how it was going and he smiled and said, “Dad can get a little intense about that book.”  They may not be reading the way we had all envisioned, but father and sons have been spending some quality time together.
– Book Talk Nation was a new initiative started by the Authors Guild whereby authors are interviewed on the phone and folks can call in and listen. Originally, I had said we sold just about 20 Katherine Paterson books. The fun of this event was the pleasure of going to Katherine’s house for her to sign the books; I got to have coffee with Katherine Paterson! The Authors Guild paid us promptly. I think this type of event could be a great way to remind folks about what indie bookstores can do.
– This update was supposed to happen in October, but I forgot. Workman had a Real Good Deal promotion that I thought would be wonderful. What happened was less successful than I had hoped. The main problem was the table that came with the books was just too little. If I could have put that table on a table I think we would have a lot more book sales.  The book mix was actually pretty good and it was so easy to return what didn’t sell, while the program wasn’t as successful as I had hoped, I do so appreciate Workman’s efforts with indies.
– Lastly, one of the first posts I ever wrote was about my love for e-catalogs. Well, three years later, I find I’m not in love anymore. I realized what I truly enjoyed about accessing catalogs on line was never losing them. I have discovered that I don’t relish spending more time online when I get home from work. While I used to thumb through catalogs and make notes in the evenings, I almost never log on and scan through web pages when I’m home. This is actually starting to be a problem as more and more publishers stop producing catalogs. I realized part of the problem was my desperate need to wear the right reading glasses. I finally saw the eye doctor and the glasses are on the way, so now I have no excuses.

There are some amazing bookish videos circulating around the Internet lately, and in case you’re one of those rare people who has been getting actual work done instead of marveling at these, I’m posting them below for your weekend pleasure, along with the world premiere of a teeny, snarky little video on misadventures in bookselling by yours truly.
“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” is a magical, award-winning (and Oscar-nominated) animated short film directed by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg. It tips several pixels at The Wizard of Oz, celebrates the power of books and stories to comfort, delight, entertain, teach, and restore. This video might make your throat a little lumpy in places and, if you’re me, cause the ol’ eyes to leak a few tears. It’s marvelous and a little mysterious.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.
A bookstore comes to life after hours in “The Joy of Books,” a mesmerizing little stop-action film by a husband-and-wife team and many many volunteers. The labor involved in making this will be evident to anyone, and especially to booksellers who can’t help imagining the hours it took to shelve and move and reorganize and reshelve all those books!). Share this with children of all ages; it will make bricks-and-mortar stores even more magical to little ones!

And now, in case you HAVE seen the previous marvels, I am presenting a humble chuckle: the latest in my Bookseller Frustration Video series, “Book Returns.”
Book Returns
by: EHB

(The first video in the series is called “I’m Looking for a Book.”)
What bookish delights have you discovered lately?