It’s easy to despair when confronted with ever-constant barrage of news that books are dead. Every day folks come in for recommendations that they’re going to download on their e-readers, so in this electronic age, it’s sometimes the littlest things that can make a bookseller’s day.
Twice today customers thrilled me and made me realize that there’s hope for the book and book-related products.
The first was a customer who ordered an actual book on CD from us. She loved the book so much, she wanted to be able to listen to it again while she was driving to and from Boston. A CD! Someone actually wanted a book on CD. She didn’t want to download it — didn’t know how, truth be told. It had been a while since I’d sold a book on CD, I forgot they were discounted and almost charged her full price, which she happily would have paid. She then ordered two more books on CD for her summer trips. She loves having the CDs and knowing where she stopped and not having to worry about listening to a book on her son’s iPod that can shuffle the tracks.
The second customer came in to order a book she already downloaded. She had a parenting book on her phone and she loved it so much she wanted the actual book. This customer decided that reading a book, especially a reference-type book, on a three-inch screen was frustrating. She found it hard to switch back to chapters that she wanted to refer back to: “It’s impossible to take notes or underline. ” Her husband just didn’t understand why she needed two copies of the books. And she came to the realization that text on phone doesn’t necessarily make something into a book for her. When she left I breathed a sigh of relief.
So, if customers want to try technology, get disappointed, or feel the need to augment their experience, I am more than happy to be there to fill gaps and remind people that books are really a complete experience.

I’ve been looking for an excuse to share the first song below with all of my book-loving friends and colleagues, so I’m taking it as a sign that the blog tool ate the post that was supposed to appear today (which I spent hours on, by the way, arghh). So instead of hearing all about the Texas Library Association annual conference, and my agent’s annual client retreat (which I will write about as soon as I can bear to reconstruct the whole post again), I submit to you a small collection of some of my favorite songs about books and writing. If you listen to none of the rest of them, do bend an ear for Moxy Fruvous’s “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors,” an anthem for the long-suffering partners or book addicts.
(Edited to add: videos were embedded here, but are not showing up. Trying to fix; check back later!)
Moxy Fruvous — “My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors” (Thanks to Kevan Attaberry for introducing me to this one!)
Cake — “Open Book”
The Beatles — “Paperback Writer”
Patty Larkin — “The Book I’m Not Reading”
Harry Connick, Jr. — “I Could Write a Book”
and the Frank Sinatra version:
Pat Benatar — Wuthering Heights
Women in their 40s will most likely remember loving this song — literary passion on the radio? Heaven. (I prefer Benatar’s version to Kate Bush’s 1978 recording (although if you want a chuckle, check out Bush’s two videos from that era on YouTube).
Talking Heads — “The Book I Read”
Elvis Costello — “Everyday I Write the Book”
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What are YOUR favorite songs based on or about books and writing?

In the years I’ve been open, there have been a handful of bookstore fires throughout the country, but Sunday night there was one close to home, and it’s shaken me up.
The Book Cellar, in Brattleboro, Vt., suffered potentially catastrophic losses in a five-alarm fire that took more than 150 firefighters from 25 fire departments in Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire to extinguish. There were no injuries, but the people who live in the 59 apartments in the building will need to find new places to live.
I have never been to the Book Cellar, but I’ve become friends with its owner, Lisa Sullivan. She and I serve on the Advisory Council of the New England Independent Bookselling Association. She’s also a regular at the children’s meetings that NECBA (New England Children’s Bookselling Advisory Council) four times yearly. Her insight into bookselling has always been engaging. She’s quick to laugh at the absurdities of our business and she’s always someone I’m happy to talk to. And she’s just full of great ideas that, with her blessing, I freely emulate.
Fire and bookstores are a devastating combination. The flammability of everything is so potentially destructive. And if the fire doesn’t destroy your inventory, the sprinklers surely will. The photos and the videos on the local news here show a massive fire on the upper floors of the building. The bookstore, on the ground floor, appears to be sooty and water is just streaming down the front door. The big question now is, how safe is the building? A structural engineer will make a determination soon and until then everyone waits.
As a bookstore owner, I feel for Lisa and her staff. Although I can’t know exactly what they’re feeling, I can only imagine how I’d feel if I saw my store in the aftermath of a fire, and it would be tragic. I have emailed Lisa to find out more, but have not heard back.  One thing I do know, Vermonters will rally behind Lisa and her much-loved store, just as they did on Martha’s Vineyard when Bunch of Grapes suffered a massive fire almost three years ago.
So,  while we wait to hear the fate of the Book Cellar, go to your local indie bookstore, record store, restaurant or coffee shop today and tell them how much they mean to you and your community, and since you’re in there, buy a little something, too.

This past Sunday I had the pleasure of provided the books for the South Burlington, Vt, public library annual tea and author talk. This is the second year we’ve helped the library sell books during their author talk; last year the author was Julia Alvarez and this year’s author was the mystery writer, Katherine Page Hall.
I love this event because it allows us to work with a local library which is something we really enjoy. And what makes this event even more special is there’s a Barnes and Noble half a mile away, and the library deliberately choose to work with an independent bookstore. And the author, bless her heart, has stipulated in her contract with HarperCollins that an independent bookstore, if one’s available, should always be used to provide books for her signings. I cannot tell you how gratifying it is that an author and the library are both striving to work with indies. It’s this kind of partnership that will keep indies alive and well.
The tea itself was just delightful: Fancy china, finger sandwiches and trifle. While I was busy selling books, a gracious library volunteer brought me a tasty plate of cookies, sandwiches, strawberries and a cup of tea in a saucer. Patrons were thrilled, the author talk was enlightening about mysteries, and we sold books, which was really just icing on the crumpet.

We’ve been having a lot of events lately, and last night was one of my favorites: Gesine Bullock-Prado came to the store to promote her newest book, Sugarbaby: Confections, Candies, Cakes & Other Delicious Recipes for Cooking with Sugar. I like to cook, but as many home cooks have discovered, there is a fear to working with sugar, because it always seems so hard, and so easy to mess up.
“Never apologize when you work with sugar.” Gesine’s sage advice resonated with all the attendees. There is something liberating about being told it’s okay to make mistakes. Gesine’s demo was full of humor and fact. She’s very funny and her presentation was peppered with many laugh-out-loud moments.  I learned there’s a huge difference between sugar at 247 degrees and at 250 degrees. On the left are some of the tools of the trade. A marble slab, orange flavor, glycerine, and baking soda; and just to the right is the induction stovetop that works magnetically. It was all magic. Heating sugar turned into a glob on the marble that Gesine slowly worked to cool it so it could be turned slowly into orange taffy. First she cooled it, then added some flavoring and color. When it was cool enough, participants donned gloves with a spray of Pam and twisted the taffy. We watched, transfixed as it changed color and texture. Gesine spoke about mouth feel and how caramel is different than taffy because of the glycerine that’s barely added to the sugar. When all the pulling was done, and the taffy was properly aerated, we could have some. Shyly at first, people sampled the taffy. And it was so good.  Smooth, flavorful and just delicious. I confess, I used the ruse of needing to get a better picture to help myself to another piece. Shameless, I know, but totally worth it.
The tips were abundant: Don’t spend $200 on a sugar spinner, take a whisk and break the metal apart so you’ve got tines. Just as effective and far cheaper. A lot of sugar recipes need an interfering agent. The way Gesine describes it sugar-making is a rebellion. The sugar wants to do its own thing which usually involves sticking to the sides of the pot, the interfering agent shakes things up and changes the sugar. It’s all fascinating and yummy. When the sugar reached 240 degrees, the room was filled with the lovely smell of homemade candy.
As if the taffy weren’t enough, then she made spun sugar, sort of grown-up cotton candy. Lovely delicate strands of sugar that fall on the table and then gathered into a nest-like shape. Hard to photograph the strands, but the technique is really fun to watch. You take the modified whisk and dip in the sugar and then you sweep it across the workspace. Really, it’s so simple. Even the young candy-makers had no problem mastering the technique. The sugar nests were gorgeous and each a different color because of temperature differences. As the sugar hardened the strands got thicker and less delicate, but they were still show pieces.
Events that are hands-on are delightful. Events where the author leaves behind a massive roll of orange taffy are, well, bliss.

It’s not every day that Erin Hunter comes to Vermont, let alone my store. So, yesterday was a special day.
The day started at the Charlotte Central School in Charlotte. Erin (not her real name, more on that in a moment) was early and hung out in the library waiting for the fifth and sixth graders to arrive for their assembly with her. Two fourth graders bounded over, holding hands, actually squeezing each other hands as to say, “Can you believe it? Erin Hunter.” They were in awe. It was adorable. These were among the three fourth graders who actually protested to their teacher that it wasn’t fair that only fifth and sixth graders could go.
Erin Hunter is the pseudonym for four writers, the chief among them is Victoria Holmes, who was visiting yesterday. She explained that the series began with her being asked by HarperCollins to write a book about cats. Ironically, she’s not a cat person; she’s allergic. She shares writing duties with three other writers, whose job is to execute Victoria’s very detailed plot points. They chose the name Erin Hunter for “very commercial reasons: they wanted to be alphabetically near Brian Jacques, whose readers of the Redwall books might find the series very compelling.
Victoria is a wonderful speaker. She’s very honest about her writing and her desire to write about death and violence. Her cats are dealing with some real issues. She’s incorporated her love of martial arts (she’s a black belt in judo) with the Warriors series. She also likes to kill her characters and inflict harm on them. She starts every new book with a character list and sees who she’s bored with and who will die. The kids were as shocked as they were fascinated.
At one point Victoria talked about one  of the clans, the River Clan of cats that swims. She said rather offhandedly, “Have you ever tried to wash a cat?” Well, proving their youthful need to connect, about ten kids  mentioned something about their cats in water. The kids were  awestruck, but got over their shyness to ask lots of great questions about writing, plot points and character names.
After the school visit we shifted venue to the Shelburne Town Hall. To give you a sense of the volume of books written by Erin Hunter, I took a picture of the sales table. The afternoon event was attended by over 150 people. Some teen fans even came in homemade cat ears. There were serious fans, fans from the beginning who really LOVED the series. One of them asked a question, “What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a writer.” Her answer was surprising. “Do anything but write. Do the things that will give you experience so you’ll have something to write about.”
The audience was almost reverential in their zeal for the series. This was a very happy thing, as they bought books literally by the armload. It was a fun day for all. Old fans were thrilled and new fans were excited. It was so refreshing to be in a room with so many readers eager for more books.
And while she might be allergic to cats, Victoria Holmes sure has embraced them, and in the process, has made legions of fans who don’t mind a little talk of destruction and death.

He looks a bit fragile, like a big-eyed, appealing teen from the 1970s, longish hair and army jacket not quite enough to mask the slimness of his frame. This youthful quality is partly what makes 28-year-old Nic Sheff (Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines; We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction) such an easy author for kids to relate to, but what really grabs them is his openness about his years of struggle with addiction, his recovery, relapses, and hard-won recent years of sobriety.
Before his evening visit to The Flying Pig, Sheff speaks to 150 high school students at a nearby school. He tells them how uncomfortable he had been in his own skin as a kid, and how that feeling of ugliness found a temporary (and false, numbing) relief through smoking pot. He shares with them how the desire for emotional escape led him to seek other drugs, including meth, his first experience with which made him feel like a superhero — and how he spent the next six years trying unsuccessfully to feel that way just one more time.
The kids are transfixed, silent and on the edges of their seats as he outlines those dark times and the rays of hope that occasionally penetrated them. Reading, Sheff says, helped him realize he wasn’t alone in feeling like a freak. Writing helped him understand how and what he was feeling. Sheff tells them that rehab was not what he expected; there was no instant pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and he wasn’t “cured” after his 30 days were up. He was drug-free, but with no idea how to live in a world without his usual crutches, without the tools he had relied on for years. As a very young man, it was hard for him to envision a social life without any drinks or drugs. He felt like his life was over, and so he tested his limits with alcohol and other substances he hadn’t had trouble with before. Surely, he thought, he’d be able to have a drink or two like a “normal” person. But of course addiction is a tricky beast, and his brain and body being what it is, he wasn’t able to be “normal” with any mind-altering substances.
After years of ups and downs, progress and failures, injuries and near-death experiences, great patches of his life spent scrounging and stealing money to feed the fixes, Sheff was finally able to put all the pieces together and find a rehab program and method (including being responsible for a beloved crazy rescue dog) that has worked for him for two years now. He looks forward to his upcoming wedding this summer, and says he’s never been happier or felt more grateful for his life. And that it’s still hard, every single day.
This is the story he shared with the kids, and with us at the bookstore that evening, too, and it was one of the most moving events we’ve ever had. There is something so honest about Sheff’s delivery, so thoughtful and open in his expression. He doesn’t place blame or dodge responsibility; neither does he self-flagellate. Instead, he simply shares his experience as clearly and directly as possible, and there’s something almost revolutionary about being in the presence of that kind of open-eyed, open-hearted sharing. Even when the occasional audience member asked tough questions (a police officer at the school talk was fairly confrontational with him, and an attendee at the bookstore evening asked him some questions that seemed aimed to needle), he handled himself with amazing grace and an impressive amount of respect and tolerance for the questioner.
One of our customers who came to the evening event just posted on our store’s Facebook page: “Thanks for bringing Nic Sheff to town; what an amazing human being and inspiration he is!!”
Booksellers, we wholeheartedly recommend these compelling books — and their equally riveting author — and hope you have a chance to share them with the high school teachers and librarians in your communities. Here is a young man who talks about very real issues of drug use and abuse without glamorizing them for a single second. As someone who’s been through so much and come out the other side—with the scars and ongoing challenges to show for it—he has so much to offer students who are locked in their own cages of moderate to severe self-loathing and unease. For school districts uncertain about inviting a former drug addict to speak to the kids, all I can say is, Nic Sheff is the opposite of a bad influence. He might even prove to be a life-changing speaker for some kids in need.

I just realized that last week marked Elizabeth’s and my two-year anniversary of writing the ShelfTalker blog. It’s been a pleasure to write about the book world. Every day something happens at the store that I want to talk about. And honestly, my customers and friends don’t necessarily want to hear about it, so it’s been delightful for me to have an outlet to discuss the book biz.
In looking through my posts from the past two years, I have noticed a trend in my writing: I like writing about kids with books. Nothing makes me happier than seeing a child bounce up and down because they’ve fallen in love with a book. Every day that I get to see the power of books on a family, and to be able to share that with the readers of ShelfTalker is a wonderful thing.
I looked through some of the comments from the last two years and was struck anew by how great our readers are. I read a lot of blogs, but I seldom, okay, never, take the time to comment on what I’ve read, so it’s a delight to get comments from our readers, some of whom have helped me understand the book world better.
I have no idea how the bookselling landscape will change, but Elizabeth and I will continue to give you our take on it. So, thank you for a great two years and we look forward to sharing our thoughts with all of you.

When we opened fifteen years ago, most of our customers didn’t have email addresses, so marketing was more traditional. We used print ads (does anyone do that anymore?), radio and postal mail, often with success. But with these tools came great expense and a feeling of shooting in the dark. You never really did know what part of the marketing effort was responsible for bringing people into the store.
Boy have times changed. Now that just about every customer has an email address, marketing to them has gotten easier, cheaper and smarter. The email blast has revolutionized how we communicate with our customers. The beauty part is the customer controls it. They have to sign up and decide to share their email address, they can opt out at any time and honestly, they don’t even have to open the email if they’re so moved.
What makes the email blast so effective for our store is, well, after the monthly fee to the company that allows you send email blasts (usually $30-50, depending on the size of your list) they are free. So, take our email list of 1800 people. It costs us .025 cents to reach one person. That’s nothing compared with, say a $500 print ad that winds up costing 27 cents per person, and with a print ad, you have no idea who is actually looking at your ad. At least with an email blast you know 1800 people who expressed interest in your store will get it. And what they get is a full-color, lovely newsletter that promotes the store’s upcoming events, complete with clickable links back to your website so the customer can learn more about books or authors they’re interested in.
The other great thing about email marketing is the ability to see just how many people opened the email, who maybe forwarded it to a friend, who opted out, etc. And the best thing is if you have links in your email blast, you can see what links have been opened, which can give you a sense of what folks are interested in, which can help you figure out how many people might be coming to an event. Also, the blasts always have a coupon, so it’s easy to see the number of people who bring in the coupon.
Oh, and email blasts can be sent right to publicists, authors and the folks who help you get co-op. Nothing says,” I’m marketing an event” better than a well-designed email blast. With email there’s no tear sheet, no invoice from the newspaper. You just send directly to your rep then do a quick follow-up email reminding him or her of your event order and you’re on way to getting co-op for your event. Pretty simple, and pretty effective.

One of the great things about having a large children’s section in my store is the kids. A recent Sunday there were lots and lots of kids in the store, and they all wanted to say hello, in their own unique way.
A boy of three strode up to the counter and said, as he took off his hat, leaving his hair standing on end in a static flurry, “Hey! You got any toys?” Well, as a matter of fact, yes. I said, “They’re in the spinner.” Why I assumed a three-year-old would know what a spinner is beyond me, but I showed him and he kept saying, “Where’s the spinner?” Well, you’re spinning it, his mom and I replied. This question was asked several times and his mom and I just looked at each other and laughed.
The next kid came in, swinging the door with such force it slammed against the wall, causing a breeze in the whole store. He sauntered to the counter and asked, as he always does, “What do you have that’s new?” Wow. That’s a tall order.  No, hi, how are you? He doesn’t mean to be rude, he just cuts right to the chase: books. I love him for that.
A little toddler clearly had just learned to say HI, and consequently was saying to anyone who looked her way. “HI!” She would shout at customers. The family was here for an hour and the store was packed, and I gotta tell you, that’s a lot of “HI!”
A mid-sized redhead shyly approached the counter and said, “Do you remember me?” I had to admit that I didn’t, but could she give me a clue. “I saw you on stage.” Ah, she goes to Charlotte Central School where I emcee the annual variety show. I told her I did remember her. Then she asked if I remembered the song she sang. I was in hot water here and looked at her dad, who gracefully bailed me out. He told me the song she sang with the other kindergartners, which blissfully I did remember. The little girl’s eyes opened wide and she said,”You work here every day and you work at the variety once a year. You have a lot of jobs.”
Yes, some days it feels like I do, but I wouldn’t want it any other way.