It’s been happening more and more: customers are snapping pictures of books at the bookstore. I know some of these photos are purely for memory. We’ve all done that. Sometimes taking a photo is easier than writing down a title. And sometimes, taking a picture of a book is an easy way to go home and order it on Amazon. Customers who use bricks and mortar stores as a showroom for Amazon are doing a disservice to everyone. And there’s seemingly nothing I can do about it. Continue reading →

We often talk about reading as something we share with children. Reading a book to a child is always a lovely moment. I’ve noticed that sometimes, as kids get older, usually five and up, they want to share reading with a parent, or even a stuffed animal. Can these kids read yet? Most likely, no, but that’s not the point. These kids have grasped the real power of books: they are for sharing. This weekend I was struck by several kids who wanted to share their books.
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A bookseller first wandering into what a reading specialist described to me recently as the dark underworld of early leveled readers is bound to feel that he or she has wandered into the wrong trade show. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that it is not so much the wrong trade show but rather that one’s trade publisher colleagues, who ought to be there, are not.
The Reading Recovery program, which is the core in school resource for struggling emergent readers, is a 20-step stairway constructed for the roughly 15% of lower elementary schools students who are struggling to read. The stairway exits into the multidimensional world of written words, that marvelous place which average and proficient readers reach by walking or running up an adjacent slope.
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Movie versions of kids’ books are iffy. A few are great; many are mediocre or worse. I always encourage children to read the book before seeing the movie, because the book is almost always better. That said, there are some books based on real events that could be fantastic movies. For instance:
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I am going on vacation next week with a very good friend. Stephanie is a great reader. We actually became friends through the bookstore and her weekly Saturday trips to the store. Steph will be gone two weeks; the first week she’s traveling with her friend Kris and then I join them on the beach the second week. Steph actually sent out an email about a month ago seeking book coordination so no one would bring the same book. This is a level of reading organization I do not possess. Continue reading →

There is something utterly charming about little kids recognizing the books they have at home when they come to the bookstore. Little ones come in every day and almost all under the age of five feel the need to announce when they see a book they know from home. There is comfort in the familiar. The characters in the books have become friends, the artwork can be anticipated and there are no surprises.  Continue reading →

Few things put a strain on the twin mandates of a bookstore, to provide a happy and engaging experience for our customers, and to sell books, as do events. Book sales are the canary in the coal mine here. Sometimes the reason is rather obvious: poor attendance. A well-attended event with poor sales brings us back to the first prime mandate. Customers were suffering in some way. I’m against that.
We recently had a two-author joint book launch for two volumes of poetry — good poets, good presenters, and well liked in the community. As the event loomed I reflected on a trend I had noticed in recent years, well-attended events with poor sales, both at the store, and at the local university’s visiting writer’s program. And I had a bit of an epiphany that I wanted to put out for discussion here. The problem had a name. The culprit was the Q&A.
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Sometimes when publishers want to re-energize a book or (more often) a series from the past, they do a cover redesign. Often this is warranted — nothing scares away young readers faster than dated or ugly covers. Remember how the Quentin Blake covers re-energized and united all of the Roald Dahl books? Even though I still mourn the loss of William Pène du Bois’ art for The Magic Finger and Nancy Ekholm Burkert’s James and the Giant Peach, there’s no denying the effect those new covers had on book sales. And they breathed new life into the timeless Edward Eager titles for young readers, as well.*

There are a number of books I have a hard time handing to kids, because their covers unfortunately lack child appeal. E. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle, a book I adored as a fourth-grader and read numerous times, once had a marvelous cover, but here’s the paperback I’ve been forced to try to get kids to look at for 20 years (not kidding; it came out in 1995).
Burnt orange is not a color kids gravitate toward, to put it kindly, and while the Harry Potter series might have given distant castle images a nudge up the popularity chart, this cover does absolutely nothing to telegraph the lively humor, magic, imagination, and adventure in this story. You should see the distaste in kids’ eyes when we try to hand them this book – they don’t even want to consider it. For the love of all things magical, PLEASE update this cover!
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The nature of sales meeting have changed since we opened 20 years ago. Back then, a rep would mail you pounds of catalogs, you’d mark them up, and then meet in person to go over your order. I have lamented before about how much I miss these catalogs. Yes, I know they’re bad for the environment, but they did make sales meeting better. I was better prepared, had more notes and didn’t miss any titles. Now that Edelweiss has proven itself to be the way of the future, things are so different, and meetings have changed. Below is my list of things reps can do in this new age to make meetings more fun and profitable for all.  Continue reading →

It’s that time of year again, when bills are due and money is tight. The flush of the holiday season has been replaced by the chill of winter and customers are not spending money the way they did in December. I am the chief bill-payer of the bookstore, and I try to do a good job, but every once in a while, a bill or two slips through the cracks. Often this bill belongs to one of the small presses, who don’t send follow-up emails. This is a bad setup. The little guys should always get paid first and I was feel horrible when this doesn’t happen. Occasionally, these small presses or distributors send very funny letters in search of payment. Continue reading →