{"id":30833,"date":"2019-09-06T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30833"},"modified":"2019-09-06T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-06T12:00:00","slug":"an-author-turned-bookseller-talks-life-on-the-other-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=30833","title":{"rendered":"Life on the Other Side: Notes from an Author Turned Bookseller"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several of us on the ShelfTalker team have been reflecting lately about some of the intricacies of the bookseller \/ author relationship, and I thought it might be interesting to ask an author to weigh in. As it so happens, we have an author on our team these days. With over a decade of experience as an author and editor and now with just about a year at BookPeople, Leila Sales<\/a> has worn a lot of different hats in the book industry, so I thought it would be fun to get some insight into her time on the bookselling side of the fence.
\nMG:\u00a0What made you want to join the BookPeople team?\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong>
\nLS: A reason to put on real clothes and leave the house on a fairly regular basis. Also, a community, colleagues, camaraderie. People with whom I can regularly talk about books and exchange ideas. Consistent access to readers, so I can see what they\u2019re excited about and why. A place to bring leftover baked goods, or eat other people\u2019s leftover baked goods. I could go on.
\n
\nMG: How do you like handselling? Has it been different than you thought?\u00a0<\/strong>
\nLS: I am way worse at handselling than I thought I would be! Turns out there\u2019s a huge difference between refining your pitch over the course of weeks or months and then delivering it with a carefully designed powerpoint at launch, and suddenly springing into action to tell a kid why he will like some random book that maybe you haven\u2019t actually read or don\u2019t totally remember. Unless I wrote or edited a book, and therefore read it a dozen times, I often don\u2019t remember enough details to have a good handselling spiel, even if I really love it! The sheer number of times that I find myself saying, \u201cIt’s about a girl\u2026 I promise it\u2019s really good!\u201d is embarrassing.
\nOn the flipside, though, I am TERRIFIC at handselling books I edited. All that practice for launch really paid off.
\nMG: Have you as an author changed how you interact with booksellers now that you\u2019ve been in their shoes?\u00a0<\/strong>
\nLS: I make more of a point now to interact with them as whole people. The booksellers I\u2019ve gotten to know at BookPeople are also school librarians, actors, PhD candidates, farmers, filmmakers\u2026 and obviously I\u2019m a writer and an editor. Bookselling is just one part of who we are, and this job has reminded me that that\u2019s true of EVERYONE who works retail.
\nI was telling one customer at BookPeople about some of the books I\u2019d written, and she literally said to me, \u201cSo what happened? Working at a bookstore seems like a real step down from being an author!\u201d I was like, \u201cWell, I do both!\u201d It made me aware of how easy it is to default to the assumption that people who work retail are doing it because they have nothing else going on, not because it\u2019s a choice or a passion.
\nMG: Do you have advice for other authors trying to build relationships with booksellers\u2014or to market themselves to stores?\u00a0<\/strong>
\nLS: What I\u2019ve realized is that the majority of customers come in with a predictable list of questions\u2014e.g. \u201cShe\u2019s 10 years old and looking for something to read after Wings of Fire,\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s eight years old and has trouble sitting still long enough to read a whole book,\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s 11 years old and has read every Percy Jackson book,\u201d etc. So, as a bookseller, I develop go-to answers for each of these questions: \u201cShe likes Wings of Fire? Has she tried the Warriors series?\u201d The challenge for authors (and publishers) is: How do I get MY book to be the booksellers\u2019 go-to answer?
\nFor example, if a teen comes in and says she likes To All the Boys I\u2019ve Loved Before<\/em> and what should she read next, the first book I think of is J.B. Howard\u2019s When I Was Summer<\/em>, because I edited it and I love it. There are any number of books that could respond to this need, but that\u2019s the one that I personally go to first. What does it take to make OTHER booksellers go to it first, too?
\nA big part of it is getting the booksellers to read your books. We\u2019re far more likely to handsell things we\u2019ve actually read, because we can talk about them with more confidence. But that just leads to the question: what does it take to get a bookseller to read your book? I mean, buzz, obviously. I feel like half my co-workers at BookPeople read Casey McQuiston\u2019s Red, White, and Royal Blue<\/em> because of its buzz. But how does it work as an author just walking into a bookstore, introducing yourself to a bookseller, and trying to convince her want to read your book? I don\u2019t know. That is the million-dollar question.\u00a0<\/strong>
\nMG: There’s obviously a whole list of books you’ve either edited or published yourself. Has anything surprised you about seeing those books out in the wild\u00a0(or talking to customers about them)?<\/strong>
\nLS: I\u2019ve loved seeing how much enthusiasm and awareness there is for Max Brallier\u2019s Last Kids on Earth series. Obviously I knew the series was succeeding because I had the numbers, but that\u2019s different from actually meeting devoted nine-year-old monster fans in person. Though I\u2019ve also been made more aware of the inherent challenges of shelving and categorizing. Like, we also published Last Kids on Earth Mad Libs. But they don\u2019t live with the rest of the Last Kids books; they live with the rest of the Mad Libs. So these nine-year-old monster fans don\u2019t find them.
\nOr, for another example, I edited this amazing art puzzle book by MacArthur Fellow Xu Bing, called Look! What Do You See? <\/em>It is fabulous\u2014but what section does it go in? Is it \u201colder picture books\u201d or \u201cforeign language\u201d or \u201cart\u201d or \u201cgames\u201d? Those are all in different parts of the kids\u2019 section. Where should it go so that a customer who\u2019s just browsing will ever come across it?
\nMG: What are your go-to books to handsell these days?<\/strong>
\nLS: Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee\u2019s Bink and Gollie<\/em>. Ellen Raskin\u2019s The Westing Game<\/em>. Kate Beaton\u2019s The Princess and the Pony<\/em>. Elizabeth Wein\u2019s Code Name Verity<\/em>. Dan Santat\u2019s After the Fall<\/em>. And of course anything that I wrote or edited. Maybe I should have more shame about handselling my own books, but honestly if I think a kid might like it, I just want them to have it.
\n 
\nInterested in more of Leila\u2019s insights? She wrote a really great piece<\/a> in PW<\/em> last year about some of the ways authors and editors can understand each other better too.
\n 
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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