Tattered Cover Bookstore Denver, Colorado
Every once and awhile, I run across commentary from someone who says something better than I could. As I’ve often revealed in my blogs, I relish my time spent reading Glimmer Train literary magazine. Though it’s unlikely my short fiction will ever be displayed inside that journal’s pages, I thoroughly enjoy the multifaceted writing that appears in GT. I also enjoy the interviews with writers in each issue. For the Spring 2011 edition, Andrew Scott sat down with writer Christopher Coake and discussed writing and marketing short fiction. This is what Coake had to say about the utility of independent bookstores in marketing midlist authors.
My second wife…works at Sundance Bookstore, which is our local independent, and which has been thriving in Reno for twenty years. They’re terrific…They will hand-sell a book they believe in and move many copies. For people like me, whose book will only ever sell in the low thousands, this sort of attention is vital. If six independent stores sell twenty copies of my book…that’s a measurable percentage of my sales.
The big chain stores generally won’t do this. There are exceptions. Let me be clear: I like all bookstores, even big chain ones…But you I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stood in a Barnes and Noble and listened to a customer ask an employee where to find an author I know, only to hear the employee bumble around…
Borders and Barnes and Noble can’t help midlist authors, except here and there, almost by accident. Unless you’re the sort of author who gets a stack on the front table, you might as well be invisible…Our local Barnes and Noble has a pretty good fiction selection…but they still miss some…(I)f you care about literature, go to stores like Sundance, City Lights, Prairie Lights, the Tattered Cover, Square Books, Powell’s. These are the places that understand…Ask their advice, and read what they tell you to.
(c) 2011 Glimmer Train
I agree. The local indies (and we’re down to one here in the Twin Ports now; we used to have three), are the places to find books that the big box retailers either have forgotten or never knew about. In my wanderings around the US and Canada selling my books, I’ve read and signed at over 100 Barnes and Noble, Borders, or Chapters stores. All of them are basically the same: Very nice folks who love books but who have a corporate bottom line and corporate philosophy to address. The little guys and gals, like my pal Sally at Fitger’s (or Anita at the now closed Northern Lights)? Sure, they need to make money: Otherwise the store will close like so many other indies have. But their personal touch, their concern for the little guy or gal who gets up at 5:00am (hey, sounds familiar) to churn out stories, well, that just can’t be translated into corporate America.
So if you value the marketplace of ideas, stop in at the Bookstore at Fitger’s when you’re in Duluth or, if you’re out and about on a vacation, pick up a good regional novel from an independent bookseller. Ask the clerk what he or she would recommend as a novel from the area that sets the mood and tone of the place and captures the essential character of its people. That’s what I do and I haven’t been disappointed yet.
Peace.
Mark
