Flat Stanley Flies

A few weeks ago I received a letter from my six-year old nephew, Quinn, asking me to assist him with a school project. This was an unusual request because Quinn lives 2,000 miles away in New Jersey. Also, Quinn and I don't really speak too much about school when we get together every summer for our week on the beach in Cape May. Our conversations usually are about the important things in life, like waves, hermit crabs, ice cream and bugs.

I was overjoyed that Quinn's project was book-related so that I could add some professional expertise. Ever since he was born, I have been sending him books. Quinn and his sister Evelyn probably have one of the biggest collections of picture book samples in North America. Last summer, Quinn was fascinated by Lynn Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard. I was so thrilled by his jump to chapter books that I began counting down the days until I could introduce him to Philip Roth. However, my wife tells me that six is a bit too young for Portnoy's Complaint. Regardless of what Quinn and his sister read, I'm just hoping to create a couple of dedicated readers.

Here is our correspondence:

Dear Uncl Arsie,

In scool, we read a book about a boy who was flattened by a bulleten board. His nam is Flat Stanley, and he can travel in an envlobe. I am mailing my Flat Stanley to you. Please take him somewhere and writ back telling me where he went. If you have pictures or postcards, please send them too. I will take Flat Stanley back to school and share his adventures with my class. Please send him back by Friday, March 14, 2008. Thank you for your help.

Love Quinn.

Dear Quinn,

Aunt Emily and I took Flat Stanley on many adventures during his time in Colorado. We kept trying to figure out just what he’d enjoy the most. Was he a sports fan? Was he an athlete? Did he like to eat? Did he want to visit other children’s book characters? Did he want a thrill that he’d never forget? You might have noticed that, unlike you and your sister Evelyn, he doesn’t say much, and also his face rarely changes expressions. He smiles at everything. We had to guess what he liked and didn’t like.

We took him to a University of Colorado women’s basketball game. Your Aunt Emily is a big fan of the team and Flat Stanley seemed to enjoy rooting for the Buffalos. Perhaps he was too enthusiastic in his cheering. Another fan, sitting behind us, told Flat Stanley to sit down because he was blocking his view.

A few days later it seemed that Flat Stanley was a bit lonely. He wasn’t talking to us and if you look at him upside down, then his smile becomes a frown. We didn’t want him to be sad. We all went down to the bookstore and he saw some of his friends, including the Cat in the Hat and Fancy Nancy. I introduced him to my buddy, Russell the Sheep. Doesn’t he look much happier in the photo we took of him in front of the bookstore?

We became concerned that Flat Stanley wasn’t getting any exercise. When you and your sister visit, you guys are running all over the place, climbing on rocks and making snow forts. Flat Stanley just sat around our house all day. Maybe he got some exercise while Aunt Emily and I were at work, but we never saw him move a muscle on his own. One day we all went to Beach Park to get Flat Stanley some exercise. The funny thing about Beach Park is that there is no beach and no ocean. It was okay because they had rocks. Flat Stanley turned out to be quite a climber. He also hiked in the mountain foothills.

We introduced Flat Stanley to our friends Stephanie and Elliot and they were quite surprised about how skinny he was. We explained that he was flattened by a bulletin board. Elliot said that was no excuse for his staying so thin. They said that we should have fattened him up. I told them I don’t know what he likes to eat. Stephanie said, not to worry, that she would make a cake that children’s book characters always enjoy. Here’s a picture of not-so-Flat Stanley after he ate more than half of Stephanie’s Pig Pickin’ Cake. It’s made with oranges and pineapples and has a whipped cream frosting.

For Stanley’s goodbye, we decided to give him a thrill he’d never forget. We found a paraglider willing to take Flat Stanley up for a ride. The paraglider flew off the cliff like a giant bird, and Flat Stanley had to hang on for dear life. They soared high up in the air and flew for over ten minutes before landing in a park almost a mile away.

Well, it’s been fun having Flat Stanley visit us. Maybe we’ll see him this summer.

Love,

Uncle Arsen

Literary Scraps for Real Readers

Networking Not Working

One day after work last week, I found myself in a dimly lit music venue a few blocks from the store wearing a bizarre name tag and scrounging for a few bites of food. I was at a networking function for writers hosted by Boulder's Daily Camera newspaper and a new magazine called The New West. I never would have attended this soiree, except that I really wanted to meet Jenny Shank, a writer for New West, who said wonderful things about my blog. I wanted to thank her in person and make sure she wasn't deranged. I also wanted to express my gratitude for the book coverage that she's providing the region on the New West website.

I don't usually go for networking events. I'm not interested in small talk, unless it is about baseball, and I am absolutely terrible about keeping people's names straight when I first meet them. The name tags should have helped with that problem, but they didn't. In addition to your name, the tag included either the first line of a novel, an author's name or the title of a book. The venue's black walls and mood lighting might work for a rock show, but it made reading name tags a challenge. You can only squint at a woman's breast for so long trying to read her name before getting walloped. I ended up calling one woman Jodi, but it turned out her author was Jodi Picoult. The idea of the name tags was that you were supposed to walk around the room to find your name tag match and start a conversation with them. On mine, I had the first line from Ian McEwan's Saturday. I never did find out who had the title, but the bookstore's promotional assistant, who sits five feet away from me every work day, had McEwan's name.

Even without the name tags, the event would have seemed a bit strange. The attendees were an odd mix of published writers, aspiring writers, publishers and reporters. It sounded great until you looked a little closer. The local publishers generally don't publish the type of work that the writers write, and the reporters generally don't report on the type of books that the publishers publish. Romance writers and young adult authors aren't going to find their way into the catalog of a nonfiction publisher. Rocky Mountain News freelancers aren't all that likely to review a hiking book.

I was mostly besieged by writers who had a book that we should be selling or could be selling or for some reason -- usually because it was self-published without a spine -- just wouldn't sell. I listened to them all, took a few bookmarks and anxiously looked around for the food. Every few minutes, the book editor of the Daily Camera got on stage and announced another winner from a drawing of business cards. The lucky person went up and selected a book. I had no hopes of winning because I had left my business cards at the office. I've managed to make 500 business cards last over 10 years in this manner.

It was great to meet Jenny from The New West, and I was very encouraged by her enthusiasm and energy for what's happening in books in the Rocky Mountain region. I must admit I was discouraged by most of the writers that I met. Many of them, especially the reporters, are excellent writers but can barely make ends meet. I was shocked by how many of them hold down full-time jobs, but still need to freelance to supplement their income.

The whole event was a study in irony, since the Daily Camera was one of the chief sponsors. The Daily Camera, like many newspapers throughout the country, has drastically cut its book coverage in the last few years. The difference is that Boulder is one of the most literate towns in America, and the paper rarely utilizes the great writers that are here. For example, the paper hardly ever features authors in any section other than the book page, and it didn't have the sense to keep Clay Evans, their passionate, talented, home-grown book editor. That they could be involved in holding a networking event for writers is almost comical. Perhaps Boulder's authors and reporters wouldn't have to stand around trying desperately to make connections if they actually had a local paper that supported and valued their work.

New Century, Same Old Story

I recently read a novel that was an extremely accurate depiction of the trials and tribulations of today's literary world. Struggling writers, the battle between artistic merit and commercial viability, the plethora of books being published, and the infighting of book reviewers are all featured prominently in George Gissing's New Grub Street. The funny thing is, Gissing has been dead for over a century and his masterpiece was published in 1891. Yet, as Francine Prose mentions in the Modern Library edition introduction, many passages seem to be taken out of today's conversations.

Gissing, a writer in the naturalistic style of Theodore Dreiser and Emile Zola, depicts several writers in 1880s London trying to make their way in the literary world. He's concerned about the working class, the poor and the downtrodden members of the writing class. Edwin Reardon is small-time novelist who can't compromise his artistic values to write something commercially appealing. Alfred Yule is an aging reviewer, novelist and essayist, who has never attained prosperity. Jasper Milvain, Reardon's friend, is his opposite, a man who will do whatever it takes to get ahead. Jasper is one of literature's great networkers, by the way. The two friends' divergent paths tell you all you need to know about Gissing's thoughts on literature.

When it comes to newspapers and magazines, Gissing predicts the advent of USA Today and other dumbed-down publications. One of the more worldly, if less literary, characters in New Grub Street proposes to change the magazine Chat into a publication called Chit-Chat. The new title is supposed to better represent the changes in the literary journal he is proposing -- all the articles will be limited to two inches in length and no paragraph will be longer than an inch. Is it any surprise when Chit-Chat becomes London's most influential magazine on culture?

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the novel:

"Speaking seriously, we know that a really good book will more likely than not receive fair treatment from two or three reviewers; yes, but also more likely than not it will be swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week, and won't have attention fixed long enough upon it to establish its repute....The growing flood of literature swamps everything but works of primary genius. If a clever and conscientious book does not spring to success at once, there's precious small chance that it will survive. "

"If I am an unknown man, and publish a wonderful book, it will make its way very slowly, or not at all. If I, become a known man, publish that very same book, its praise will echo over both hemispheres. I should be within the truth if I had said 'a vastly inferior book.'"

"I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty-thousand copies."

Too many books in 1880s London? I'd love to show Gissing my stack of Random House catalogs.

Let the Readers Read

A few days ago, I was asked to write a short piece for the PubWest newsletter on what independent bookstores, and specifically the Boulder Book Store, do to attract non-readers. Publishers Association of the West is a collection of western publishers. I've spoken at their annual conference in the past and was asked to contribute to the newsletter by a Kash's Book Corner reader who is with Boulder's Velo Press. The question was spurred on by the NEA's "Reading at Risk" report that showed that fewer people are reading now than during an earlier, Edenic period in our nation's history.

I started writing about the bookstore's free giveaways to teachers and schools, our attempts to make the store less stuffy and more inviting to people that might not be regular readers, and our multitude of events that appeal to the general population rather than the literary reader. It was the usual litany of desperate measures that you hear from bookstores around the country.

About halfway through my writing, I just got pissed off. Reading is just about the greatest pleasure a person can have in the world. It's absurd that we have to coddle all of the idiots out there that can't figure out how much fun it is to read a book or even a magazine. Perhaps bookstores would be better served, and the Boulder Book Store does this to a great extent, by catering to the people that are passionate about reading. It's more important to coddle the true readers in our community than become missionaries to the unconverted.


Books aren't going to disappear. If people haven't learned to value reading by the time they would become our customers, our chances of winning them over aren't very good. Even if all the independent stores in the country banded together, their efforts would be a mere drop in the cultural cesspool of our society. Instead, let's focus on the really cool people that are smart and hip enough to read books. Maybe the non-readers will start wondering what's going on and want to join the club. Sounds crazy? Look at Harry Potter.

I'm tired of being flogged by the NEA study. Do people really think that books are less prominent now than 5o years ago? Books were never absolutely central to the majority of Americans' lives. There has always been a select group buying most of the books published. It's hard for me to believe that things are as dire as the NEA would like us to believe. For bookstores, it is really a matter of competing for the book sales that are out there, not trying to drum up a bunch of reluctant readers. Today, there are three bookstores of over 20,000 square feet in Boulder. There probably wasn't a single bookstore that size in the entire state of Colorado in 1958, despite the fact that no one could buy books online back then.

There was a great article, Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading, in the February issue of Harper's Magazine by Ursula Le Guin that discusses the history of reading in America and makes some great points about the NEA study and publishing today. It should be required reading for anyone who ever mentions this NEA study again.

Going to School with the Publishers

The most complicated publishers to buy, for me, are the numerous university presses. This is publishing stripped to its nearly unsaleable essence. There are no glossy two-page spreads in the Duke University catalog, there's no marketing push behind a Penn State ceramics title and there's no name recognition for a Louisiana State University poet. Instead, there is earnest catalog copy, a photo of the cover that reveals the minimal design budget of the press, and a note that the author is an honorary fellow, distinguished professor or senior lecturer at a university far, far away from Boulder.

Despite this lack of marketability, there are some great titles in these catalogs. It's my job, with the help of my sales reps, to ferret out just what might work in Boulder. It's an almost impossible task, but occasionally we hit upon a bestseller, or at least something approximating one. Last Wednesday I sat down with my Harvard, Yale and M.I.T. rep to look at the summer titles. Over the years, I've come to learn that we have some luck with Harvard and Yale titles but that M.I.T. is extremely difficult. That said, Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness by James Austin, an M.I.T. book from the 1990s, has been a huge seller for us over the years. Austin, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado, wrote about two topics of intense interest to our customers -- Buddhism and neurology.

As I sat down with John, my rep, I could only hope that there would be just such a hidden nugget buried in these catalogs. John is one of the best-read and engaging of my reps; he actually understands many of the books that his academic presses publish. He's from Milwaukee and even though his territory covers the northern United States from Buffalo to Seattle, he has taken the time to get know our store and our market.

The first thing we did was go over our numbers from last year's buy. Unfortunately, they weren't pretty. Over forty percent of the titles we brought in didn't sell a single copy. Ouch! The bestseller was Existentialism is a Humanism by John Paul Sartre. Not exactly a fresh new voice. Every season, I pull the trigger on a a couple of titles from his presses and try to stack them up at the front of our store. We work together to come up with the most likely candidates from his lists, give them some marketing exposure in our email newsletter and see what happens. Last year we bet on Galapagos: The Islands that Changed the World from Yale and 100 Butterflies & Moths from Harvard. Both titles were beautiful nature books, but neither one sold well. Perhaps the summer isn't the right time to gamble on fairly expensive picture books. It's a lesson I need to learn over and over again.

With that fresh in my mind, I began perusing the Yale list. As usual, I was greeted by a plethora of titles that I just didn't quite understand. John patiently explained a few of them, like Nudge by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler. Nudge is about how choices can be framed to help people make decisions that will improve their lives rather than make them worse. Once I heard John's full explanation of the book, I recognized a comparison to the bestseller Freakonomics. I bought four copies, convinced it had a shot to sell and might garner some prominent review attention. Jonathan Zittrain's title The Future of the Internet & How to Stop It was one I just couldn't get my head around. Zittrain's argument is that the internet is on a path toward closing opportunities and innovation. By the second paragraph of catalog copy, my eyes were glazed over and nothing John could say was able to awake me from my stupor.

As I paged through the eclectic selections, including books on Napoleon, the hamburger, the Comanche empire and joint pain, I kept my eye out for a book or two that might actually sell in Boulder -- a book that we could promote to our customers. After last year's debacle, I took the safe route and gambled on James Speth's The Bridge at the End of the World. Speth, who has had a previous strong seller with Red Sky at Morning, argues in his new book that our current environmental situation is a serious indictment of modern capitalism. Anything on climate change seems to find an audience in Boulder and Speth's willingness to tie our failure into an attack on capitalism, while not wholly original, should resonate with our readers. Best of all, because it is from a respected university press, I could be fairly certain that Speth's arguments would be well-reasoned and erudite.

Next, it was on to Harvard. I must admit that I find buying these Ivy League presses a bit humorous. The fact that I'm expected to make decisions on books published by schools that wouldn't have taken me in as a student 20 years ago seems absurd. Who am I to judge a worthwhile academic title? Anyway, in my judgment I found it hard to give Harvard a passing grade this semester. I didn't find a single title that seemed worthy of stacking up.

I bought a few copies of The Road to Dallas by David Kaiser, which promises to tell the unvarnished truth about the Kennedy assassination. Kennedy conspiracy wing nuts, like my dad, will buy it, but really, hasn't this territory been mined hundreds of times before? Beautiful Minds, a comparison in the evolution of apes and dolphins, seemed good for our nature section, but a bit of a stretch to try and foist on the general public. Mario Vargas Llosa's collection of essays, Wellsprings, was also intriguing, but somehow a sophisticated book of literary criticism didn't seem too likely to make a splash in the summer.

Finally, I was left with M.I.T. The odds of hitting paydirt weren't great, but hey, I've got to have an open mind. Anything is possible, each turn of the catalog page revealing a whole new world of possibilities. I must admit, it didn't look promising, as I passed on Digital Culture, Play, and Identity, a $30 book exploring the cultural implications of the online game World of Warcraft, and New Tech, New Ties, a look at the sociological impact of the mobile phone. Maybe these subjects would work as magazine articles, but entire books?

As I was about to give up hope of finding a book that we could really run with, I found SITELESS: 1001 Building Forms by Francois Blanciak. At first I couldn't grasp the idea behind this little paperback. It's billed as "a new kind of architecture book that seems to have come out of nowhere." It asks the question, "What would happen if architects liberated their minds from the constraints of site, program and budget?" It's filled with strange drawings of kneeling pyramids, seismic columns and many other bizarre forms. Finally, it started to make sense when I read, "The 1001 building forms in SITELESS include structural parasites, chain link towers, ball bearing floors, corrugated corners, exponential balconies, radial facades, crawling frames, forensic housing -- and other architectural ideas that may require construction techniques not yet developed and a relation to gravity not yet achieved."

Wow. It's science fiction for architects. It also seems to have a strange graphic design element going on. After all, many of these drawings are forms that can only exist on paper. I asked John what he thought and he shared my enthusiasm. We had a book to take a risk on. It seemed ideal for Boulder's strong community of architects and architecture enthusiasts, and also for our customers who seem to revel in just the sort of post-modern aesthetic that this book represents.

My God, after an hour mired in academic catalogs, I'm almost sounding like an Ivy League undergrad.

Lying Bookseller, Smooth Politician

Bookselling has afforded me many opportunities to meet great writers and public figures. I've detailed my encounters with Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates and Thich Nhat Hanh during the past year in this blog. However, as I sat in an overheated middle school auditorium waiting to cast my vote for Barack Obama in Colorado's caucus on Tuesday, I realized that if Obama wins, I can add a United States President to my celebrity list.

It's not a pretty story, and if Obama were a hawkish right-wing Republican who might gleefully classify big-mouth booksellers as enemy combatants, I'd already be looking for property in Canada. Our encounter occurred at the 2006 Book Expo America in Washington, D.C. during a Crown Publishing dinner at the Occidental Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue. The restaurant--a very staid eatery with hundreds of portraits of formerly powerful white men on the walls--bills itself as the place "where statesman dine." You can see why that's true. No normal human being would subject themselves to a five-course meal while being stared at by the members of Richard Nixon's cabinet.

The Crown party, featuring not only Obama, but Juan Williams, Ina Garten, Michael Isikoff and Gillian Flynn, was the top event of that year's Book Expo and there was quite a bit of internal discussion about who on our staff would get to go. I was accompanied by our young marketing manager who was new to the book business and fairly naive about politics. We arrived early and headed straight to the bar. Obama, who was promoting Audacity of Hope, had not yet arrived and, in fact, the rumors were that he might not make it to the dinner at all.

At the bar, we fell into an entertaining conversation with Flynn about her debut novel Sharp Objects. It was the type of novel, a mystery, that I probably would never read. I feigned interest as I scanned the room searching for a luminary to pounce upon. Gradually, I was drawn in by the attractive Flynn and her tales of Hollywood's elites. She's the television critic for Entertainment Weekly. I asked her if she was ever intimidated by a star, at which she laughed and said that actually the only actor who ever made her nervous was Dennis Quaid. "Dennis Quaid?" I screamed out. Then Flynn quickly explained that she'd had a crush on him since she was a girl.

Eventually, our tight, fairly drunken circle was broken up when one of Crown's publicists introduced a few other booksellers to Flynn. I wandered off and, in my desire to snag another drink, basically ran over Ina Garten. I was busy apologizing when I suddenly realized who she was. "But you're wearing shoes!" I stammered. She gave me a look of mild reproach. "Is the whole 'barefoot' thing just a marketing ploy?" I asked with genuine shock in my voice. "My God," I thought, "does the Naked Chef wear clothes when he cooks?" Finally, she broke the tension by laughing. She told me about the dessert that she had created for that evening's meal. It involved strawberries and balsamic vinegar and sounded like something that would go horribly wrong if attempted at home.

By this time, the bar was mobbed and still there was no sign of Barack Obama. I was rehearsing what I might say to him if I got the chance when I caught a few words in Juan Williams' familiar voice booming across the room. Everything I imagined saying to Obama suddenly sounded like the slurred ravings of a groupie. My internal monologue was interrupted by Crown's attempt to get us to sit down at our assigned tables. It was then, as I was moving from the bar, that Obama entered the room.

He was taller than I imagined, but more slight--all elbows and shoulders and chin on first impression. A coterie of editors and publicists guided him through the bar. I stood at a safe distance observing how firmly he shook everyone's hand and how easily a smile came to his lips. It was a crazy scene, with dozens of people vying for his attention. I figured at most I'd get a quick handshake as the whisked him over to a more important bookseller or media member.

Ironically, I was missing a book group discussion about his first book, Dreams From My Father, back in Boulder. My wife had spent the previous two weeks reading his autobiography in preparation for the discussion and she had read a few passages out loud to me. The language was surprisingly lyrical and my wife, a tough reader, had been impressed by his writing style. Since I knew I was going to miss the group, I hadn't even cracked open the book. These thoughts were in my mind as I felt someone grasp my elbow. It was my Random House regional sales manager.

"Do you want to meet him?" she asked.

"Of course!" I answered back.

She guided me through the hordes of people and a moment later I was in front of the Illinois senator. He stuck out his hand and gripped mine as I told him who I was. It was like a cheesy movie scene: everyone seemed to fade away, the din of dozens of conversations slipped to a whisper as he focused on me. I had to fill that silence. I needed to hold his attention for a moment more.

"I just finished reading Dreams From My Father," I lied. He paused a beat and once again I rushed in to fill the void. "I expected a fascinating story, but I was surprised by how strong the writing is. It's really well written for a politician."

His face broke into a broad grin. "Well, Arsen, that's setting the bar pretty low."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just meant..." What the hell did I mean? I didn't even read his book and now I had insulted him.

Things took a down turn when he patted me on the shoulder and said, "I'm just honored that you read it." Now the guilt from my lying and insulting was in full force. I could feel the blood rushing to my bald head.

In desperation I changed the conversation to safer ground. "Are you going to tour for this new book?" I asked.

"We are going to try to do a few things, but I have a pretty busy schedule."

"You have to come to Boulder. It's a tailor-made town for you. We'd sell out a theater in a heartbeat if you came."

"I'd love to get to Boulder," he said. "We'll see if we can work something out."

I sensed the crowd pushing in on us. Our fleeting moment together was nearing it's end. I looked at the portraits on the walls of staid white men surrounding us and motioned to them. "It would be amazing, if you ended it up on the wall in here one day," I said.

He laughed again and as the smile left his lips his attention was already being pulled towards another bookseller. My moment was over and I slinked back into the crowd wondering why I spent our brief time together lying and insulting him.

The rest of the evening went by in a fog. I sat at a large round table with Isikoff, who bonded with a few women from a tiny bookstore in West Virginia, and completely ignored me. About midway through the meal, I began to think that perhaps the Hubris in the title of his new book referred to himself rather than the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, the bookstore's young marketing manager sat next to Juan Williams. She had no idea who he was and when he told her that he worked for both Fox News and National Public Radio she quizzed him on how that was possible. "Aren't they complete opposites?" Williams patted her on the forearm and assured her he was capable of being a good reporter for both.

Later, when she learned that his book Enough basically blamed the plight of many African Americans on their own leaders and themselves, she asked him about the huge amount of racism and white privilege in our society. Again, he condescended to her and told her that his was a realistic look at the situation.

The crowning glory of the evening for her came when the main course arrived. She looked at the crayfish with their heads attached and proclaimed that she wasn't interested in eating anything with eyes. Williams let out a laugh and said, "You're such a child."

When I met up with her at the end of the dinner, she recounted the conversations with Williams and said she couldn't leave fast enough. It turned out that, aside from her awkward exchanges with Williams, her dessert plate was significantly more vinegar than fruit. I told her that I wanted one last chance to speak to Obama and make amends for my fibbing. Unfortunately, as we made our way over to his table, it was apparent that he'd left long before dessert was even served. My chance to set the record straight was gone.

The other day as I sat in the caucus casting my vote for Obama, I thought of that dinner of nearly two years ago. My whole life I've been lied to by presidents from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton to both Bushes. If Obama gets elected, I'll have finally turned the tables and lied to a President.

A Perfect TWELVE

The Complete Book of Aunts seemed like an odd title when it was first presented to me last year. Who would buy such a thing? After all, aunts are usually mothers, daughters, wives and sisters before they are aunts. I'm an uncle, but it certainly isn't a defining characteristic of my personality. I wouldn't even be remotely tempted to buy a book about uncles. I stared at the page and tried to imagine where in the store we would even shelve such a book. I was about to say "skip", when my Hachette rep mentioned that this book was being published by Jonathan Karp's imprint TWELVE.

That changed everything for me. I refocused on the catalog page, noticing that the dog on the book's cover was an alligator. I began to think that perhaps a strange book detailing aunts in history from Aunt Jemima to John Lennon's Aunt Mimi might have campy appeal. I decided to order ten copies and put it on our recommended reading section during the holiday season. Why such a drastic turnaround based on the publisher? Karp, the former editor-in-chief of Random House, is attempting to do something that is completely counter to much of publishing today. He's actually showing tremendous restraint in the number of books he's publishing, he's giving them all personal attention by editing them himself and he's going full bore on the publicity and marketing for his books. Hallelujah. If you are a bookseller, or a reader for that matter, it's like watching a true craftsman at work.

TWELVE, which released its first title a year ago, only publishes 12 books a year, neatly timed to one a month. Karp, who receives hundreds of solid manuscripts from established writers, saw something in Rupert Christiansen's book on aunts to warrant a full month of his company's time. I knew that TWELVE wouldn't let The Complete Book of Aunts die an anonymous death. There would be a heavy ad campaign and clever marketing to back it up. Karp's investment of time and money in a quirky title was enough for me to take a leap of faith and give the title front-of-store positioning. My gamble paid off, with the title garnering over 25 sales during the holiday season.

One of the most unusual aspects of TWELVE is the eclectic selection of titles. When the imprint was first introduced, I imagined a tightly focused house that would excel in one type of book. That simply isn't true. Karp has published fiction from established authors, like Christopher Buckley, and from unknowns like Matt Richtel. TWELVE's nonfiction has ranged from current affairs to histories to memoirs to philosophy and featured authors from John McCain to Christopher Hitchens. It's all held together by a vision of what makes a great book.

"We want to publish singular books -- stories, perspectives, and voices readers aren't likely to get elsewhere with the same kind of authority," Karp wrote during in an email interview. "Works of high quality and broad appeal. Books that influence the national conversation, entertain, and illuminate.... It's possible to fall in love twelve times a year without being promiscuous in your taste."

TWELVE led the national conversation for a while last year with the release of Hitchens' God is not Great. The title seemed to ignite a societal debate on atheism that had been simmering for years. Hitchens' work reached the top of the New York Times' bestseller list and was featured in countless newspaper articles, magazine pieces and radio shows. Hitchens always generates great publicity: you can't attack Mother Theresa and fly under the media radar. But the avalanche of attention that God is not Great received far outpaced his other recent books.

Karp has said in other interviews, when he was first founding TWELVE, that he believes "talented authors deserve a massive amount of attention." So far, he has delivered on that belief. Each book is promoted nationally. There won't be any authors crying because the publicity has been pulled from their titles.

"I suspect our spending per title is greater than the industry average, but that may be true for all Hachette books," Karp said. "Generally, this company (Hachette) has always published fewer titles than its competitors and marketed them more aggressively. That marketing philosophy was one of the reasons I wanted to publish books here. Authors appreciate that kind of attention, and we want to attract the very best writers."

Karp will have to attract the best writers if TWELVE has a chance to flourish in the future. That's going to be a tough task. TWELVE is operating in an industry where publishing more titles always seems to be the way to grow. The pressure to show sales gains, despite falling readership, from the corporate parents of book publishers is immense. Karp doesn't shy away from the challenge.

"Our goal is to keep raising the bar -- to publish progressively better books, by the finest writers, and to help them reach more and more readers. As a business, we won't grow by publishing more titles -- our promise to publish only twelve new books a year is inherent in the name of the imprint -- so the only way to grow is to sell more copies of the books we do publish, in hardcover and ultimately in paperback," Karp said.

I wondered if perhaps Karp was trying to start a trend in publishing. I must admit I'm a bit fascinated with trends after reading another TWELVE book, Microtrends: The Small Voices Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne. Penn, an advisor to Hillary Clinton, discusses dozens of trends that are bubbling under the surface of our culture. My favorite one is that a discernible number of young people are aspiring to become snipers. Those inclined toward military work used to want to fly air force jets, drive a tank, or blow things up, but now the glamour job is the secret marksman. However, Karp eschewed the notion of being a publishing trendsetter.

"This model works best for TWELVE. Larger companies have different goals and different objectives. We want each book to have the potential to be a bestseller. A larger company may not have that objective for every book it acquires, but by acquiring more books, those companies are giving a lot of talented writers a chance to begin to find a readership," Karp wrote. "Personally, I've come to believe the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson: The publisher who publishes best, publishes least. (Not his exact words, but I'm sure it was his intention.)"

In my research for this article, I couldn't find the Thomas Jefferson quote that Karp mentioned. However, we should all remember what Jefferson said about reading on numerous occasions: "I cannot live without books." Somehow, I think Jefferson could live without a lot of the books being published today, but he just might perish without his monthly title from TWELVE.

Hachette Takes a Hatchet to Indies

Hachette Book Group, better known as Little Brown, has been doing a lot of things right when it comes to independent bookstores over the last few years. Several senior members of Hachette came out to Boulder late in 2006 to have discussions with dozens of representatives from independent bookstores all around the country. During those conversations, I certainly got the sense that Hachette was a publisher that really cared about the independent marketplace.

It's not just the words of a few executives that put them on the positive side of the ledger, however. Their actions speak as loud as their words. No one in the business has a better cooperative advertising plan to offer bookstores for their newsletters. They, unlike Penguin USA and Simon & Schuster, actually let the bookstores choose what books they want to feature, and the co-op pool is generous enough, unlike Random House and HarperCollins, that we don't have to be all that picky. Hachette introduced a thoughtful and superbly marketed imprint, Twelve, last year, giving independent bookstores tailor-made books, like Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great and Christopher Buckley's Boomtown, to sell to our demographic. They have also honed their Emerging Authors program, throwing marketing and co-op dollars behind writers that independent bookstores can sell.

It was with all this in mind that I began my Hachette appointment last Thursday. Not even the immediate over hyping of James Patterson pablum (a full-color, glossy calendar marked with the release dates of his eight new books) was able to break me out of my good spirits. It was only when I tried to order six copies of Patterson's novel Sail (co-written, of course, by Howard Roughan) that the appointment quickly turned sour. Suddenly, my thoughts of Hachette went from warm and fuzzy to cold and prickly.

My rep informed me that if I ordered six copies of the Patterson book, I wouldn't get them in time for the national laydown date. The only books that Hachette will send out on time are those that are ordered in carton quantities. I looked at him as if he were speaking Aramaic and was an escaped lunatic from a bad Mel Gibson film. I smiled, in response: surely I had misunderstood him. Obviously, Hachette wouldn't renege on the most basic job of a publisher -- to deliver new books on time. I asked him what he meant. Unfortunately, what he meant was that Hachette, for all its smooth talk and gestures of good will to the independent stores over the last few years, had, in fact, adopted a policy that would put independent stores around the country at a distinct competitive disadvantage. Worse yet, the customers would think it was the bookstore's fault when a beloved author's title was not in.

I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down. It's not really possible to be mad at my Hachette rep. He is about the nicest, kindest man I know, and besides, he didn't come up with this asinine policy. "When will we get the books?" I asked. He assured me that we would get the books within a few days after the laydown date. "That simply is not good enough," I told him. Faced with an immediate decision on Sail, however, I upped our order to meet the 10-copy carton requirement to ensure I'd get the books on time. We typically sell more than half of all the Patterson books (typically six or eight copies) that we are going to sell in the first two weeks of the book's release. I couldn't risk missing that window because of Hachette's ineptitude.

As the appointment went on, I seethed with anger at every book I ordered. Between my buy and the kids' buy, the Boulder Book Store easily ordered over 500 books on Thursday. There were a handful of laydowns that I just couldn't bring myself to order in carton quantity. When those books are released, we will not have them. Despite our large buy, our order isn't good enough for the number crunchers at Hachette. Those will be dark days in our store. Hachette will rev up its publicity machine with a national media onslaught for these titles, and we will invariably have a few customers who will request those titles. We won't have them. Of course, Borders and Barnes & Noble will have them in stock. It's not so hard to order a carton of books when you have a 1,000 locations.

Sure, I could order a carton of every laydown book, but just how much shipping (Hachette's money sending the books to us and ours on the returns) do we need to burn when we know we aren't going to sell that many books? Shame on Hachette for putting independent bookstores around the country in this position.

Obviously, Hachette has figured out that it costs more money to break open the cartons and repackage these books in a timely manner. Somehow every other publisher has worked out a method that doesn't unfairly penalize independent stores. Every other publisher gets their laydown books to independent bookstores on time. Only Hachette has decided to purposely thrust themselves into a situation where they will appear incompetent to booksellers throughout America. In the hope that Hachette will rethink their terribly insensitive decision, here are a few suggestions on how they could address this issue:

• Give stores incentives to buy carton quantities. Perhaps, Hachette could offer extra co-op or discount on the first carton that an account orders to each ship-to location. Gigantic stores that order 5,000 cartons to a central distribution center would only get the deal on the first carton. Smaller indies would have some encouragement to bump their orders up.
• Make all new releases national laydowns. Random House sets all of its new books to be released on Tuesdays. It doesn't matter if it's the biggest book of the season or a book with a tiny print run. The problem with Hachette is that only a dozen or so books are laydowns. They end up getting caught shipping five books at a time when an account doesn't order a full carton. If every title were released as a laydown, there'd be at least a box or two of books being shipped to the indies every week.
• Realize that there is a cost of doing business. Breaking up cartons for independents is just a small cost of doing business. Stop counting your pennies and look at the broader scope of the relationship.
• Up the price of laydown titles by $1.00 to cover the cost of shipping individual books. Will anyone really notice if Sail, already listed at an inflated $27.99, were $28.99 instead?

I hope that Hachette can figure this out, because I'd like to get back to concentrating on all the great things they do. There's a new David Sedaris book, Indefinite Leave to Remain, coming out in May, and it doesn't get any better than that for an independent bookstore. Oh yeah -- I bought 10 cartons of the Sedaris book, plus a display. A purchase like that should be enough to convince Hachette it's worth their while to send the Boulder Book Store a few stray books on time.

Bargain Shopping

The Boulder Book Store marks each new year with an all-store sale on January 1st. We've turned what used to be the slowest day of the year into one of the busiest. I remember working New Year's Day in the years before the sale, when you could play a hand of solitaire at the front register between customers. Now, we welcome all the exhausted, the hungover, the stuffed, the seemingly shopped out, the football-hating customers and give them 20% off. It's not an original idea. We stole it from Changing Hands Bookstore in Arizona.

Yesterday, customers came to the register juggling stacks of books, eager to spend their holiday gift cards. My favorite shoppers were the ones looking for the super discounts. They trolled through the remainders and used books, looking for the deal of the year on books that were already absurdly cheap. We even had a number of customers down on their hands and knees wading through our used book markdowns that normally sell for one to three dollars. I didn't want to break it to them: they were only going to save 20 to 60 cents on a book they may not ever read. Didn't these bargain shoppers get the memo? Spend more, save more.

As I waded through dozens of customers in our upper north room who all seemed to be looking for the perfect calendar, I started thinking about the psychology of a sale. Let's face it, most of our customers could easily afford everything they were buying at full price. In the case of the calendars, they would have had a much better selection two months ago and they would have had the added bonus of being able to circle our January 1st sale on their brand new 2008 calendar ahead of time. Instead, they chose to come out on a cold holiday and brave the crowds to save just a few bucks. Most of the shoppers were our frequent buyers who get 10% off all year round, so they were really saving an extra 10% yesterday on items that are already priced as low as one dollar.

I don't think it's the money that is saved. After all, you could go to the library and save 100% on most of these items. It must be the perception of finding a great deal. The excitement of the hunt. A customer's perception really is everything in the retail business. About three days before Christmas, I had a customer approach me to discuss the "pricing" of our items. He was holding Tony Hillerman's new paperback Shape Shifter ($9.99) in one hand and the "Planet Earth" DVD ($79.99) in the other. He wanted to know how we had the gall to charge $9.99 for a flimsy paperback.

My mouth dropped open as I stared at the "Planet Earth" DVD that was in the hand that he wasn't shaking at me. Finally, I focused on the Hillerman. It was one of the steroid mass market editions that are becoming more popular from the major publishers. They look like the old mass markets, except they're an inch or two taller. I personally wouldn't be caught dead reading something that appears so ungainly, but I tried to remember the reasons the publishers were giving for the new size. The main reason the publishers gave to retailers was that it would allow them to effortlessly milk an extra two dollars from the customers. Their words were, "a more attractive price point for the retailer." That reasoning wouldn't work in this situation. The next explanation was that the print size in this format would be bigger for the aging baby boomers. I tried that one.

"I don't need bigger print," he said through nearly clenched teeth. "I've been reading Hillerman for 20 years and never complained." I was sorely tempted to comment on the fact that he had no qualms about spending nearly 80 dollars on a DVD. It was hard to resist pointing out that our net profit on the DVD was about three times the cost of the Hillerman book. Instead, I offered him my 30% employee discount on the book. In the end, I didn't want to jeopardize the DVD sale. It was almost worth giving him the book for free. My god, even the Boulder Book Store is reduced to using books as a loss leader.

At least I didn't get any bitter comments yesterday. The sun was shining, the air was crisp and everything in the store was a bargain, or at least in the case of Tony Hillerman, it was priced just right.