ADS $10/month (1 & 2), $8/month (3 & 4) & $5/month (5-10)
I’m sorry, but I’m spoiled. I want a bookstore that’s like one we used to have around here, where I could sit down on the floor or in a chair, or just snuggle up in a big floppy floor pillow and peruse books in peace to my heart’s content. I could spend hours upon hours there. And did. And always came away with at least a couple hundred bucks worth of reading each visit, this when hardbound books cost around $20 and paperbacks were anywhere from $3.99 up to $7.99.
Unfortunately, consumers in the area didn’t support the local bookstore, so it folded. While we still have one new book indie here and a couple of used bookstores, too, it just isn’t the same. The indie is not your old-fashioned bookstore. It’s bright, shiny, new, wide open, with no comfortable nooks and crannies, no dark corners, no snugness. Everything feels exposed — naked.
I want comfortable. I want snug and muted lighting with bright spots for reading. I want the feeling of intimacy with the tomes on the shelves. I don’t want noise, people bumping into me with shopping carts, loud speakers blaring, moosak in the form of elevator sound. I don’t want sales specials hawked with bright, burpy labels, I don’t want squalling babies and wives and husbands arguing over finances.
I want the specialty store. I want “personal.”
And I can’t have it anymore because it just doesn’t pay to run a small, intimate bookstore.
What in the world is our country coming to if the only place we can find a book haven is overseas in Poland?
…..HMMM. Idea. Remake The Deepening into an old-fashioned book store as its theme. Now there’s an idea.
Tags: buy books, buying books, old-fashioned bookstore, shopping for books
I believe I mentioned Target, Costco, etc. However, I’m being realistic, not idealistic. Those places sell a ton (make that lots of tons) of books. If I could get one of my books stocked on those tables at Costco, I’d be a happy camper.
Yes, we as writers want to create art, not sausage, but the fact is that sausage sells and art…not so much.
I once considered becoming a teacher, but came to my senses. However, when I did mull that idea, I decided I’d love to use comic books in English classes. Kids that don’t/won’t read “real” books, will read comics. I don’t know if they put them out anymore, but Classics Comics used to do stuff like Ivanhoe, the Iliad and Oddyssey, Treasure Island. If you can get a kid to read even the dumbed down version of a classic, maybe they’ll become curious enough to try the real thing.
My point is that a writer should be happy to have their books in the most extensive distribution channels they can get. Maybe, just maybe, somebody inadvertently picks up your book at Target thinking it’s a Harlequin Romance. They read it. A light bulb lights? Who knows? Your writing, being widely available, might turn someone’s reading habits around. That’d be a good thing.
Oh, and I do love your idea of having The Deepening modeled after an Indy bookstore. We need cushy armchairs and a cat to sleep in the front window.
Actually, one of your recent references did finally spark me to grumble about Costco, Wally-World and the likes. But I’ve heard it over and over and over again. In fact, the fact that Costco, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and Target DID start stocking books was one of the death blows to our local PHENOMENAL independent bookstore. So I have a real hatred for those places. And not only that, but they drove almost all of my favorite shops out of business around here. It’s a personal thing with me. I won’t shop there. I hate them. That’s the bottom line.
…BTW, thanks for finally getting me up on my high horse to write a rant about it.
Oh. And how do you like the new digs? It ain’t a cozy bookstore, but I think it will work nicely.
Yes, it is nice to see books sell, but there was a middle ground and doing away with the net price and allowing K Mart et al to sell below cost has killed bookshops.
Small is beautiful!
Yes, I agree. Walmart, Costco, etc… have killed so many wonderful little shops. But I shop at Walmart. I have to. I live 45 miles from everything else. Walmart is about 18 miles. I don’t buy books there. I don’t buy clothes there. Toilet paper. Toothpaste. Poetic, isn’t it? Soon, we’ll have to cash our checks at Wells Fargo, buy our groceries and toiletries at Walmart, and that’ll be it. Everything else will be gone.
We have one used book store in town. I’m wary of buying used books. I’d rather support authors by buying new. But, there are tons of old out of print paperbacks at the used store, and she has a couple of sofas, a couple of arm chairs, two small rooms with low lighting, shelves, and bean bags. And, yes, a cat. So, I love the place. I try to steer clear of buying anything relatively new there, but it’s great for picking up an oldie. Plus, the place smells like old books. I love that smell.
Liz
Totally awesome. Support that store!!!
Don’t count me as a proponent of big box stores knocking small stores out of business. I’m absolutely not. I’m just pointing out the realities of where authors are getting their royalties. Well, those and Amazon, but that’s just on-line big box.
I hate to see the indy bookstores going out of business. One in my town was the ONLY bookstore which would carry Tales of a Texas Boy. It was also the only store that invited me to signing events. Will Costco carry my books? Target? Walmart? Not bloody likely.
I don’t think any of us are proponents of the warehouse markets. And, you’re right. They not only don’t carry much in the way of books, except remainders and a partial inventory of books on the best sellers list that they think will appeal to their main shopper demographic, but they definitely won’t cater to authors, book signing, or anything of that nature. Warehouse market stores, online and brick and mortar are death to the nice “mom and pop” shops, but probably death to the big book chains, too. When the last brick and mortar book store closes in the U.S., and libraries turn into computer cafes and Kindle rent-a-read shops, a whole cultural nook will have become extinct.