After my post from yesterday about BookCourt closing and Books Are Magic opening, I saw this New York Times piece today that I thought I’d share since it’s applicable and a logical follow up. For all of you interested in opening up or working in a bookstore, or are curious about how it all works, enjoy!
Category Archives: booksellers
December 07, 2016 
Stacey 
booksellers, classics, culture, great books, hand-selling, independent bookstores, magic, Stacey, year end A special holiday gift in Brooklyn
It was with great sadness that I and many others learned this week of the end-of-year closing of the classic neighborhood Brooklyn bookstore, BookCourt, which has been a neighborhood staple for 35 years. Even The New Yorker payed homage.
I lived in Brooklyn not too far from the store for many years before I moved out of the city, and it was always such a warm, wonderful place to visit, shop, or attend a book event, reading or party. Last year, I went to see my client, Aimee Wimbush-Bourque, author of BROWN EGGS AND JAM JARS and the upcoming THE SIMPLE BITES KITCHEN, there during a winter snowstorm and it was the most cozy, intimate experience being inside that place surrounded by books while she read from the book and her kids ran around enjoying themselves too while outside it was a big, fat slushy mess.
So it was such a happy story to learn that the author and Brooklynite Emma Straub and her husband are going to be opening up a bookstore in Brooklyn called Books Are Magic (how cute is that?). And also that they’ve received a ton of support for it from the community and others. Losing a neighborhood bookstore like BookCourt is like losing a member of your extended family. The neighborhood just won’t be the same without it.
I don’t live in Brooklyn anymore, but I look forward to visiting Books Are Magic before too long. What’s your favorite local bookstore?
Publishing Tuesdays
I’ve been on a book buying tear lately. This mad shopping spree has, unfortunately, coincided with the back-to-school avalanche of proposals and manuscripts that have hit my desk with the abandon of a drunk parallel parking in New York City. So, I’m pretty certain all those titles will end up gathering dust for months while I dig myself out enough to be able to read for pleasure again.
Thing is, a plethora of amazing authors and delectable sounding books are being published this fall. Ann Patchett, Zadie Smith, Maria Semple, Ian McEwan, Colson Whitehead all had/have hotly anticipated novels coming out. And then, of course, there’s the Springsteen memoir which will undoubtedly break sales records because, OMG, the Boss!!! (Ahem, okay, I’m done fangurling.)
What all of these books have in common, is that they are all being published (or were in Whitehead’s case) on a Tuesday. Because, well, that’s when books are published.
Now, I’ve been in the business for roughly 150 years, give or take, and when my husband asked me why the Springsteen book was pubbing on a Tuesday, I mumbled the usual “distribution, PR, bestseller lists” blather I’ve heard over the years. Then I thought about it and realized that I don’t really know for sure how Tuesdays became the “new books” day.
Turns out, I’m not alone. Laurie Hertzel goes digging for answers in this amusing piece in The Star Tribune and reaches no definitive conclusion. Suffice it to say, books are published on Tuesday, so pre-order accordingly.
Returning to the Scene of the Crime
Lauren Abramo and I both have books coming out today, and that’s not all we have in common – Lauren and I also both used to work at Barnes and Noble! So we thought it would be fun to spend a little time visiting the big flagship B&N here in Union Square and see how many DGLM books we could spot. Including, of course, our own!
Lauren put together this fabulous collage of our field trip, which you’ve already seen if you follow her on Twitter (and while you’re at it, follow me too!) .
Agents are almost as proud of the books they’ve worked on as the authors themselves are! In my bookseller days, my favorite part of the job was suggesting books I loved to regular customers and hearing what they thought on their next trip to the bookstore. And being an agent is like that, only better, because you get to be an even bigger part of getting books you love into customers’ hands. It makes wandering through a bookstore all the more satisfying.
Another reason to visit Maine
It’s that time of year again—Maine is on the brain. Stacey took off for Ogunquit this week, and my wife and I started planning our annual August vacation in Damariscotta in earnest last night. Already, we’ve got our tickets on the Hardy Boat for a day trip to Monhegan Island, I’ve planned an overnight camping trip to Acadia with my son, Henry, and we’re heading back to the Chebeague Island Inn for our anniversary. Since we had kids, it seems like our precious vacation days fill up faster than ever. But on the plus side, both boys both tried lobster this past weekend… and liked it!
And as if Maine couldn’t get any better, big news today: a new independent bookstore is opening in Portland. Print: A Bookstore will join the three other independent booksellers in town, and the idea that a city of 100,000 can support four bookstores is sure to warm any booklovers heart. But the more I think about it, books are all around whenever we head up north. Damariscotta, a town of less than 3,000 residents not only has a thriving bookstore in the Maine Coast Book Shop, but the adjacent Skidompha Public Library is the cultural center of town (with possibly the best name ever).
Sadly, Print: A Bookstore won’t be open until October, so we’ll miss it this summer. But knowing that there will be a new place to browse on our way up (we often spend the night in Portland on the way to Damariscotta) is a good incentive to plan a fall trip…
June 22, 2016 Stacey authors, Barnes and Noble, bestsellers, booksellers, business of publishing, how publishing works, news, publishers, Publishing, retailers, Stacey Will books survive if Barnes & Noble doesn’t?
There is no shortage of articles that have been written over the last few years (and beyond) about the death of publishing. There’s little doubt that the industry has changed dramatically since I became an agent in 1999. Back then we had meetings to talk about digital books, and the consensus was it was not going to happen, at least not anytime in the near future and not in a way that would have a dramatic impact on the sale of print books. Well, we all know what a big impact digital publishing has had on the book market in recent years. The good news is publishers are still finding ways to maximize print sales as well as digital sales so it’s another revenue stream to mine that has cost benefit to publishers.
This recent piece in newrepublic.com speaks to a specific, if not new, concern for publishers and the book business – the potential demise of Barnes & Noble. Bear in mind, this has been a topic of conversation for many years and despite rumors, challenges and financial constraints, B&N is still in business.
Alex Shephard mentions in the piece: “In a world without Barnes & Noble, risk-averse publishers will double down on celebrity authors and surefire hits.” That might be true, but we’ve been seeing this for a long time. Same with his assertion that “Literary writers without proven sales records will have difficulty getting published, as will young, debut novelists. The most literary of novels will be shunted to smaller publishers. Some will probably never be published at all.” This has been a refrain we’ve heard on repeat for years.
My sense about the retailer’s impact on the book business if it were to shutter its doors is that it would be a significant and negative impact, but not an insurmountable one. No question, B&N has been a wonderful partner for bringing books to a wider audience. They provide some very nice opportunities for books and authors, from in-store events to co-op advertising (front of store placement) to their now 25 year-old Discover Great New Writers program. And while publishers still rely heavily on B&N’s feedback on many things, including covers (I’ve had several covers change at the last minute because B&N didn’t like it), the truth is that the number of books they purchase for their stores has dropped dramatically over the years. Yes, they still carry lots of copies of the big bestsellers, as do all the retailers, but they take a lot fewer copies of almost everything else.
This, in part, has resulted in smaller first printings for most books from years past with the hope that if the book starts selling, publishers can quickly hit the reprint button and fulfill market demand. But that doesn’t feel like new news to me. I hope B&N can survive and find a way to thrive in a very difficult market, but I feel strongly that even if that doesn’t happen, authors, publishers and agents will figure out a way to make it work, just like we’ve always done.
March 30, 2016 Stacey booksellers, business of publishing, culture, fun, independent bookstores, innovation, road trips, selling Coming soon to a bus near you!
Not in a while has an article made me smile the way this one did earlier this week in the New York Times. Booksellers are getting creative in finding new ways to reach readers, and it’s working! Not only is Ann Patchett’s Nashville indie bookstore doing well, it’s expanding its storefront in addition to taking books on the road for sale on a portable bus! It seems like such a simple thing, and yet it’s innovative as well. Go to where the people are rather than waiting for the people to come into the bookstore, not such an easy sell anywhere with so much available online and for delivery in 5 minutes or less.
As if I didn’t already love every single thing about Ann Patchett, just one more thing to swoon over. The store’s name, Parnassus, actually comes from Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel “Parnassus on Wheels,” about a middle-aged woman who travels around selling books out of a horse-drawn van. So it’s fitting that they are now taking the “bookstore on wheels” concept literally.
I was thinking as I was reading this charming article about bringing books to the masses that it’s really not that different than what Scholastic has done all these years for children’s books. They schlep busloads of books and set them up in schools across the country where parents, teachers and kids can shop in the comfort of their own gym, and a portion of sales gets donated back to the school. I personally buy a majority of holiday gifts each fall at the Scholastic Book Fair, and I’m so thrilled that next year I’ll have one of my books for sale there – Cecilia Galante’s THE WORLD FROM UP HERE. And this year, they’re doing a bus tour called Summer Reading Road Trip with events all over the country so they’re getting on the “buswagon” too. Who doesn’t love a good road trip?
Scholastic’s is a brilliant and a successful sales model that I think is unique, although are there other “bring the books to the buyer” methods I’m not aware of? What are other ways you can think of to get books into readers’ hands? Books on a bus is so fun, I’m seriously thinking about renting a bus to sell books this summer! Ok, I joke, my lifestyle so does not allow for such a thing, but I love the idea of it so much. One can dream.