In Praise of Booksellers

The world of words and ideas lost another champion recently with the passing of Nancy Olson, the founder and longtime owner of Quail Ridge Books and Music in Raleigh.  Nancy was a kind, warmhearted and generous person who loved books and loved authors.  When you went to Quail Ridge to promote a new book, Nancy drew a crowd, made you feel at home, and made sure everybody who came in the store in the days and weeks after knew about your work.

Nancy was an independent bookseller, and one of the most successful anywhere.  Booksellers all over the country knew about Quail Ridge and admired the way she ran her store.  Those who studied how she did it knew that she combined the two essential ingredients of any successful bookseller: a love of books and authors and a keen business sense.  She made her store a warm and inviting place, she was a master of personal service to her customers, and she knew how to promote and market.

Not all that long ago, there were thousands of local, independently-owned bookstores in America, a great many of them started by good folks whose main attribute was a love of books and writing.  Any town of any size had at least one independent store, and in larger communities there might be scores of them. 

Then along came the big chains with huge stores and inventories and great buying and marketing clout.  It was devastating for the independents, just as the mom-and-pop grocery stores fell victim to the Krogers of the world.  Hundreds of independents fell by the wayside.  But a few, like Quail Ridge in Raleigh, survived because folks like Nancy Olson knew that a love of books wasn’t enough.  You had to know how to count and how to let the world know what you were doing.

More recently, bookstores of every size and shape – chains and independents alike – have struggled in the new world of e-books and online ordering.  When you can turn on your Kindle and order an electronic version of the latest hot seller, or go online to Amazon and get a physical copy delivered in a couple of days, why bother to get in the car and drive to a bookstore?  The reason you should is that those booksellers who have weathered the storm give you individual service, host authors to tell you about their work, and generally make you feel at home when you walk in the door.

My books are available in all sorts of formats and sources, but so-called “midlist” writers like me would not exist if it were not for people like Nancy Olson.  When you enter one of their stores and ask, “What have you got that’s good to read?” they can recommend a book that fits your particular taste.  To a bookseller like Nancy, every customer is an individual, unique and special.

I sure do miss Nancy Olson.  But Quail Ridge Books and Music is still going strong under new leadership, and when I have a new book to show off, I’ll make a beeline for that place.  And I’ll feel unique and special, too.

And That Reminds Me...

The ultimate payoff for a writer is when a reader says, “That reminds me…”  meaning that something you wrote – a character, a place, a situation, an emotion – triggered something from the reader’s own experience.  Sure, a check in the mailbox is nice, especially when it arrives in the nick of time, but checks get cashed and money gets spent.  What connects with a reader is more likely to last.

I thought about that when I got a note from a friend who had read my recent blog “Among The Graves At Thiacourt,” about my visit to an American cemetery in France, the final resting place of 4,000 of our soldiers from World War One.  For my friend, it brought back the memory and emotion of his visit to the cemetery at Omaha Beach, where American casualties from World War Two are buried.  And that’s the magic of writing and reading: two imaginations intersect through the telling of a story.  What I wrote resonated with my friend.  I couldn’t ask for more.

I get a fair number of similar responses from folks who read my stories.  My first novel, Home Fires Burning, is set in a small town somewhere in the South.  It bears a pretty good resemblance to the small southern town where I grew up.  I set the story there because it was familiar territory.  I populated my fictional town with the kinds of people I knew growing up.  After the book was published, I got a letter from a reader who said, “You wrote about my hometown in Iowa.”  That told me there was a good measure of universality about the characters and the story, and that’s why it resonated with a reader from another part of the country.

Setting and plot can trigger something in a reader’s imagination, but the part of a story that’s most likely to connect is character.  For that to happen, a writer has to be honest and authentic with the characters he or she imagines.  The writer is asking a reader to take a leap of faith into the story, and to do that, the leap has to start from solid ground.  You have to be able to believe the character is plausible – someone you might know – and the character has to be presented warts and all.  We human beings are combinations of dark and light, and if, in presenting a character’s story I omit the dark places, you know right away the character isn’t authentic.  The same goes if something the character says or does doesn’t ring true.  And that probably means you aren’t ready to take the leap of faith.

The central character in Home Fires Burning is a crusty curmudgeon of a small-town newspaper editor named Jake Tibbetts.  I knew I had presented Jake honestly and authentically when a reader called me and said, “I stayed up all night with that book, and if I could have gotten my hands on Jake Tibbetts at three o’clock this morning, I’da wrung his neck.”  But then he went on to say that Jake had a fiercely independent streak and a willingness to speak his mind, good traits for a newspaper editor.  My reader and I had connected through Jake.

A story is a meeting place between two imaginations – the writer’s and the reader’s.  Every reader brings his or her own knowledge, experiences, beliefs and emotions to the reading of the story and finds things in it the writer might never have suspected were there.  It’s a kind of alchemy, a magic that exists nowhere else, and it makes each reader’s experience with the story unique.  When a reader tells me it worked, I’m satisfied.

But…I’m also happy to find a check in the mailbox.

It's Festival Time!

It’s Spring, and that means a raft of literary festivals, especially in the South.  At last count, I noted eleven in this part of the country.  Every state worth its name seems to have one – some as short as one day, some lasting several – in which writers and readers are brought together in joyous celebrations of the written word.

I’ll be involved in two during the month of April.

On Saturday, April 19, it’s the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery.  It’s a day-long affair featuring author presentations, workshops, book signings, food, music, and schmoozing.  More than 50 authors, all with Alabama connections, will be there to share our work and enjoy the interaction with readers.  alabamabookfestival.org  

Then Thursday – Saturday, April 24-26, it’s the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville, home of Harper Lee, author of one of the two truly iconic books in American fiction, To Kill A Mockingbird (the other being Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn).  The Symposium honors an outstanding author and literary scholar each year, and this year the awards go to two longtime friends and truly gifted writers – novelist and screenwriter Mark Childress and historian Wayne Flynt.  www.facebook.com/pages/Alabama-Writers-Symposium/

Writing, as I’ve said many times before, is lonely, painful work – an individual sport.  We scribblers spend hours, days, years behind closed doors battling demons, writers’ blocks, and infected paper cuts.  Then at some point we stagger out into the light of day clutching dog-eared stacks of paper and proclaim, “I just wrote THE END.”  At this point, as I tell aspiring writers, art meets commerce.  Writer meets reader.  To have a reader express an interest in what you’ve just toiled over so mightily is the payoff.  When organizers of a literary festival bring tons of readers together to express interest, that’s as good as it gets.

When writers gather, we talk shop: who’s written what, which agents are hot, who’s got the latest mega book deal; and we commiserate over the profound changes, for good and evil, that are taking place in the book business.  We swap tales over manuscripts rejected, e-books launched, the pleasures and perils of marketing.  The art/commerce thing.

But more importantly, we congratulate each other over having written, and we rejoice in the opportunity to look our readers in the eye and thank them for their encouragement and support.  It’s a love fest.

And for readers, it’s a chance to meet, see, hear, touch the poor souls who labored so long and hard to bring forth works of poetry, fiction, memoir, history – all of the written things that entertain, inform, educate, and even disturb.

If you love good writing and reading, seek out a literary festival near you and go.  You’ll find yourself among folks of like mind, you’ll have fun, and you’ll make a bunch of deserving writers mighty happy.

Give A Bookseller A Hug

Some authors are shy.  I’m not.

I remember a bookseller telling me some years ago about a visit to her store by an author whose work I admire.  This fellow had a fine new book, which the store owner had read in advance of his visit and was eagerly looking forward to recommending to her customers.  She arranged an appearance for the author, drew a crowd, had plenty of books available.  But she realized to her chagrin that the author was a terminal introvert.  He mumbled a few pages from his book to the assemblage, didn’t take questions or comments, barely met the eyes of people whose books he autographed, and scurried quickly away as soon as possible.  It was not a successful event.

Contrast that with another writer whose work I like a very great deal – Pat Conroy.  Pat is warm, funny, self-effacing, accessible, generous, and enormously talented.  When Pat appears at a book store, he seems to reach out and gather people to him.  Pat’s writing alone guarantees him an audience, but Pat makes the experience of meeting him in person a treat.  And it’s all completely genuine.  Booksellers love Pat Conroy.

Booksellers have a tough job – especially independent stores whose very existence has been in jeopardy for years.  The big box stores, Amazon, the e-book tsunami, have decimated their ranks.  In one good-sized city I’m familiar with, there were perhaps a dozen fine independent full-service bookstores not too many years ago.  Now there is one.  The stores that have survived are owned and run by people who combine savvy business sense with a love of books and work hard to deliver personal service to their customers.

Mid-list authors like me survive because of the independents.  We love to have our books available in any store of any size, and we have come to embrace the brave new world of the e-book.  But independents hand-sell our books.  Walk into one and ask, “What have you got that’s good to read?” and the bookseller will have a ready recommendation.  If independent booksellers like an author’s work and are willing to recommend it, that’s huge.

Park Road Books, Charlotte NC  

When I visit a book store of any kind or size, my attitude is that I’m there to help the bookseller.  I’m grateful for the invitation and I love meeting and talking with readers.  I really like people, and I’m thrilled when someone thinks enough of my work to want to read it and hear me talk about it.  If I enjoy myself and genuinely connect with the folks who take time to come out, it makes a successful event for the store and leaves a warm glow that will last long after I’ve left.  I try to be just like Pat Conroy.

I’m embarking on a promotional tour that will take me to a lot of bookstores of all kinds in the next couple of months.  After the years of hard labor it took to bring my new novel, The Governor’s Lady, to life, this is the payoff, and I don’t just mean in monetary terms.  It’s a time when I get to tell booksellers and readers how grateful I am for having the work to present, and the opportunity to present it.

We’d be a poor, sad society if we didn’t have booksellers.  So visit a store, give the bookseller a hug, and take home something good to read.  If you visit while I’m there, I’ll be mighty glad to see you.  Hugs are optional.

Giving Birth to an Elephant

Writing a novel is similar to giving birth to an elephant: the gestation period is very long, and when the dear thing finally pops out, you hope nobody notices that it has long, floppy ears.

Well, I’m in the final stages of labor.  My new novel, The Governor’s Lady, debuts August 29 at Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC.  My first four novels were birthed at the same great store, where owners John Barringer, and later Sally Brewster, have nurtured and supported my scribbling from the beginning.  You might call them the delivering physicians.

This book has been more than ten years in the making, and there were times I wondered if I’d ever finish it, and if so, if it would ever see the light of day.

The book publishing industry has changed dramatically in the time since my fourth novel, Captain Saturday, came out.  It’s mostly a bottom-line business these days, and midlist writers like me, even with decent publishing records, have a tough time placing a new work.  So many books of merit that used to get published with little problem now have a much slimmer chance of finding an audience.

I’m incredibly fortunate.  The Governor’s Lady will be birthed by a wonderful house, John F. Blair Publishers in Winston-Salem, NC.  Yesterday, I held the first copy off the press and marveled at the beautiful presentation Blair has made of my story.  Carolyn Sakowski and her staff have done everything right and given the work its best possible chance to succeed in the marketplace.  They’ve arranged an extensive promotional tour (www.robert-inman.com/appearances) where I’ll get the opportunity to present my book to booksellers, librarians, and readers.  It will also have an e-book edition for those who are making the move to devices like Kindle, Nook and Kobo.  I’m proud to be a Blair author.

Now, it’s up to me and my little elephant.  Readers will decide the merits of the story, and I’ll do everything I can to help the cause.  It’s where art meets commerce.  I’m proud of the work – the characters and the story -- and immensely grateful to everyone who has provided wise counsel and guidance along the way.

If you see me on the street pushing a very large baby carriage with a long-eared little darling inside, at least honk and wave.  We’re on a mission, and we need your good wishes.  A few bucks for the book would help, too.