The Bookstore

The picture has nothing to do with the post. Just doesn't my uncle look like Viggo Mortenson in Eastern Promises? (Yes, the Great Slide Project of 2009 continues.)

So yesterday I went to the bookstore.

I bought . . .

--Present for Oldest Daughter

--Present for father (he doesn't read my blog, so I can tell you it's the entire Ken Burns Jazz series on DVD)

--Presents (three) for Significant Other. Since I am sure he has dyslexia, this involves books on tape

--Presents for Baby Girl

--Present for Oldest Son

I LUSTED after at least ten books and one movie for me. I refrained.

The bookstore was packed.

As I posted on Facebook today, books are like crack to me.

And here's my thought . . .

In the era of everyone declaring books are going to be extinct one day and the era of e-books . . . there are SOME people who are always, and I mean forever, going to lust after that specific experience. A bookstore, for people like me, is never, and I mean NEVER EVER going to be about dashing in and buying one book. Though I knew I have ONE book to buy, I dropped a boatload of Christmas cash. I COULD have walked right to the literature section and bought the ONE book and been done with it. But I can't. Aisles of crack cause me to wander and lose track of time. A bookstore isn't ABOUT single purchases for me. It's about reading back covers of new releases and wandering the science and math aisle (sadly, did not get to do that). It's about looking at covers. And opening coffee tables books. It's about mentally making a list of books I covet.

Will I ever have an e-reader? I think so. What would I put on it? Classics. Big thick science books I can annotate. Research stuff. Some faves. Newspapers or magazines, maybe. Stuff I don't want to schlep when I go to the doctor's office and have to wait--ta da, I could turn on an e-reader. I wouldn't have to bring a whole SECOND bag on vacation to lug my books. I would never worry about not having reading material with me.

Will I ever STOP having my experience of yesterday? Nope. They are two entirely different entities. One is an experience. The other is convenience.

Thoughts? And are people like me the MAJORITY? The minority?

Discuss.

:-)

Orloff Visits a Bookstore: An Anatomy of Book Purchases

I learned something yesterday. In this economy, I am getting REALLY cautious about my book purchases. Several times, at Barnes and Noble, books I would not have thought twice about buying a year ago, I put back. I do not want to spend $24 on an author I don't know or have not heard about, or if I am not GRABBED on page 1 . . . sorry. This is bad news for newbie authors because I don't think I am alone in this. And this, in general, is why I am sure editors are skittish about signing new books. It's the economy, stupid, as they say.

That said, if I had a Kindle and could try any of the books I put back for half of their cover price, I like would have. So that's good news for e-books in this oh-so-scientific marketing study of mine.

What did I put back? Several historical biographies. They were big FAT books at the high end of the price chain. I picked up a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln and immediately put it down. While I find her fascinating, I also thought I could get a lot of what I would want to know about her from the Internet. Free is good. I am interested in her story--only by virtue of stumbling on the book about her. She isn't someone, frankly, I ever think about. It's not like physics, which I routinely SEEK.

So what did I buy?

Well, I bought this book on Von Braun. Why? I found American Promethus (a biography of Oeppenheimer) to be my favorite book of the last year, and it was SO fascinating that this period of time interests me--as well as the cast of characters floating around at the time. And more importantly, in the case of Von Braun, involving an ex-Nazi in the U.S. space race shows hypocricy is nothing new to our government. And the idea that a man would strike a deal with the devil (the S.S.) in order to reach the moon fascinates me. That he later helped get US to the moon? Even more fascinating. With enough physics thrown in for my taste.

Then I bought this. Yeah. I know. Totally unlike me. But I SO enjoyed Mike Lawson's book that I was in the mood for another all-nighter. Yeah . . . how exciting is MY life that my all-nighters are books and not sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll? Anyway, they didn't have Lawson's first book in stock. And they didn't have at least four other titles I was seeking. This, unscientifically of course, is BAD news for authors. Unless it was a HUGE name or a title published in the last nanosecond, the stock wasn't deep. So I wandered the stacks and the fact that the hero of this story was named after a jazz great intrigued me. And then it had won an award. I didn't think I was usually impressed by awards, but I guess I am. Then I read the first page. Color me hooked, I bought it.

In case you were wondering, I didn't stay up ALL night. But I did read 150 pages or so and was sufficiently riveted and in one chapter repulsed. I called my mom at 10:00 to tell her this is my last thriller. I really can't go to these dark places, and this was definitely an impulse buy. The equivalent of literary crack. Nope. Last one. (But well written and a really intriguing hero. Only thing I don't like is the hero's ex-partner is black, and the author, British, insists on writing him in a dialect . . . I kind of loathe that idea--it's unwieldy, and he could have gotten the speech mannerisms across with a lot less than the clunky dialect he chose.)

Then I bought this. In hardcover. For $5. LOVE the remainder stacks at B&N. What made me pick it? Science, of course. But also that on the back cover, it mentions how well the author does his research, how thorough he is. So though it is a novel, I am sure I am going to learn things about Darwin that I did not know before. Reason enough for me. I think the remainder stacks, while not great for the authors . . . are good in a way because while I DIDN'T buy those expensive historicals I mentioned, I had no problem dropping $5 on a book by an author I do not know.

At this point, Baby Girl, my bookstore companion, informed me that SHE had chosen her two books a half-hour before and that I was "boring" her. And that really, Mom, STOP picking up books, enough is enough. And she was hungry. So we had coffee . . . (some chocolate thing for her) and split a sandwich in the cafe.

So there you go. A totally unscientific examination of book purchases and my interpretation of whether that is good or bad for the book biz.

Thoughts? What makes YOU buy a book these days?

So I Walked into a Bookstore . . .

. . . and I bought something new.

That's kind of how my book buying goes.

I may (actually, often) set out to buy something specific. Every time he writes a new book, off I go. Or I will read about a "hot" new physics or mathematic book (WOO! Wild woman!) and I head to the bookstore. That's how, years ago, I bought this book. Oldest Daughter and I love to wander bookstore aisles, buying new writers and classics alike. Youngest Daughter and I head off frequently. She reads on the high school level, so it's tricky to find YA high school-level reading but content-appropriate for a 10-year-old, so we have our work cut out for us. She wanders the kids' area, I wander the science.

With Amazon and Barnes and Noble online, I sometimes oder something off the 'net. But that's not my preferred method. I've started buying books for my iPod, so I browse iTunes a lot.

Which brings me to my real topic. You see, yesterday over at Amy's utterly amazing writing blog, there was a discussion of self-pubbed authors giving big publishers a "black eye" in the comments section. Now, I am utterly motivated to read HER book (and she had kindly let me read a copy when it was released, though for some reason my review didn't show up at Amazon). She's funny as heck and she has a specific platform. But I am not, I have to honestly say, motivated to read very many self-pubbed books. To be honest, I'm not even motivated to read any by this publisher. (I could have picked any of dozens, but I remembered their name.) Or any smaller ones that deal with e-books.

I wondered why. Is it I'm a snob about sloppy editing or ugly covers? (Maybe.) Have I SEEN a lot of really bad self-pubbed stuff (um, yeah, can't be a book editor without people approaching you with some really, really bad iUniverse stuff)? Yeah. That. But I had an ah-ha moment at Amy's blog.

You see, when Amy's blog visitor posted about a "black eye" and people elsewhere have had the same sort of rail against publishing ("My God, but it's like the same five guys get book deals and where does that leave the rest of us!"), I thought about it. And I guess I realized that when I walk into a bookstore, I can choose from THOUSANDS of titles. And chances are obvious that not all of them will be what I am searching for. I want to read this. And my browsing limits itself to anime (for Oldest Son and Youngest Daughter), David Sedaris (for Oldest Daughter), kids (Youngest Daughter), religion (me), and science (me again). I may wander to knitting. I always look at coffee table art books (often on sale!). I've got my shelves that I head to. But again, I COULD, if I wanted, choose from thousands. Thousands with (mostly) decent covers and production values, thousands (mostly) fairly cleanly edited. Thousands by talented people. Some of them HUGELY talented as in the idea that they put a lot of the rest of us to shame. So I am simply NOT MOTIVATED to think, there is nothing in this store for me and now I will turn to the vast array of self-pubbed titles.

Are there exceptions? Sure. Robin's book (visit the Shrink Rap blog) is one. I am sure if a pal of mine had a book out with a very small press, I would be motivated. I think SHE IS A TALENT!

But when it comes down to it, I know that we're all trying to bring our A-game and when someone gets published it represents a breakthrough for them of sorts. An intersection of their A-game and market and luck and the rest of it. And so I know when I walk in that bookstore . . . that's what I'll find for the most part. And I guess it's true when Mark Terry and others say we're competing for readers' time and their budget and all the other entertainment options out there AND we're competing with other books on the shelves. And in the end, I just haven't ever reached a point where I thought . . . "Well, my God, this is ALL just not anything I would read and now I must go in search of more obscure writers on the Internet to read." My motivation for that doesn't exist.

So that's how I feel . . . the motivation . . . not there.

But tell me how you feel? Thoughts?

Book People

I spend so much time on this blog talking about the process of writing fiction. I love writing. Even when I appear to be daydreaming . . . I'm actually often thinking about writing. So it's kind of like I am working.

I "hang" with mostly writers. Writers, editors, artists . . . I always feel like other writers kind of get me. Not that I am particularly easy to understand, but at least with writers I don't ALSO have to explain why I like to comb the internet researching strychnine poisoning, or why I find people with unusual jobs--like funeral home workers--fascinating. Why I can't sleep when I am on a roll with a manuscript. Why I like to be alone most of the time. But love meeting new people.

But I forget that I am not only a writing person, I am a BOOK person.

Tonight, Baby Girl and I went to Barnes & Noble. I had a caramel macchiatto with soy milk; she had a hot chocolate. She went to HER book section (she's in 4th grade but reads on an 8th or 9th grade level, so she reads later YA, no longer middle-grade fiction, and then I peruse her choices to make sure they're not TOO racy--or don't have too much violence). I went to MY section (physics). I pulled one book after another down. Books on physics. Books on math. Books on the cosmos. Not cosmos as in vodka and pink stuff, but THE cosmos. I ended up buying THIS by THIS GUY. Other women like HIM (so do I) but I am, admittedly, a physics groupie.

I wandered from stack to stack. I went over to the comparative religion section. I checked out books by him. I looked at cool covers over in the sci-fi section. I went to the children's section. I looked at crossword puzzle books. (I am also a groupie of THIS MAN.) Are you seeing what a geek I am?

I went over to the coffee table books and looked at great photography. Then I checked out some memoirs. Baby Girl wanted three books. I whittled her down to one hardcover.

Oldest Daughter has a wardrobe Posh Spice would envy. She digs clothes shopping. I break out in hives at the thought. But send me to Barnes and Noble without Demon Baby, and I could literally spend all day. I don't have to speak to anyone. I don't have to do anything but browse.

There are all sorts of stats on how we're reading less as a nation. But I don't care. I am an unabashed book person.

So who else? And what are your trips to the bookstore like? Where do you browse? Let us peer over your shoulder at your bookstore life for a moment.