It’s Literally Wednesday: Kvetching on Barnes & Noble
Dave | June 13, 2012Pre-kvetching: Congratulations to Natasha Trethewey, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, who on June 7, 2002, was appointed by the U.S. Library of Congress as Poet Laureate. This is as big as it gets.
Kvetching
This Week: Richard Ford, author of Canada, Friday, June 15th, 7pm, Barnes & Noble in Buckhead, free.
Sigh. I would have been thrilled to have Richard Ford at Little Shop of Stories for a reading and signing. I feel strongly about Canada (as does Andre Dubus III in the New York Times Sunday Book Review) and have been happily recommending it at our store. Instead, Ford is going to B&N. Just look at their corporate announcement of Ford’s visit. Look at their description of Canada: the “Overview” was written by the publisher, the editorial reviews from other publications, “The Barnes & Noble Review” that isn’t written by Barnes & Noble, and the collectively meaningless customer reviews. Did anyone at B&N bother to read Canada? Anyone? Not just at this B&N, but in the entire company?
Sigh.
Post-kvetching: I have very mixed feelings about Barnes & Noble. They’re a huge competitor in a tough market in an industry going through tremendous upheaval, and they have obviously done a lot of things right over the years. B&N is going through major changes of their own; Microsoft is investing $605,000,000 in a yet-to-be-created subdivision of B&N that combines online and college bookstores. This will quite likely result in spinning off B&N’s bricks & mortar stores. The fear within publishing is that the stores may go the same way as Borders which would result in the unemployment of many truly knowledgeable and engaging B&N employees and even more communities without a bookstore. Little Shop and other independent bookstores are on the same side as B&N in regard to the Department of Justice lawsuit against Apple and some major publishing houses. And I’m more than a little jealous of the Nook.
Post-post-kvetching: Read books as literature. As art. If you are interested, please go to B&N and listen to the great Richard Ford on Friday. Or go to other wonderful author events this week.
Other Wonderful Author Events This Week
Jen Marlowe, author of The Hour of Sunlight, Thursday, June 14th at 7pm, Jimmy Carter Library, free.
Congressman John Lewis, author of Across that Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change, Saturday, June 16th, 2pm, St. John’s Lutheran Church Elca, free.
Sonya Cook, author of Sweet Auburn Desserts: Atlanta’s ’Little Bakery That Could’, Monday, June 18th, 7:15 pm, Decatur Library Auditorium, sponsored by Georgia Center for the Book, free.
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Publishers have drastically cut back on their publicity budgets. Except at the very, very top, authors themselves arrange their own book tours (if any), so indis often miss out unless the author has some personal connection to the store.
Marketing still exists at the big publishers, but it comes almost exclusively in the form of people who look at manuscripts and tell editors whether or not they will sell. If the marketing people can sell it, then the editors buy and publish. Unfortunately, this shift has almost entirely driven out mid-list books because the marketing people only want smash hits they can take put in the hands of Amazon, Walmart, and B&N. These days, it’s million dollar deals or nothing.
Also, I can guarantee that someone at Barnes and Noble did read the book, but it was most likely the person who decided how many to order for the stores, not a reviewer.
Before the first DBF, I had a Random House exec argue against the possibility of a successful festival in Atlanta based on a Richard Ford signing at the old Oxford Books. Independence Day had just won the pulitzer, but less than 10 people came out for him.
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the story.
B&N will do an okay job with Ford, nothing like what an Indie would have done. In some meeting in a tall building in NY, his publisher promised B&N X number of signings in exchange for end cap space in X number of stores and placement on front tables throughout the chain. Ford, remembering a bad experience two decades earlier, probably said, “Yeah, one of those B&N’s should be Atlanta.”
This is Richard Ford’s first book with HarperCollins, and we’ve done some awesome events with Harper kid authors (e.g. Neil Gaiman, James Dean / Eric Litwin / Pete the Cat). As we sell more adult titles, it would be nice if publishers thought of us. But, yea, I can see where an event at Oxford in which ten people come out for a newly-minted Pulitzer Prize winner would leave a bad taste even sixteen years later.
Daren, way to prove them wrong! And as the AJC Decatur Book Festival quickly became the largest INDEPENDENT book gathering in the country and as Decatur gradually evolves into the center of the literary universe, publishers should reconsider their biases.
Do you mean Literally Wednesday or Literarily Wednesday? That is, are you addressing the fact that it is factually Wednesday or the day of the week when literary things are considered?
Wow, excellent point. Both work.
I appreciate the balance in this piece. I can appreciate the independent booksellers’ perspective. I also agree that there are a lot of things that B&N does right (not all the things, but a lot of things).
” The fear within publishing is that the stores may go the same way as Borders which would result in the unemployment of many truly knowledgeable and engaging B&N employees…”
Thank you sooooooo much for not representing B&N booksellers as idiots who know nothing about books, as so many others do. I work for B&N, my wife works for one of the largest indies in the country – we’re both passionate about books. I snagged an advance copy of Canada but haven’t read it yet. Thanks again for a thoughtful and balanced piece.
I was at the Richard Ford event, and he said he’s a big fan of Barnes & Noble and said it’s a “savior” for readers across Montana, where he lives, for readers.