So
I go to Cape Cod to sell some books. I’ve never sold much of anything before,
having avoided the experience save for a brief weekend handing out
fliers to strangers. Er, wait, that was the one job I’ve ever been fired from. Ahem. And
yet here I am, waltzing into two dozen bookstores around this beautiful corner
of America, where The Last Ancient takes place, porting a stack of promotional
materials and armed with only my goofy smile and a vague confidence that people
will like my book if they just pick the dang thing up.
Getting
here wasn’t easy.
I
have kids, see. A wife. Responsibilities. And they’re all located in
Finland--far, far away from the Cape.
This was my wife’s idea, bless her. I probabl wouldn't have come without her encouragement.
“You
have to go to the Cape this summer to get your book in bookstores. It’s now or
never,” she said.
“You’re
probably right, but it’s a long, pricey trip.”
“Don’t
be a schmuck. You have to go,” she said.
“You’ll
be stuck with the kids. I think that’ll be too tough for you all. Who'll tell the Saga and Erik and the great big enormous humungous apple story?”
“Don’t
be a schmuck. You have to go.”
“I’ve
never done anything like this before.”
“Don’t
be a schmuck. You have to go.”
“What
if nobody buys my book? What if they laugh? What if they’re mean to me? What if
I eat bad clams? What if I'm attacked by a shark?”
“Don’t
be a schmuck. YOU. HAVE. TO GO.”
You
get the idea. So I went. And thank goodness I’m here.
I’d
sent a sustained flurry of emails the previous month to all Cape book stores who had emails
listed. I got a grand total of zero responses. I called those same bookstores
the week before I got in to the Cape, which was last Saturday. Everyone was at the
very least courteous on the phone, and a few were downright biblically generous, like Buttonwood Books, the wonderful Cohasset bookstore north of the Cape who invited me to attend a
reading and then fed me a gourmet lunch. Ah, so this is what it feels like to be an author...
My
first day selling books from the back of my rental Jetta, I went to five book
stores, which took the whole day, driving and schmoozing from 8 – 6:30 PM
(distances here are deceptively long). The next two days were the same. It felt so strange to walk in with a
book tucked under my arm, smiling and delivering my pitch to see if they’d want
to carry it. Every bookstore took my book at least on consignment, and one is trying to
carry the book outright if they can get the right deal. Apparently, there
aren’t so many Cape & Islands-set books male readers will pick up. And I
think mine is the only one with murder, mythological creatures, and ancient
coins. Call it a niche industry.
Selling
my strange book can be awkward. I spoke with a few incredibly sweet older
ladies who took a copy to review after a delightful conversation about books and
the Cape and history and whatnot. They looked over my reviews, so I hoped they'd
understood what they were getting into, but in the spirit of full disclosure I
made certain they understood my book has adult content. They blushed when I
mentioned that there’s some deer mutilations, murder, and—er, oh yeah, there’s
some sex. They still asked for the book, but in the way you agree to babysit a
dog you just learned has a history of biting crotches. Sex, I’ve learned, can
be a deal-breaker more often than a deal-maker in these cute little boutique bookstores.
Who knew? I’ll eventually do a whole post on sex in books, because it’s a much
more hot-button topic than I’d anticipated.
Another
sweet older bookstore owner agreed to carry my book, and then bought five more
as gifts for her friends and family. I’ve hung out with some of the bookstore
owners or clerks for over an hour, chatting about this and that. I also give
them Finnish chocolate (my wife's idea), to which they all say, each and every one of them,
“You’re bad.”
Just
wait till you read the book.
What
I’ve learned from all of this is that humility and Finnish chocolate are powerful
charms. These folks get pounded, absolutely inundated, with authors phoning and
walking in pounding their chests and proclaiming their book is the next Millennium
Trilogy/FiftyShades/Davinci Code. While speaking with one lady, I watched her
field two phone calls from two different authors in five minutes. She said
she’d had six calls that day alone, and she looked fatigued from author
solicitations. I saw to it that she would not in hindsight associate me and my
book with fatigue and frazzle.
The
secret to standing out and being liked in a professional context is to make others
feel their day is better, not worse, because you are a part of it. Some good
conversation, some laughs, maybe some chocolate goes along way to that effect.
So far so good, and it seems to keep
getting better. A few large Boston bookstores are interested in carrying The
Last Ancient as well, which I hadn’t expected. We’ll see how they react to a
few bars of exquisite Finnish Karl Fazer chocolate.
