Do you prefer to buy used books online or at a store?

We have some good used bookstores in Chattanooga, and I took all of the children to the large one nearest to us, which was still a good drive away. (I don't know why my favorite used bookstore isn't on that list, but we didn't go to it because it was much farther away and may have been closed.)

I wanted to trade a DVD and some books and perhaps find an etymological dictionary (see Mr. Smith's post linked earlier this week). I walked away with the QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins for $4. There were a couple other books which looked good, but I didn't now how much I would get in trade and the girls wanted to take books too. I got about $15 in trade and walked out with almost $6 left over.

Even though browsing the book-lined aisles can be fun, I usually don't like it. I can't remember what I wanted to look for, or worse I can't find it. Last night, I tried to hunt down something by Frederick Buechner. Where should I look for his non-fiction, memoir-like stuff? I didn't see a memoir section. Maybe non-fiction essays? Will I find something by that other guy I've tried to find before, what was his name--Joseph Epstein?

I'm usually disappointed at this place because I can't find what I want and after a while everything looks cheap. What about you?

Joel Miller talks about what author Seth Godin gets wrong when he announced his rejection of traditional publishing:

"Trying to sell books to people who don’t like them is hopeless—it’s like hawking lentils the day after Easter. . . . Literature is like running. It’s not for everyone, but for people who love it stopping after four blocks fails to satisfy."

Note also this video review by Mr. Charles of Mona Simpson's My Hollywood. Good job, sir.

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light!" Publishers Random House and Macmillan are criticizing an eBook deal by one of America's leading literary agents.

Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture.

Publishers are citing active contracts on these works and Amazon's dominance in the market as reasons against this deal. Agent Andrew Wylie doesn't know how to respond, according to the NY Times.

Be sure to scan this interview with a self-published author who has sold many books in the locale in which her novel is set.

As a self-publisher, you’ve sold 50,000 copies of your books. I’m sure every self-published author wants to know your secrets. So, let’s start from the beginning: When your first book was hot off the press, did you have a marketing plan? Did you have an existing platform or readership of any kind?

I had a very simple plan for my first novel. My husband and I were living in Nashville, Tenn., at the time, and when the novel released, we loaded our trunk with books and drove to Sanibel Island, the setting of my book. I sat out in the car with our baby as my husband went in and out of every book and gift shop on the island asking if they’d like to carry the book.

I remember letting out yelps of pure joy and shock every time he returned to the car to tell me, “Yes!” Of course the shops were cautious at first, taking only a couple copies at a time and most did want books on a consignment basis. If they sold, then they would pay us.

Overlook Press comments on an article about how book-signing events go down in New York. It isn't first come, first serve. From the article:

It's just that certain branches are simply better for certain types of books. "There are definitely uptown authors and subjects and downtown authors and subjects," he said. "A lot of it has to do with where a writer has most of his posse. Thus, you're not going to put the latest Tea Party author at the B&N at 82nd and Broadway," Mr. Kirschbaum continued, alluding to the store in the heart of the famously liberal Upper West Side.

The winners of the 2010 Locus Awards have been announced. Winner of best fantasy novel is this metaphysical mystery by London author China Miéville:



The best science fiction novel is this steampunk tale called, Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, who earned her college degrees in my part of the world (I just learned).

Also of note: there's a new contest for new novelists of the U.K. and Ireland. It's The Terry Pratchett Anywhere But Here, Anywhen But Now Prize. Wild acclaim and fortune will attend the winners of this soon-to-be prestigious honor.

A new book on marketing called, UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging has these UnTestimonials on the back. I remember something like this on other books. Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life & Times comes to mind. It has "quotes" from Hans Christian Andersen, The Brothers Grimm, and Aesop. Does anyone remember mock endorsements from Thomas Jefferson and such men for a book?

You can show a smidgen of appreciation for your favorite book bloggers by buying from Amazon through our links. A couple of you have already, so thank you. Who's up next?

"The shortlist for the International Dagger award of the Crime Writers' Association was announced at Crime Fest." (via Books, Inq.)

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) is running a little promotion for reviewers. Write at least 100 words in review of one of their products, and you will earn one chance for winning a vacation trip. If it's a first review, you'll earn two chances.

Do I need to recommend which things (ahem) to review?

The invaluable Roy Jacobsen has a daughter bookselling and blogging now. Her name is Patricia Schnase, and here's a post of her tips for a more pleasant experience for everyone at the local bookstore.

A bookstore affiliated with the National Air & Space Museum has sold 13,200 copies of the book Hell Hawks! The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht by Robert F. Dorr and Thomas Jones. How? Location and what's called hand selling. (via Books, Inq.)

Our friend Daniel Crandall, over at The American Culture, writes about "Libel Tourism," the frightening strategy by which reputed terrorist supporters use the libel laws of Great Britain to censor books (both British and foreign) that report facts they don't like.

He embeds a video which is a couple years old, but informative:


A bill called the Free Speech Protection act, Crandall reports, is now before Congress. It deserves the support of every lover of books and free expression.

A sure sign of Epiphany around my office is the ceremonial ordering of the spring textbooks for the Bible school and seminary. In spite of one accommodating instructor, who told me he made a point of ordering mostly books he'd determined to be already in stock, this batch is proving more difficult than usual. A surprising number of the books on the list are out of print, which means ordering them through Amazon. One thing I don't like about Amazon's system is that, when they tell you a book is available from an affiliated bookseller, there's no information as to whether that seller has one copy or many. So I end up buying one copy each from a long list of vendors, and that drives the shipping/handling costs up.

Our buddy Loren Eaton, over at I Saw Lightning Fall, links today to a fascinating piece at Tor.com by author Mary Pearson, about the importance of setting in fiction. An excellent essay, well worth reading.

I think sometimes setting is almost relegated to the grab bag of afterthoughts when it comes to describing it, but setting is what makes the characters and plot come alive. It creates atmosphere that the reader can share. It reveals who the character is and how they came to be that person. It supports and pushes events so things happen. It is metaphor and motivation, and often even the janitor too, swishing its mop across the stage long after the performance has ended and you are still in your seat and don’t want to leave. The setting is the last to leave your memory.

I've never thought about setting much, because in my own stories setting usually comes pre-packaged with the story. When I write about Vikings, the locale is fairly limited (though the Vikings swung a pretty wide cat, as my latest book shows). And if I'm not writing about Vikings as such, I write Viking-themed modern stories set in the country where I grew up and live. To be honest, I hate trying to write about places I've never visited. I figure that, as oblivious as I am to my own home town, parading my ignorance about an exotic place would be overreaching.

But that still determines what kind of stories I can write, whether I like it or not. Or, as Loren says,

Consider how a simple tale of cunning detective thwarts career thief changes when moved from New York to Botswana or to one of Jupiter's Galilean moons. Despite sharing similar plot arcs, Neuromancer feels worlds away from any of Richard Stark's Parker novels. That's because setting is more than color or icing, more than a chance for an author to wax poetic. It sets boundaries, draws lines, holds the course. It says, "You go this far -- but no farther."

The auction on Edgar Allan Poe's first book, which we mentioned before, has sold for $662,500. Note the beat-up book in the photo.

I was interviewed recently by The Christian Authors Show with Don McCauley. You can hear this interview, today and tomorrow (maybe longer, but I'm not sure how that works) here.

Edgar Allan Poe's first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, didn't impress folks at the time, but it's a rare find at auctions today for antique book buyers. Christie's is selling a beat-up copy of the book which it says could sell for half a million or more, a record for American literature. Twenty years ago, another copy of the same book sold for $250,000, which is the current record price for this kind of thing.

Scott Lamb has started up conversation on the NY Times list of best book from 2009.

Also, in case you missed it, the winner of the Best of the National Book Award winners for fiction is The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor, as it should be.

When Amazon, Target, and Walmart sell a book at well below wholesale price, they can't be making money. So what are they doing? Attempting to hurt every other bookseller in every other city. James Surowiecki writes about the price war for The New Yorker.

The idea is to let your competitors know that you’re not eager to slash prices—but that, if a price war does start, you’ll fight to the bitter end. One way to establish that peace-preserving threat of mutual assured destruction is to commit yourself beforehand, which helps explain why so many retailers promise to match any competitor’s advertised price. Consumers view these guarantees as conducive to lower prices. But in fact offering a price-matching guarantee should make it less likely that competitors will slash prices, since they know that any cuts they make will immediately be matched. It’s the retail version of the doomsday machine.

(via ArtsJournal)

Today provided another of those little rewards that make being an author almost worth the trouble. I spoke on the phone to a lady from Ingebretsen's Scandinavian store.

If, for some obscure reason, you don't live in the Minneapolis area, you probably don't know about Ingebretsen's. It's a community institution. It started (if I have the story right) as a neighborhood grocery on Lake Street, catering to Scandinavian immigrants, back in 1921. The neighborhood remains an immigrant center even today, except that the immigrants now tend to be Mexican and Sudanese. But through all the decades, Ingebretsen's has remained on the old corner, faithful to the neighborhood, dispensing lutefisk, flatbread, goat cheese and herring to a small but grateful public.

Somewhere along the line they expanded to include a Scandinavian gift shop, and they're the best and most successful brick-and-mortar enterprise of that sort in the metropolitan area. I make a pilgrimage every Christmas season, and it's usually a long walk from wherever I can find a place to park. Before stepping inside to join the throng, I have to make a conscious effort to abandon all concept of personal space.

I wrote to Ingebretsen's, along with a couple other midwest dealers in the same sort of line, after West Oversea came out. I enclosed copies of reviews and a free copy of the book. The lady at Ingebretsen's told me she'd read the book and enjoyed it, and had added it to their winter catalog (which I knew about) and to their web site (which I didn't).

Don't mess with me. Among Minneapolis Norwegians, Danes, Swedes and Finns, I now have street cred.

Marion Manekar says the new e-reader from Barnes & Noble, the Nook, is better than Amazon's Kindle and therefore could break Barnes & Noble as a printed bookseller.

Sarah Palin has a memoir coming out next month, Going Rogue: An American Life. You can pre-order it from Amazon for $9--the same at Walmart. Buy it at Books-a-Million for $15.65.

I very well may buy this book, but should I go for the $9 or the $15 price? Why are deep discounters able to discount some books so deeply? Should I care about paying too little for a book, or should I let the publishers figure out their stupid business models by themselves?

In related news, political pundit Bernie Quigley talks about the messages within the titles of Palin's and Mitt Romney's upcoming books. Romney's book, to be released in March, is called No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. Quigley says that title focuses on the past.

"There is hubris and a kind of conspicuous arrogance to it, which he asks us to wear with our chests out. Romney’s title suggests a full endorsement of the Bush II paradigm without a moment’s introspection," he says. "Going Rogue, however, suggests a new direction, a new adventure, something just ahead there in the great unknown. It is a very good title and speaks in essence to the frontier spirit of those who venture beyond the Hudson River or the Beltway."

I missed this while I was off in Minot, and it was only brought to my attention a couple days ago. Our friend Dr. Gene Edward Veith posted this entry on his blog on Sept. 28, asking his readers to go buy West Oversea and drive my Amazon ranking up (in spite of what Phil posted below, I have to admit I do check my status occasionally).

Much thanks to Dr. Veith for this support.

The National Book Award wants you vote for the best of six award winning choices.

1. The Stories of John Cheever
2. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
3. The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
4. The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
5. Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
6. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

I won't tell you who was winning when I voted, but I will say it was the one I picked.

D.J. Taylor asks why Dan Brown's new book is so heavily discounted when thousands of people are eager to read it. Why not capitalize on all of the hype by asking readers to pay full or slightly-off-full price? The reason is that the hype and discount will get buyers into the store and maybe, just maybe, they will buy something else. How does that figure, Taylor asks. Won't it drive the price for other books down?

I agree, and as thrifty buyer (more or less) I balk a paying $25 or more for a book. I remember seeing Robinson's Gilead in the store after much praise, and I wanted to buy it. I was even a little excited. But I think was priced at $28.00, and it was much smaller than I had imagined. I passed it up.

But Brown's fans are even less hinged on reality than I am, so make them pay $20 or more for the most anticipated novel of the year. Tell them it sells for $35, but they can get it for $22.50 if they give the secret word. They love stuff like that, and some will even pay $35.

This year's CYBIL Awards, the Children's and Young Adult Blogger's Literary Awards, will start taking nominations for books published primarily this year on October 1. Learn more about the award and how to nominate your favorite book on their website.

Today was one of the great, dreaded days of my year as a bookstore manager. I finally had in hand the book orders from all (and by all I mean most) of the instructors, for texts they want their students to have this fall. So I sat down at the phone and started placing orders, relying on my efficient and elegant Microsoft Xcel-based system.

And it went pretty well. I finished all the orders, I think (got to double-check tomorrow), except for the one publisher who put me in a call queue this morning until I gave up, and then put me in a call queue this afternoon when I tried again. I left my number on voice mail.

The most harrowing order is always Zondervan (last in sequence because it starts with “Z”). They have a fully automated ordering system which depends entirely on pressing the buttons on the phone dial. I ought to love it, as it involves no actual human interaction, but I think I fear numbers even more than I fear people.

It’s an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed in the last few years, that I never seem to experience particular satisfaction anymore when I finish a major task. Even when I complete a whole novel, I’m left with the feeling Flashman had at the end of Flashman at the Charge, when he’d finally made his way over the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, having fought, lied and skulked his way through fire, blizzard and carnage, to reach a British post at last, and all the official had to say to him was, “Very good. This is a customs post, among other things. Have you anything to declare?”

The reason for the dysphoria, of course, is that I don’t try enough new things.

Oh well. I can live without particular satisfaction.

Annie Frisbie, the Superfast Reader, sends me information about a scheme called BookMooch, a simple book exchange program. After joining, you list the books you want to give away on the site, send them to someone who asks for them (for which you get points), and then use your points to order books from other people.

Sounds like a conspiracy to take money out of writers’ pockets, say I.


You know, it’s one of the ironies of life. Writers depend on the sale of new books to make a living. We only get paid for that first sale. When I shop at Half Price Books (as I do more than anywhere else), and buy used books, I’m not showing solidarity with my comrades in labor, but profiting only the carrion birds of the bookstore.

However, as a midlist author, I just don’t have a lot of money to spend on new books (which are, I think, generally overpriced). Thus do I cut mine own economic throat.

A friend just told me she found a signed copy of The Year of the Warrior in a used bookstore.

I don’t really seriously imagine that everybody who’s bought a book from me at a Viking event, and got it autographed, fell in love with it and wouldn’t be parted from it.

But it still rankles.

Take physic, pomp!

Tim Challies says he was drawn in by a blurb.

Polishing God’s Monuments was an unexpected surprise. A book that arrived (as do so many others) without any fanfare, I quickly skimmed the four endorsements and paused only when I saw Bruce Ware’s name and his claim that this title is “so gripping and moving and inspiring that one cannot put the book down.” Based on my respect for Bruce Ware, on the enthusiasm of his endorsement and on the track record of the publisher, Shepherd Press, I decided I should at least give the book a try. Am I ever glad I did!