Building a Shame List from Scratch

When I met Jamie Fiocco, Sarah Carr and Land Arnold--co-owners of Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.'s newest indie bookstore--at this year's SIBA trade show, I was immediately impressed with their knowledge and passion as booksellers, as well as their undeniable courage as business people.

Next Monday, Flyleaf will debut with a "soft opening" (a January grand opening is planned), and since we've been exploring Shame Lists recently, I thought it might be interesting to ask booksellers who've been deeply enmeshed in the process of creating opening-day stock how they approached the Shame List challenge.

"These days, at least for me, my favorite books and reading in general seem to be the last things on my mind," Fiocco observed. "I must say, though, as we’ve plowed through spreadsheet after spreadsheet of title lists, it’s a real joy to have an old friend emerge from the black-and-white lines. Land, Sarah and I had some funny conversations, usually yelled across the hallway as we were going through lists of books for opening day: 'Which knife skills cookbook do you want?' 'Oh, I don’t remember the exact name, but it’s from Norton and it’s got a white cover with an avocado at the top and every other chapter is for lefties.'"

Arnold has selected most of the adult titles for Flyleaf's stock and Carr is ordering children's books. Fiocco is "pitching in on a few categories and some nonfiction, like cookbooks. So, the merging hasn’t been too painful because we all have our 'own' categories, plus Land and I were working together at the same store [McIntyre's Books, Pittsboro, N.C.] before Flyleaf."

One aspect of the process she noticed while figuring out opening stock was that "no one quite understands we want to pick it out ourselves, from scratch. We have found wholesalers happy to create an entire 'opening-day order' for us, but not capable to just give us the data we know we need, like recommended steady sellers in specific niche categories. I’m not saying the wholesalers aren’t helpful; all of them have been incredibly supportive and very helpful, whether we were giving them business or not. It’s just that our decision to start up with stock primarily direct from publishers has been a major undertaking. And if the publisher has only an electronic catalogue, they’re the last to get ordered--just not the right medium for a collaborative approach to buying."
 
Fiocco shared some titles from "my personal 'shame' list, including cooking, but I’d like to say I have a penchant for cookbooks that make good reads."

• Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition (which Ethan Becker "restored" back to the focus of the original '70s edition)
• Quick and Easy Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey (Indian cooking is neither "quick" nor "easy," but this is a great introduction to cooking the cuisine, and Jaffrey’s comments before each recipe are fun to read.)
• Quick and Easy Chinese by Nancie McDermott (local N.C. food writer; same fun anecdotes and relatively easy recipes)
• The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters (I love cookbooks you can read, and this is one of the best. The line drawings scare off some folks but it’s just a joy to read through and learn about everyday food in the process.)
• The Sultan's Kitchen: A Turkish Cookbook by Ozcan Ozan 
• Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual by Peter Hertzmann
• Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue by John & Dale Reed (a great picture book, travelogue and just plain fun to read)
• Seasoned in the South: Recipes from Crooks Corner by Bill Smith (just another great read about food and people)
• A Love Affair with Southern Cooking by Jean Anderson (another romp through Southern cultural history, and oh yeah--recipes, too)
• Molecular Gastronomy by Hervé This (because it explains in scientific detail why water boils faster with the top on)

She also offered some non-cooking favorites "I would hate to be without."

• Coal Black Horse and Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead
• So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger
• A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
• The Last Voyage of Columbus by Martin Dugard (Audiobook version)
• Grayson by Lynne Cox (great YA/adult crossover)
• Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
• Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician by Daniel Wallace
• Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
• The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
• City of Thieves by David Benioff (the perfect foil to The Madonnas of Leningrad)

With the initial orders in place and opening day on the near horizon, Fiocco concluded that she's "never been more convinced that book buying is an art and not a science. Land, Sarah and I know that when we open our doors on Monday, we’re not going to have the correct inventory. We can look through catalogues and sort through spreadsheets until the cows come home, but until we open those doors and start talking to folks in our community, we’re not going to have the right stock, hence the 'soft opening.'"--Published in Shelf Awareness, Issue #1053.

The Shame List Smackdown--'Oh, oh' vs. 'Oh!'

Consider the difference between the "Oh, oh" factor and the "Oh!" factor. For both booksellers and customers, having certain titles in stock is a measure of a shop's credibility. The Shame List I wrote about two weeks ago is something that gradually accumulates over time.

"Oh, oh" titles are those books that a customer reasonably expects to be carried by any good bookstore (Great Expectations or 1984, for example). Nobody likes to stare at an empty slot on the shelf or a computer screen's mocking 0 under the "on hand" category, and then have to mutter sheepishly, "We can special order that for you."

And "Oh!" titles? These are books that establish an individual shop's identity (its biblio-fingerprints) and include staff picks that can often be sold in casual conversation away from the section, or even as a last minute nudge at POS. When a bookseller is in full handselling mode with an enthusiastic reader, the goal is to keep saying, "Oh! You'd love this one..." and pluck it from a shelf rather than "Oh, oh" and where do we go from here?

Several readers responded with their own Shame List thoughts and recommendations.

"Having spent my professional life in the book business on all fronts, I am now working in a small store in Cable, Wis.--the home of the Birkebeiner (the world's best cross-country ski race)," noted Jane Kent Johnston of Redbery Books. "Our customers are lake home owners who come from the Twin Cities, Chicago, Madison, etc.; many are artists who have opted for life in a beautiful, nature environment; and those who have chosen the northwoods life. They are an amazingly well-read population. So, my Shame List is Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, Plainsong by Kent Haruf, Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olssen, A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems."

Angela Cozad, events coordinator for Lafayette Book Store, Lafayette, Calif., "was a buyer for many years at Tower Books and we didn't call it the Shame List; we called them the 'Sacred Cows.' The turns were low but they legitimized the section and sometimes the whole store. Titles included War and Peace, Call of the Wild, My Antonia, any and all of Penguin Classics, the Sunset Western Garden book, Runaway Bunny, Fahrenheit 451, etc. It was storewide, not just fiction-based. We actually tried to have one per rack because we felt they were so important."

On Twitter, @LIBERTYBAYBOOKS wrote that although Shame List was an unfamiliar term, "one book on my list is Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins."

Another perspective was offered by Peter Ginna, publisher and editorial director of Bloomsbury Press, who observed that he "once read a piece by an author about her 'Middlemarch test.' If she went into a bookstore and it didn't have Middlemarch, she knew it was a writeoff. Maybe that's setting the bar too low, but I would certainly agree that if there's no Middlemarch, the backlist pickings are going to be slim."
 
Ginna added that he is "a big history reader, and I often find that it's harder to find a good selection of history backlist titles than a good fiction section. Some otherwise good indie stores I won't even bother going into if I'm looking for a history book. Here's a random selection of titles I'd look for to see if a store had a good history buyer. All of these are important and enduring works that are also wonderful reads:

• Plutarch's Lives
• The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga
• The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
• At least something by Richard Hofstadter (my vote, The American Political Tradition, far less boring than its title)
• A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
• Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
• Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer

"Inevitably, as a publisher, my first test for any bookstore is, how many of my books do they have? I don't expect even a good shop to have every one of my titles, but the ones that have at least a few intelligent selections prove themselves to be smart and discriminating. Extra points for faceouts, double points if they have a couple of the new ones on the front table."

More must-have titles coming next week. And please tell me what's on your Shame List.--Published in  Shelf Awareness, issue #1048.

'Ghost Amusement' & the Spirits of the Season

I'm scared--that's right, scared!--of William S. Pumpkin-Burroughs; of Halloween Bible book burnings; of loss-leader pricing specters and an innocent child whispering, "I see dead books."

Well, no, not really. I'm just trying to get into the spirit of the season with a shout out (scream out) to neglected ghosts in contemporary fiction and to present the first annual Halloween Book Spirits Awards.

First, I believe ghosts need some new PR. I mentioned on Twitter and Facebook earlier this week that, in a publishing world gone mad for vampires, zombies and werewolves, ghosts seem to be getting short-sheeted (even Anne Rice said recently that angels are the new vampires in the book trade). Those of you familiar with spectral vengeance know that we disrespect wraiths at our peril.

What made me think about ghosts was a visit last weekend to the Metropolitan Museum Art in New York to see an extraordinary exhibition, Eccentric Visions: The Worlds of Luo Ping. Although I knew something about his work, I hadn't realized that during the late 18th century, he painted "Ghost Amusement," a scroll depicting "a mélange of ghosts," as the exhibition catalogue so delicately puts it. "The conflation of two seemingly different worlds--evidential scholarship and fanciful supernatural narratives--is one reason why this painting continues to fascinate viewers today."

In 1772, on the day, appropriately enough, of the Ghost Festival, Luo Ping showed this scroll to his friend Zhang Xun, who added a "layer of interpretation" by observing that "ghosts were often vengeful or malevolent spirits and as such were feared by the living. But since Luo had the unusual gift of blue-green eyes, he was able to see and pacify these spirits by painting them. At the same time, through his depictions of ghosts, Luo was able to reflect on the misdeeds of humans and reveal the truth of their nature," according to the catalogue.

And where, the book guy in me wondered, is that book series? Where is the Stephenie Meyer of the ghost world lurking, and wouldn't this be an appropriate week for his or her manuscript to emerge from a slush pile graveyard somewhere? When I was a kid, becoming a ghost was as easy as cutting eyeholes in a white sheet. Perhaps there's a page-turning novel about a "mélange of ghosts" nested in those memories. Bestseller lists and loss-leader tables here I come.

And now to the awards ceremony. As the fates would have it, one category winner for this year's purely subjective and hastily organized Halloween Book Spirits Awards appeared just as I was pondering these questions.

Best Facebook Comment on My Post About Absent Ghosts in Contemporary Fiction

Rich Rennicks of Malaprop's Bookstore, Asheville, N.C., and Unbridled Books: "I'm reading a manuscript of a kinda creepy historical fiction about seances, hauntings and skeletons of murdered peddlers buried in cellars (Captivity by Deb Noyes, due in May from UB). Maybe ghosts and mediums will be the big thing next year. They're due a resurgence."

Best Halloween Bookstore Event Promo Copy

McNally Jackson Books, New York, N.Y. for the McNally Jackson Halloween Embarrassment: "This Halloween we hope book nerds of all sorts will join us to act like costumed fools amid our stacks. We're hosting our annual Halloween party, and that means it's time to dust off your spats and clichés, grab those fangs and poorly executed allegories. We're inviting all attendees to draw on their bookish lore to dress up as a favorite character. Or theme. Or setting? Even a title will do. Anyhow, we expect you to impress us with your book-themed costume. Uncostumed book nerds are welcome, too, they just won't have a shot to win fabulous prizes. Even our friends at The Desk Set, those nerdiest of hip librarians, will be here to get in on the action."

Best Bookstore E-newsletter Subject Line

Cornerstone Books, Salem, Mass., for the subject line to Wednesday's bookstore e-newsletter: "Fantasy Freaks Costume Party and Bernie Madoff Finish Off A Very Scary October!" If I had ever done these awards before, Cornerstone would probably be a perennial favorite due to their location in a village renowned for its witchery. But this year they earn kudos for that line promoting a pair of Thursday night events at separate venues featuring Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms; and Erin Arvedlund, author of Too Good to be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff.

Congratulations to the winners (and the ghosts, of course) and Happy Halloween!--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1043.

The Shame List

You already know about the current book pricing conflict that Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target and Sears are engaged in; a price war that probably won't end all price wars, and their own version of the old state fair Wall of Death motorcycle stunt, where two or three bikes whizzed around a cylinder, "defying gravity and the Grim Reaper!"

Titling this column the "Shame List" might reasonably cause you to think I'll be writing about those 10 inevitably hot--but now literally almost price-less--upcoming titles that have quickly become linked on a new list of their own (call it what you choose), defying retail gravity.

But I'm not writing about them. I bring up the Shame List only because it is an old, venerable independent bookseller creation that I am preemptively saving from potential misuse.

I recently heard the concept mentioned during a seminar at the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association trade show in Cleveland. "The Art & Science of Buying & Selling Backlist" featured Michael Boggs of Carmichael's Bookstore, Louisville, Ky., Sue Boucher of Lake Forest Bookstore, Lake Forest, Ill. and Melissa Weisberg of Macmillan. The moderator was Anne Storan of Paragraphs Bookstore, Mt. Vernon, Ohio.

"Backlist used to be defined by publishers," said Boggs. "Now backlist is much more what you define backlist to be for yourself. Special offers aside, backlist is the books you want to have most of the time."

I was a backlist buyer for many years, so I was intrigued by the insights about a process that I already knew was, as the title suggests, on the thin borderline between the artistic and scientific. The Shame List offers the best of both worlds.

More specifically, the Shame List includes those backlist books every bookstore would be "embarrassed" and even "mortified" not to have in stock when a customer asks for them. Boucher brought up the term while discussing titles that may not turn regularly but are essential to any bookshop's credibility--books, as she put it, that "I'd hate not to have," the ones for which she has to ask herself the question: "How important is this book to me as a bookseller?"

Boucher observed that, when pulling returns, a report was never a sufficient guide for her. "I have to go through the sections myself. I know what the embarrassment factor is."

There are, of course, obvious choices for the Shame List, like Great Expectations or The Age of Innocence. Where it gets tricky is moving down an author's bibliography. Is Dombey and Son on the Shame List? Perhaps not. What about The House of Mirth? Probably. Ethan Frome? Maybe; maybe not. And, depending on where your bookstore is located, regional books can often be Shame Listers, as are books by midlist authors who happen to live in your area, whether or not their titles sell. It's only polite, after all.
 
What intrigues me beyond these categories, however, is the personal Shame List every bookseller develops over time; those books, for example, that you instinctively handsell in a conversation without even doublechecking the shelf to see if the title is on hand. You assume--sometimes at your peril if you aren't the buyer for that section--that it will be nestled in the stacks, waiting for you to pluck it free and place in the grasp of its next reader.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I had to consider my own Shame List and came up with just a few key titles that I recall having often handsold "sight unseen": 

• Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill
• Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
• The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
• The Unknown Masterpiece by Honoré de Balzac
• Train by Pete Dexter

Years ago (I looked it up, in fact, and the year was 2001), Slate ran a piece, "The Literary Critic's Shelf of Shame," in which book critics and literary journalists played "Humiliations," a parlor game from David Lodge's Changing Places "in which participants confess, one by one, titles of books they've never read."

There are no comparable humiliations on a bookseller's Shame List. It's what keeps us in the game.

I would love to hear what titles are on your personal Shame List. In particular, I'd like to hear from frontline booksellers who may not have direct control over backlist ordering, but run herd on their buyers to make sure key titles are always on the shelves.

Factoring in the passion and dedication of indie booksellers for handselling backlist gems, shame can be a good thing indeed. So, what's on your list?--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1037

'Ideas That Work' at GLiBA

Picture a bookseller with a light bulb over his or her head--the universal symbol for having an idea. Now picture a banquet room full of booksellers with light bulbs over their heads. O.K., O.K., if you insist, you can picture energy-efficient light bulbs.

How many booksellers does it take to change a light bulb? Maybe the better question would be: How many ideas can a room full of indie booksellers share in less than an hour? At the "Ideas That Work" session during the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association trade show in Cleveland recently, symbolic light bulbs were ubiquitous, as were great ideas.

The Learned Owl Book Shop, Hudson, Ohio, puts its name "on everything"--T-shirts, mugs, etc.--and recently held a haiku contest where the winner's entry was printed on the front of a T-shirt, with other poems in smaller print on the back.

CoffeeTree Books, Morehead, Ky., creates gift baskets featuring regional books and products and has handled businesses orders for as many as 50 at a time.
 
At Forever Books, St. Joseph, Mich, about 100 people attended a book club symposium featuring sales reps presenting new titles. In addition, one of the bookshop's key staff members is Trevor, a golden retriever who oversees the animal book section where his recommend tags are posted. Last year, for Trevor's birthday party, guests were asked to bring donations for the Humane Society.

Jill Miner of Saturn Booksellers, Gaylord, Mich., asked her staff to pay close attention to the reasons people said they were drawn to the store, so she could react accordingly in terms of inventory range and display focus. "The idea is to make it a one-stop shop."

Holding a Chamber of Commerce "after hours" event was suggested by a bookseller who noted that "even though our store is in a small town, there are people who have never been in it."

Bill Cusumano of Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor, Mich., said his shop displays faced-out books at the same level, so when customers move from section to section, their eyes are drawn to the titles displayed in a line "at a reasonable height. No matter what alcove, it stands out."

Bookstores are constantly being asked for donations. McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, Mich., generates sales and good will by offering specific days on which customers can request that 10% of their purchases be contributed to a designated nonprofit.

Dealing with the ongoing flood of advance reader copies is a common challenge for booksellers, and some creative solutions were offered.

"This summer, we made them part of our summer reading club," said Sally Bulthuis of Pooh's Corner, Grand Rapids, Mich. And Becky Anderson Wilkins of Anderson's Bookshops, Naperville and Downers Grove, Ill., said the stores use old ARCs, especially children's books, as part of a donation program connected with asking kids to also bring in their old books. "To this day, we've probably distributed over 400,000 books."

Other great suggestions:

• One bookstore holds what amounts to a community Secret Santa promotion each year. Customers pick a name from a hat and purchase a book for that person. Only the bookstore knows the names and chooses appropriate titles for participants, then hosts a holiday party at which people open their gifts together (with 10% of the proceeds donated to a local charity).
• Another bookseller has the store's logo on her car, though she cautioned: "You do have to be a nicer driver."
• Distributing free bumper stickers with your bookstore's name and/or logo was recommended.
• Another bookstore sometimes pays staff members ($20 gift certificate, $10 for children's books) to read and review certain ARCs they might not otherwise be inclined to read, but which are going to be of interest to customers when published.
• In anticipation of the release of the film version of Where the Wild Things Are, a bookstore purchased advertising space on the local movie theater's screen saying that it was the place "where the wild books are." Also suggested was putting up book-themed movie posters in bookstores and displaying books at theaters.
• Co-sponsor a community promotion where, if children get their "passports" stamped at the library and bookstore they get into the movie for half price.
• Where the Wild Things Are has also inspired costume parties, where individual photos are taken and posted on the bookshop's website.

How many booksellers does it take to change a light bulb? If those light bulbs are ideas, then a room full of booksellers seems to do the job quite well.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1032