Ha Ha! Bibliophilic Boasting!
Sep. 25th, 2005 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
artyartieIt's worse than being a kid in a candy store - it's more like being an alcoholic in a wine cellar, where they keep pushing free bottles at you.
My friends I'm staying with are in the long process of opening up a bookstore. It will be sometime before they have a storefront - bookstores, alas, are not cheap. Until then, however, we'll be selling to schools, libraries and churches in the area, and will be doing holiday book orders to area teachers. These past two days, we attended the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association, otherwise known as publishers madly pushing advance reader copies at you - and sometimes copies of current titles.
The experience is somewhat surreal - rows and rows of tables full of books, bookmarks, journals and other book paraphernalia. All of the big houses are there - Penguin, Chronicle, Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin, etc. There's a number of local publishers, and of course, all of us mountainy and plainy booksellers struggling under loads and loads of ARCs and catalogs.
Even restraining myself, I came home with 40+ titles, including Flush by Carl Hiassen and The Science of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials - much thanks and gratitude to the sweet and helpful Random Book Children's reps! There are a lot of promising books, and a good mixture of young adult, non-fiction and fiction titles. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, a Grail-legend story where the women have the swords, looks fun, as does The Alchemist's Daughter by Katherine McMahon. Harvest for Hope, Jane Goodall's newest, will be wonderful, I'm certain, and The Book Thief, a young adult novel, was "beautiful but heartbreaking" according to the rep.
But for all the books I came home with, there were a few that got away. I didn't get a copy of Holmes on the Range, and sadly, I didn't get a free copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a story about the revival of English magic in 1805. I have a feeling once I get a copy of that it will take over my brain, and will spawn waaaaaay too many plot bunnies. I was going to hit up Penguin for a copy of Nelson's Trafalgar, but the rep knew what I was up to. Damn.
Oh, and we didn't only get books. I am the proud owner of a black shirt which on the front says "Beware of (image of bar code with ISBN 0064410153)" and on the back the words "Snicket's back." October 18th I will be wearing that shirt, if not before. And speaking of unfortunate events, the Harper Collins rep hadn't read the books yet! So I talked with her for five minutes on how wonderful the books are and how she needs to read them.
Only I would go to a book trade show and "sell" the reps their own books. I am a shameless book whore who knows no bounds.
My friends I'm staying with are in the long process of opening up a bookstore. It will be sometime before they have a storefront - bookstores, alas, are not cheap. Until then, however, we'll be selling to schools, libraries and churches in the area, and will be doing holiday book orders to area teachers. These past two days, we attended the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association, otherwise known as publishers madly pushing advance reader copies at you - and sometimes copies of current titles.
The experience is somewhat surreal - rows and rows of tables full of books, bookmarks, journals and other book paraphernalia. All of the big houses are there - Penguin, Chronicle, Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin, etc. There's a number of local publishers, and of course, all of us mountainy and plainy booksellers struggling under loads and loads of ARCs and catalogs.
Even restraining myself, I came home with 40+ titles, including Flush by Carl Hiassen and The Science of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials - much thanks and gratitude to the sweet and helpful Random Book Children's reps! There are a lot of promising books, and a good mixture of young adult, non-fiction and fiction titles. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, a Grail-legend story where the women have the swords, looks fun, as does The Alchemist's Daughter by Katherine McMahon. Harvest for Hope, Jane Goodall's newest, will be wonderful, I'm certain, and The Book Thief, a young adult novel, was "beautiful but heartbreaking" according to the rep.
But for all the books I came home with, there were a few that got away. I didn't get a copy of Holmes on the Range, and sadly, I didn't get a free copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, a story about the revival of English magic in 1805. I have a feeling once I get a copy of that it will take over my brain, and will spawn waaaaaay too many plot bunnies. I was going to hit up Penguin for a copy of Nelson's Trafalgar, but the rep knew what I was up to. Damn.
Oh, and we didn't only get books. I am the proud owner of a black shirt which on the front says "Beware of (image of bar code with ISBN 0064410153)" and on the back the words "Snicket's back." October 18th I will be wearing that shirt, if not before. And speaking of unfortunate events, the Harper Collins rep hadn't read the books yet! So I talked with her for five minutes on how wonderful the books are and how she needs to read them.
Only I would go to a book trade show and "sell" the reps their own books. I am a shameless book whore who knows no bounds.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-26 10:04 am (UTC)Let me know how Labyrinth turns out, and I'll spill the beans on Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (which we got as soon as it came out but haven't managed to read yet)...
books, books and more books
Date: 2005-09-28 08:01 pm (UTC)