Humour – Literary Lurkers
Feature Essay – Published in The Globe and Mail Books Section
January 11, 2003
Literary Lurkers
by Craig Menzies
When I started working in a bookstore eighteen months ago, it never occurred to me that I would have anything to do with the people who actually write the books. In my mind, these people lived on a different plane of existence and I just assumed that the chance of meeting a famous writer in a bookstore was akin to the chances of meeting a major film director by working at the local cineplex.
But meeting new (and yes, even famous) authors has become an unexpected perk of the job, though it has not always been a positive experience. About six months ago a woman approached me at the sales desk of the store, a well worn book bag hanging from her shoulder.
“Excuse me,” she asked. “Do you have the book Some Obscure Title?”
“It doesn’t sound like something we carry at the moment, but let me just have a look on our computer,” I said and turned to my left to punch the title into our inventory database. Nothing came up, so I hit a few more keys and entered the title into a database that covered all of North America. Nothing. So I went to the Internet and searched a database that covers every book that is currently in print in the world in the English language. Nada.
“I can’t seem to find any kind of a listing for this book,” I told her.
“Could you try it by the author’s name?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said and she spelled out the author’s name as I typed it into the search field of the database. Nothing came up. Again I tried the larger databases. Again nothing. I had now exhausted our standard procedure for finding books for customers. At this point, we usually refer customers to used book stores or Internet services for finding out of print books. Or the library, but we usually do this just to see the look of profound horror on customers’ faces. (“A library? You expect me to read books that other people have touched?”)
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But we don’t seem to have a listing for either the title or the author you’re looking for. Are you quite sure we,” (I used the royal ‘we’ to suggest that maybe, just maybe, it was I who had made a mistake with the spelling of the author’s name). “Are you quite sure we didn’t misspell it?”
“No, I’m quite sure,” she said, a little defensively.
“Well, okay, but there isn’t a listing for that author or that title. Perhaps the book has gone out of print?”
“No, I’m sure it hasn’t,” she said.
“Oh, well, I’m very sorry, but I can’t find a listing for this title, and without a listing I can’t order a copy for you.”
“Oh, I don’t want to order a copy. Don’t you have one in the store?”
“No, I’m sorry I don’t.” I had already spent far more time with this customer than I normally would, but our store prides itself on customer service, and so I was willing to spend a little extra with her. But, I noted that many of my colleagues were busy with other customers, and it looked like the store was starting to fill up with shoppers.
“Well, would you like to have some for the store?” she asked, fumbling in her book bag. She withdrew a handful of trade-sized paperbacks and handed them to me. They were awful. Gaudy covers with third-rate graphics superimposed on an overblown pixilated family album photo. The pages were stiff white photocopy-quality paper, the text too small and typeset in an unfriendly font. In contrast, the author’s name appeared on the cover in 100 point ego-font and, sure enough, it was the name of the author she had been asking me to find.
“I’ve just published this novel, and I was wondering if you would be interested in carrying it in your store?” she asked. I had been searching for this title for nearly twenty minutes on a busy Saturday afternoon.
Fortunately, I don’t make ordering decisions and so I politely referred this particular author to the store’s owner and went to help another customer. But, no, I was not interested in carrying that book. I was not interested in even looking at it to see if the book should be judged by its cover. Why? Because the conduct of the author was so deplorable, so base and dishonest that I could never imagine liking anything that lay between its covers.
The really strange thing is that this sort of thing happens quite often. Some authors wander into bookstores and ask if we carry their books, but they do it covertly. Or they send friends in to order one or several copies of this “fantastic new book a friend told me about” only to refuse to purchase the books in the hope that the bookstore will then put their friend’s book on the shelves (Hint: We do not. We return it to the publisher and incur shipping expenses or mark it down and make nothing). These authors are the post-publication versions of the amateur writers who lurk in the writer’s reference section, arms laden with self-help writing books looking like they might as well be wearing a button that reads: “Please ask me about my writing group!” They are closely related to the anonymous authors who go into bookstores and discreetly rearrange the shelves so that their book is faced out, and those who secrete promotional bookmarks and flyers into random books. Some people call this Guerilla Marketing. I call it counter-productive.
And then there are the local authors who have seen too many movies and believe that their new self-published memoir should fill the store window display (and be moodily spot-lit from above), even though it’s difficult to fill a window with two copies of a book that you’ve reluctantly agreed to try out on consignment.
At any given time there is something like forty thousand titles in the bookstore, and though most booksellers read prodigiously, they’re still lucky if they can read a hundred books in a year (at two books a week). With that many books to get through, why would anyone waste their time reading the book of someone who is obnoxious, arrogant or ignorant? And if I won’t read an author’s book, why on earth would I recommend it to a paying customer?
I’ve read and, more importantly, bought the books of authors who I’ve met and liked. And if their books are good, I hand-sell them to customers who might otherwise never know about them. I know that a book is supposed to stand on its own, that an author’s character has nothing to do with their work, and that, yes, many of the world’s best writers have been notorious sons of bitches. But the reality is that booksellers are human and prone to the holding of grudges. Piss off a bookseller and they’ll never sell your book. Be nice to enough of them and you might just have a bestseller. At the very least, someone will read your book.
Isn’t that what it’s supposed to be all about?