After a
couple mad weeks spent nailing down appointments, writing up notes, mailing
catalogs, feeding Edelweiss, chasing down missing minutiae, overcome by a
chronic feeling of Not Ready, I packed up the Golf and took the fall lists out on their
virgin sales tour today.
When the
moment comes to actually close the office door and head out selling I breathe a
deep sigh of relief- though, of course, in the new digital economy, when is the
office door really closed? When all is
said and done the actual visits to bookstores and museum shops, the meetings with
buyers, the eyewitness experience of seeing our books come to life out in the
world is the most satisfying part of being a book rep, and the most fun.
When I’m in sales calls all week, the other varied aspects of sales rep-dom
have to take a back seat. Textbook desk
copy requests? Not my department. My opinion on the latest in-house big
idea? Thanks for including us but too
busy to think about it right now. And
you people who I never hear from all year but wait until I’m away for three
weeks to fax me an urgent order: DON’T!
I won’t see it until your event is over!
(Yes, I have heard of digital faxing.
But haven’t they heard of email?)
Part of what
makes the actual selling season feel liberating is that I plan it to the
hilt. Where I’m staying, how I’m getting
there, and where I’m going next is laid out in exquisite detail. Of course events intervene, but I feel most free
and able to devote maximum psychic energy to the appointments when all the
logistics can be left to unfold on their own.
(This reminds me a bit of my friend Jennifer’s belief in the power of
constraints as the key to freeing up writer’s block.)
This trip
will be a bit challenging and I will try to do a Dear Blog on it daily,
something I’ve never done. When you’re
in several bookstores a day, surely something noteworthy enough to note will happen. My plan is to drive to London, Burlington and
Hamilton Ontario this week, to stay in Toronto next week for six days of meetings, to
take the relatively luxurious (vs. Amtrak) VIA Rail train to Ottawa next
Friday, then to train again to Kingston Ontario, then by train again to Montreal for
a few days of appointments, then to fly for an overnight to Halifax, returning to
Pearson Airport in Toronto where I will have left my car.
Today,
enroute to London, I paid a visit to one of the nicest new bookshops I’ve seen
in awhile- Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor.
If bookshops were appreciated in this culture as they should be, a city
like Ann Arbor should have a dozen. In a
just book world, the legendary Shaman Drum Bookshop, Karl Pohrt’s irreplaceable shrine
to books, one of the only retail environments ever to make this diehard atheist
feel a sense of reverence and awe, would still be standing. There are
several fine bookshops in the area, but Literati fills that downtown gap.
When you spend as much time in bookstores as
reps do, it’s easy to scan the shelves and make a snap judgment, and we can be tough. But these people are serious, and they labored
over every detail. The books themselves
seem hand-picked, they are displayed with love, and the building is
sensational- huge glass windows flood the main floor with light, and the noirish lower level has a cozy, retro, basement rec room feel. I was at home in the place after spending
ten minutes in it. That busy downtown
corner with a smart bookshop on it now makes me jealous for all the cities that
don’t have one.
One other
Literati detail blew my mind. As a
bookseller, I remember struggling with issues of section signage- what to call
each category, how big to make it, where it belongs in the store. All of these aspects are malleable, but
section headings tend to be permanent: F-I-C-T-I-O-N plastered on with paint or
carved in wood or otherwise permanently etched can subtly make you start
filling the section rather than letting it inhale and exhale, or even change
names, as time demands.
At Literati,
problem solved: section headings are inscribed in chalk across a band of slate
that runs along the whole wall above the shelves. It’s
easy to change and adapt headings, or to add playful detail, or to upgrade
fiction to L-I-T-E-R-A-T-U-R-E on a whim with a little chalk. Nicely done! That’s idea of the year
material.
On to
London. The customs guy didn’t even give
me a funny look when I said I sell books like they sometimes do. On the radio, the dulcet tones of CBC
News.
But wait,
what’s this? VIA Rail strike called for the day I leave for Ottawa?? Stay tuned.
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