Jim Huang's blog

Where I am, after 20 years in bookselling

I wrote in an email that I believe that the center of gravity in mystery publishing is increasingly moving out of New York, and was asked to explain what I meant.  What ended up spilling out is this long essay about how I view the industry today. It's not completely responsive to the question, which  is part of why I've posted it here.  The other reason it's here is that I'm looking for your feedback, because these ideas are very much a work in progress.

At some point, I need to run some numbers to quantify how much of this is really true -- this is just off the top of my head.  But I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think that at least conceptually I may be on the right track.  Much of this depends on your view of the industry and your perception of what folks in our position are actually able to influence.  I don't expect everyone to agree with me on this, but here goes.

There's a level of NY publishing that's both crazy and impervious to change: the top of the market, the relentless and idiotic throwing of big money after "hot" commercial properties that lack pedigree.  These are the first novels that get six- (seven-?) figure advances, the high-concept thrillers and suspense novels that publishers try to bully into the marketplace with big marketing campaigns that more often than not are doomed to failure -- in the sense of being a building block in an author's long-term career.  This is roll of the dice publishing, designed only to make a splash without regard to what happens next.  Because NY publishers are so bad at this kind of stuff, history is littered with failures -- Douglas Kennedy, Jilliane Hoffman, etc. -- many more failures than successes.

(Given the poor quality of THE THIRTEENTH TALE, I'll be really interested to see what happens to Diane Setterfield.  A former B&N CRM who spoke at my store recently said that they sold hundreds of thousands of copies of this book, but it's hard to image that many readers will come back for a more on their own; I think she'll only be successful again with massive publicity and massive discounting -- costly tactics that would undermine the economic case for publishing her a second time.)

We recognize how foolish all this is, but we also know that no matter what we say about this, NY publishers are going to continue to behave this way.  To some extent, they have to, but more for corporate strategic reasons than for the advancement of an author's career or the genre in general.  That's fine to an extent, and we can tolerate that kind of stuff as long as it doesn't interfere with the real work of publishing in this genre.  Star-struck publishers can have all the one-night stands they want with these glamorous properties, but the rest of us in the mystery world much prefer stable, long-term relationships.  What we want is simple: every time we pick up a book by a new author, we're hoping to fall in love. When we find true love, what we want is to be able to hang out with the character we adore, stand by him or her through change and growth -- adventure after adventure, book after book, for better or for worse.

Years ago, the very smart co-owner of a mystery small press (not so small these days) said to me that it's impossible for a big publishing company to be bestseller-oriented and still publish category midlist, that the two mindsets were incompatible.  At the time I thought he was wrong, but I am more and more coming to the conclusion that he was right, that year after year of one night stands does in fact leave these companies incapable of committing to relationships.

I'm not against bestsellers.  As I've written and said more than once in the past, I'm delighted to see good writers succeed.  It's a great thing that the book business has evolved to the point where the top selling titles can sell so many more copies than bestsellers in the past.  What I'm talking about here, though, is the way in which bestsellers are made, and the way in which the genre as a whole can -- indeed must -- be sold.  Publishers may not listen to what we might have to say about massive advances and silly marketing campaigns, but if there's a chance that we might have any influence over the direction of the business, it may be at the level of the category midlist writers, the folks whose careers would be a lot stronger if we're able to change just a few small things about the industry.  The big question is whether the big companies as companies even care much about writers at this level.

These writers might not ever become New York Times bestsellers, but their livelihoods might be significantly different if their hardcovers sold 15,000 copies instead of 7,500, and if their backlist titles stayed in print, continuing to generate income instead of disappearing from the marketplace.  And, who knows, some of these folks might become bestsellers -- Hillerman, Parker, Evanovich, Connelly, Lippman, even Dan Brown started from relatively modest circumstances, publishing-wise, and they seem to be doing ok right now.  In fact, I believe that success built on the kinds of relationships these writers have built with readers is likely to be much stronger and more durable than a fling that starts with a one-night stand.  (Actually, let's leave Dan Brown out of this for the moment; the jury's still out on where his career is going.)

The point is to figure out what went right, and to get folks to see the success of this group of writers as normal rather than fluky.  And that's where I now have my doubts about big New York publishing.  Are they impervious to change?  I'm generally a pretty optimistic person and I like to believe that business makes sense, that companies will do the right thing when it's in their rational self-interest to do so.  But this month, I've hit 20 years in bookselling, and I'm not feeling especially positive about these companies -- upon whom I depend for product to stock my store.  After 20 years, I'm starting to feel that the big NY companies are hopeless, and I'm starting to wonder why I'm working so hard to sell products from manufacturers and suppliers who are not just bent on undermining my store  but on undermining the genre itself.  Thoughtlessly rather than deliberately, to be sure, but the difference in intent isn't such a big deal when the effect is so clear.

The big publishers whine about how difficult it is to sell in this genre, but the fact is that they're more or less completely unwilling to change anything about how they operate to match up with what customers want.  To the extent that independent booksellers succeed in this genre at all, it's because we are close to our customers and we understand how to sell to them.  That's it, the sum total of the secret of our success.  It's not a matter of our superior resources; most of us do all this without any resources whatsoever.  We do more with less money than anyone else in any other segment of the business, and yet we're the ones who are consistently dissed by policies and practices that favor other customers.

(The really curious thing in this industry is why the big chain stores aren't doing a better job of adopting the sales techniques of the independents.  It's not like what we're doing is rocket science, and there are plenty of fairly obvious things that they could be doing to sell more books.  Which makes you think that pig-headedness isn't limited to publishing companies, despite the fact that B&N is in most other respects a pretty smart outfit.  I would dearly love to have the resources of a B&N at my command, and I know that I could sell a lot more books -- for B&N, for publishers and for writers -- as a result.  Of course, I'll never get that opportunity.)

When I think about the center of gravity of the mystery genre, I still believe that it lies in series.  Seventy percent of the titles on the bestsellers lists of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association in 2007 year to date are part of a series.  Seventy percent of these series titles belong to long-running series of five or more books.  Sales in IMBA member stores are not necessarily representative of the marketplace in general, but they are the best indication we have of what the most devoted mystery lovers are looking for.  Yet you can in fact generalize from these numbers. When you look at the BookScan mystery bestseller list for the week of 8/12/07, representing sales throughout the industry, you see that over 70% -- closer to 80%, actually -- of these bestselling titles also belong to series.

So series matter, and what publishers do with them tells you a lot about their inclinations and abilities.  I write a lot about series and the bad job that the most publishers do with them: not keeping books in print (especially the first book which is where readers want to start), not clearly indicating the order of books in series, not identifying books as part of a series, not packaging series titles with a common look to make it easier to find them on new releases tables, not timing publication of new hardcovers and paperbacks to maximize sales, not indicating for the benefit of buyers for stores a new title's place in the series, not soliciting orders for series backlist and frontlist together, not waiting months (if not years) between UK and US publication, etc.

It's not even like what we're talking about major, insurmountable problems.  The issue of properly timing the latest paperback and hardcover releases in a series is simple on every level -- easy to explain, easy to grasp, easy to fix -- and it doesn't cost a dime to make that fix. It's incredible that a new hardcover release is ever published prior to the first paperback edition of its predecessor.  And yet it still happens, over and over again. Fixing this won't turn a midlist writer into a bestseller, but it will undoubtedly sell more of his or her hardcover books. That should be a goal that everyone agrees on.

I'm not alone in raising these questions, and none of them are new.  We've been saying this stuff to St. Martin's, Berkley, Mysterious Press (R.I.P.), Random House, etc, for years and years.  Those folks in publishing whom we're talking to, they're not stupid.  In fact, when you meet most of them individually, you end up thinking these are bright, earnest, serious folks who love books too. I know that's hard to believe when you see how they treat the books, but I still think it's true. (Most of the people I meet are on the editorial side of the business.  Most of these people blame folks on the sales and marketing side for everything that's wrong with the business.  I probably need to spend more time talking to people on the S&M side of publishing, to see if their world is as divorced from reality as I'm led to believe.)

So if these people are not stupid, then what's going on?  Is it as simple as lack of interest?  Is it something more complicated, rooted in the psychology of an institution addicted to the one night stand yet so jealous of those in happy marriages that it will work to undermine them as best it can.  (In terms of the mystery genre, this relationship metaphor only gets you so far.  Since mystery fans have lots of favorites, we have to conclude that they're polygamous, which may not be where we want to be, metaphor-wise.)

Yes, I'm being somewhat facetious in writing about the psychology of publishing, but not entirely.  The fact is that in order to change, institutions (like individuals) have to want to change.  If we've been giving publishers the same advice over and over again for years and years and they're not taking the advice, maybe it's time for us to say, "Ok, you're on your own.  We're cutting you off.  Just don't ask for our help anymore.  And don't whine to us when things go badly for you."

It's not that simple, of course.  I can't tell you how insulted I've felt by St. Martin's Press and its lack of help in setting up author events in my store.  They'll send writers everywhere around me -- literally, to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Kentucky -- but not to Indiana smack dab in the middle. Except, of course, for sending the biggest writer on their list to the B&N store just 1.97 miles away without even a drive-by or drop-in here.  But it doesn't matter how my store's been treated, I still have to deal with St. Martin's because they publish so many books and authors that I love.  I place orders with them season after season, feeling worse and worse about my business' relationship with this supplier.  But I'm stuck.  (Here's where the relationship metaphors become addiction metaphors, and suddenly the metaphors aren't so much fun anymore.)

If all this were about nothing more than how I feel about particular publishing companies, then you all could feel free to dismiss everything that I've written as nothing more than the cranky complaints of crazy malcontent.  Many of you -- particularly I'm guessing those of you who work in publishers' S&M divisions -- will do so anyway.

But I think there is reason to take this stuff seriously.  I believe that what's going on with publishing doesn't just hurt individual authors here and there, but it's hurting the genre as a whole.  Take the issue of series.  Every time readers encounter a new series, the first thing they ask is "what's the first book in the series?"  And if those readers like the first, they'll want to go on to the second, third, fourth and fifth.  Most publishers make it difficult to figure out where a series begins and how it progress.  And that's even before we get to the question of whether the books are in print and available.  The lack of information and availability frustrates readers over and over again.  Because they are so devoted to the genre, they'll keep trying.  But engendering frustration at the point of sale should not be a publisher's goal, and I believe there is a limit to readers' patience.  Get your heart broken enough times, you might stop going out on dates altogether.

I do believe in the power of the mystery story, and I know that there's a vast audience of readers out there who would like nothing more than to fall in love with a new writer and read all of his or her books.  I'd like to be the bookseller who puts those books into the hands of those readers.  So while I gnash my teeth and rant in frustration, I'm also trying to change the things that I can change.  Sales haven't been especially strong in my store lately, so we're going to have to try do some things differently otherwise, I can't afford to keep the doors open.

These are among the things that I'm thinking right now:

1) I haven't completely given up on trying to influence the big New York publishers, but it's time to change tactics a little.  I'm told that publishers are more likely to include us on author tours if we whine.  I hate the idea of having to whine, but I'm willing to give it a try.  (At least a little; consider this essay a first salvo.)

2) We're putting a somewhat greater emphasis on our used book shelves, because publishers are pushing more and more customers to shop for the books they want used.

3) We're going to shift our stocking practices a little, to emphasize the series that are available, complete and intact.  That's not necessarily good news for writers whose publishers aren't doing a great job, unless we're able to stock their out of print books on the used side of the store.  Sometimes, used is the only way we know to keep a series alive.

4) We're going to try importing more books from the U.K., in some cases to fill in holes in series, and in other cases to import series as a whole so that we have enough intact series to keep our customers happy.  (Hard to believe, given how many books are published, but some days, there aren't enough to meet demand.)

5) We've always had an emphasis on events here. If we can't rely on publishers' help in setting up author events, we will continue to work with writers directly -- and many are happy to work with us directly. But we're also going to try to come up with different kinds of events to draw folks in.  We hosted a 50-hour round-the-clock read-a-thon as a benefit earlier this summer, and this fall we're partnering with The Writers' Center of Indiana to host a series of classes on mystery writing here -- which is the first time we'll be charging for something like this too.

6) More than ever, we'll emphasize books from the small presses that we like.  These presses are making a significant and growing contribution to the genre, in so many different ways. The main thing we see is that these companies truly respect the genre and understand how to appeal to readers.  Poisoned Pen Press doesn't just publish Mary Anna Evans, it presents her books the right way.  All three of Evans' titles are in print and available in paperback; the third, RELICS, features an appendix for "the incurably curious" -- which most of us are.

Change isn't easy, and obviously the major companies still have a big stake in this business, still publishing a lot of writers that we like.  And sometimes even the companies that are least effective in this genre will still on occasions do some things right.  Simon & Schuster is not doing especially well by the few mystery series it still publishes, except it nevertheless has done a solid job with William Kent Krueger's books. So we can’t dismiss them completely; we have to stay aware of what they're doing.

The main thing going forward is to recognize that the world has changed, and that the enormous mindshare that the major publishing companies have occupied for the longest time is no longer justified.  Yes, they do in fact have all the money there is in this business (because it sure isn't with the small presses or with small book stores).  Sure, they're capable of good work and they're going to publish more than a few books that we're going to enjoy.  The irony of the publishing industry as a whole is that as bad as they are on the business side of things, they're actually pretty good at identifying good stuff in the first place.

But on their own, publishers are unlikely to change just because we talk with them. So we let them do what they do, we work with them to the extent that we have to, maybe we can nudge them at the margins, look for the few real opportunities we have to make money for each other. But let's be realistic; those opportunities are few and far between, so those big publishing companies are not worth a lot of extra effort right now.

If change is going to happen among these big companies -- and ultimately the genre would be better off and we'd all sell a lot more books if these publishers were to change -- it's going to happen either because good behavior will forced on them by their biggest customers or good behavior will be modeled by others.  The former's unlikely, but not inconceivable; as I said, I've been waiting for B&N to realize that it's possible to do a much better job of selling genre fiction (even though this epiphany would really hurt stores like mine).  The latter?  Well, that's why it's important to deal with those newer, smaller companies, to make the time to work with firms whose polices and practices are helping the genre rather than undermine it. To see if -- working together -- independent stores can help turn these independent presses into economic forces themselves.

All this means re-setting our sights, re-calibrating our business relationships and, generally, being willing to think outside the box.  I hope we're up to the challenge.

At least that's where I am in my thinking today.  There's a lot that I need to do to flesh out these ideas -- this is all still very much a work in progress, one morning's ramblings,  a first attempt at solidifying my thinking, of pulling together various threads that I've been turning over.  I'll be very interested in seeing your feedback.

Store signings / Conference programming

By now you've observed that I sometimes collect here posts that I've sent to various lists that I try to follow.  The difficulty with doing this that if you're reading this here, you're coming into the middle of a conversation.  I hope that what I write gives you enough context to understand what's going on, and that my comments are still of interest (and, I hope, of value).

The post below is somewhat more problematic than most, in that it addresses two separate discussion threads.  Still, you'll catch on.

Store signings

On Aug 16, 2007, at 7:23 AM, sistersincrime@yahoogroups.com wrote:

When my first book came out I was assigned a publicist and was told by the head
of publicity that I should absolutely not attempt to contact bookstores
or set up bookstore events on my own. She said that I would run the risk
of annoying booksellers.

Your publisher gave you bad advice.

In terms of setting up events, publishers and writers don't have the same interests. There are some overlapping goals, to be sure, but not all are the same.  As a writer, you want the best opportunity to meet the largest number of people who might find your book of interest.  Publishers will schedule events to make key customers happy, sometimes without regard to the suitability of a venue for a particular title.

It's not uncommon for a writer to be scheduled into a B&N store when there's an independent in the same market that has a better track record with that writer or for that type of book. The reason this happens is that B&N is, overall, a very large customer.  That independent is likely to be a much smaller account, and therefore a much lower priority from the company's standpoint.  Still, that independent might have a better relationship with customers for your type of book, a bookselling staff that's particularly passionate about what you write, etc.

I have no quarrel with B&N in general, or Borders for that matter, and I certainly recognize that there are some things -- including events for some writers -- that the chains do well.  But there are other things that I do better, despite the fact that many big publishers steer writers away from stores like mine.  Almost none of our events in my store (http://themysterycompany.com/) are the result of a publicist's efforts; I'm always happy to hear from and work with writers who are as understanding of our needs as we try to be of theirs.

Conference programming

I'd like to add one thing on the conference issue, now writing as the unpaid, volunteer program director for Magna Cum Murder (http://www.magnacummurder.com/), and as the unpaid, volunteer co-chair of Bouchercon 2009 (http://bouchercon2009.com/).

Betty used a form of the word "entitlement" in her comments about some writer's requests/queries/bullying about conference programs.  I want emphasize her point: there are no entitlements at conferences.  Conventions such as Magna and Bouchercon are not designed for YOU to sell YOUR books.  Yes, book sales happen at conferences, and a well-run event will offer writers opportunities to meet readers in a way that improves their chances of selling books.  If and when such sales happen, though, they're a by-product of a program that's designed first and foremost (exclusively?) with goals that have little to do with book sales and everything to do with engaging and entertaining an audience, celebrating the richness of our genre, and enriching our appreciation of these books we love.

As a conference programmer, I'll try just about anything -- ask folks who've been to Magna over the past few years, and what you'll hear should prove that I mean that -- but what I won't do is schedule an author who tells me that he or she is coming to Magna only because he or she expects to sell books.  I schedule panelists -- writers, others working in the business, readers, everyone -- because I have reason to believe that they have something interesting to say and that the folks attending the conference will want to hear them.  Each and every person on the program is there because I believe he or she will make a contribution to the program, say something that others won't say, provide a different perspective on the issue at hand, have expertise that will be instructive, etc.  It's not my goal to simply put together a string of commercial announcements for writers' new books -- no matter who's published them.

Books vs. Bricks

Posted this morning to 4_Mystery_Addicts:

On Jun 9, 2007, at 8:34 PM, 4_Mystery_Addicts@yahoogroups.com wrote:

Jim Huang of the Drood Review (and also a mystery bookseller) hates everything about the "new" size paperback. He calls it a "brick," (I love that characterization!) and claims that it has none of the "feel" of a normal book. It is generally too thick and heavy for those who like the weight and size of a normal paperback or even a traditional trade paperback. And its bulk makes it uncomfortable and unbalanced for those of us that like to read hardcovers. Jim says that his customers just don't buy them in his store. They don't like them (could it be that Jim has passed on his prejudice?).

As an independent bookseller, I get to pass on my prejudices all the time. I think that's the main virtue of independents -- agree or don't agree, at least you know where we stand! But in terms of the bricks, I'm only reacting to my customers' complaints. I don't volunteer an opinion on them until asked. (That's in contrast to the opportunity to talk about and recommend titles and authors; that we do all the time, without being prompted.) My customers are picking these books up off my new titles table, they're bringing them up to me and they're basically telling me two things: 1) $9.99 is too much to ask for a book that's packaged like this --- they'll spend $23.95 for a new hardcover but balk at $9.99 for a brick -- and 2) these books aren't comfortable to hold.

Both are legitimate complaints. Couple of things to remember:

1) The $9.99 price is essentially designed to give room for discounting. At $7.99, there aren't enough dollars there for the big box stores and online sites to do 20% or 40% or whatever off the suggested list price. Publishers are dealing with chain booksellers who've gone insane with discounting, and the way they're dealing with it is by trying to find way to raise suggested retail prices. I hate this system. (The chains don't like it much either. If you doubt that, take a look at the reporting on B&Ns and Borders' most recent quarterly reports.) I'd much rather see a business where books are $7.99 rather than $9.99 less 20%, mostly because of the way that 20% gets financed: through publisher promotions that are available to the big guys but not offered to smaller independents. I can't discount the way the big guys can because publishers don't want me to. (If they wanted me to, they'd offer more support.) It's even worse when something that should be published at $6.99 instead gets released at $13.95 less 30% at Amazon. Consumers are paying more for the book, but they're being coaxed into believing that they're getting a bargain because it's 30% off. It's more than just insulting to your intelligence: these practices are having a real effect not just on prices but on the nature of what's being published and retained in print.

2) It's the balance thing that's most disturbing about bricks. For decades -- literally for decades -- we've come to expect that the ratio of height to width of the books that we read has been more or less constant. Run the numbers for the four standard trim sizes and you'll see what I mean. The bricks fall outside of the "normal" range. What this represents is a total failing on the publishing industry's part to appreciate the visceral aspect of reading a book. We love books for a lot of reasons, mostly having to do with the words they contain. But I also believe that there's a tactile sensation at work here, that the experience of holding a book in your hands is in and of itself reassuring and restorative. (John Dunning writes about the healing qualities of books in Booked to Die, albeit a different aspect of this but one that's very real for his protagonist.) It's a learned behavior, but it's been learned over all our lives. When we pick up a book in the brick format, our subconscious doesn't even recognize that it's a book -- it's some weird alien thing masquerading as a book. It's going to take a long while before readers unlearn everything they know about what a book feels like. That's what has to happen before we're comfortable with bricks.

I certainly understand readers who want larger print in books. In my 40s, I do too. But the way to get there is for the big guys to publish standard-sized trade paperbacks and price them at $9.00, $10.00 or even $11.00, instead of the brick at $9.99. There's no production cost reason why they can't do this. (As a small book publisher, I have to price my trade paperbacks at $14 or $15, but there's no reason that Simon & Schuster -- with its economies of scale and marketplace muscle has to do so.)

Why do I hate the brick? Because it's evidence that book publishers don't respect books and their readers. It's pretty much as simple as that.

Veronica Mars, R.I.P.

VERONICA MARS has been canceled.  We're mourning at our house -- me, my wife, and our two daughters.  This was a show that we could all watch together -- not a lot of those on TV these days.

In fact, I think VERONICA MARS was brilliant.  Part of the wake at our home has involved re-watching the first and second seasons.  (We own the DVDs, went out and bought them after my colleague Austin Lugar loaned us his set.) The girls are doing all of it; I've been dipping in and out.  Those first two seasons were just incredibly good.  Taken as a whole, seasons one and two add up to one of the most intricately plotted mysteries I've ever seen (in any medium).  There's so much plot in each episode; most episodes, more happens before the credits than happens in whole episodes of other TV detective shows.

The most incredible thing?  The individual episodes not only solved weekly mysteries but added pieces towards the solution of larger, season-long questions.  And it all made sense.  The pieces fit together.  The resolutions were satisfying -- horrifying, sometimes, but just right.

I love the attitude -- Neptune High is so tough and Veronica is so hardboiled, maybe the toughest detective ever on broadcast TV (except for the last ten minutes of the last episode of season one when she whimpers a lot -- weirdly out of character).  The setting is so Raymond Chandler -- the amoral rich, the downtrodden working class.  You won't see a starker portrayal of haves versus have nots than you see in this series, and it's not just window dressing, it's an integral part of how the stories play out.

The other thing is that there wasn't anything that the show wouldn't do; no character was sacred.  We know this right away when we find out in the first episode of season one that Veronica was raped.  Season two begins with a bus load of kids dying when their bus plunges off the Pacific Coast Highway into the ocean.  (I think season two is the best single season of series television that's ever been done.)

Veronica has a great relationship with her dad.  He's a private eye; she works for him.  They're both great characters, and their relationship is beautifully portrayed.  It's fascinating to see what she'll tell him and what she won't (and visa versa) -- though we all think she made the wrong choice about what to say/not say at the crucial moment in the final episode of the final season, broadcast last night.  I'm also really fond of a lot of the secondary characters -- Cliff, the lawyer, and Vinnie, the really sleazy private eye, are especially cool.

We haven't been as fond of the show this season; they've dumbed it down and Veronica's gone soft and the whole Veronica/Logan thing has gotten ridiculous.  College just isn't the kind of hardboiled place that high school is.  (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER had the same problem when the gang graduated from high school and went off to a college that was just not that interesting a place.)  Last night's two episodes were an improvement over most of the rest of this season.  But still not up to the earlier standard.

At least VERONICA MARS is good enough to stand up to repeat viewings.  We're spotting new things that we missed the first two times we ran through this series, seeing clues, spotting connections, etc.  Knowing where it's going, it's fascinating to see how the characters (good, bad and variable) are introduced.

VERONICA MARS, R.I.P.

Selling Alan Gordon

I’m just back from Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I sold books at an international congress of medieval scholars, Thursday through Sunday. (Apparently, if you're a medieval scholar, this meeting is the place to be.)

This is the sales pitch I did 50, 60, 70 times during our days there.  You can guess from the length of this that I didn’t get to say all this to all customers, but I did as much of this as I could whenever I could, and pieces of it for just about anyone who allowed me the opportunity.

Why post all this?  To persuade you to give Alan’s books a try, and to provide something of a guide to approaching this unusual and fabulous series. To illustrate how hard we have to work to describe these books, and to show how much describing a book’s publishing history becomes part of what we end up talking about when we talk about books. And to demonstrate one way that independent booksellers take a different approach in selling than other kinds of booksellers. Would chain stores or warehouse clubs or grocery stores be willing to work this hard to sell a book? Can you readily find all this information at online bookstores?

Alan Gordon’s books are wonderful – clever, funny, beautifully plotted. Alan’s premise is that all of the fools in the Middle Ages, including the fools in Shakespeare, are all part of a guild that works like a Middle Ages CIA: they run around, meddling in affairs.  The books are great fun.  Because Alan’s writing about fools, he gets to do all of the humor – the verbal humor and the physical comedy.  The banter and the wordplay are lovely, and there are some really hilarious juggling scenes.

The first book in the series is Thirteenth Night. It’s set in 1200, and you can probably tell from the title it’s a sequel to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: Feste the fool – whose real name is Theophilos, Feste is a stage name -- is sitting in a bar when he gets word that Orsino is dead. He immediate suspects Malvolio, and races off to Illyria to investigate.  This one is here in paperback; it’s $14.

After Thirteenth Night, the characters go off to Constantinople and get involved in the crusades and all the intrigue there.  The second book is Jester Leaps In, and that’s out of print and not all that easy to find, but we have two signed first edition hardcovers that we borrowed from another book dealer so that we could have it here.  They’re $24 each.

Third in the series is Death in the Venetian Quarter. This one came out in hardcover in 2002 and it was just published in paperback for the first time last week.  It’s a $13.95 trade paperback.  They’re still in Constantinople, and they get involved in what’s essentially a locked room mystery.  This is probably the most straightforward mystery in this series, and it’s very well done.

The main action of Widow of Jerusalem actually takes place prior to the first book in the series, even though this was the fourth book Alan published.  There’s a framing story that puts this book after Venetian Quarter, but it’s one of those “around the campfire” tales, about the Fools’ Guild’s involvement in events of 1191 swirling around Isabelle, the Queen of Jerusalem.  It’s one of the most elegantly plotted mysteries I’ve ever read; the ending is just beautiful.  This one is out of print, but I’ve found a couple of used hardcovers; they’re $22 each.  I don’t know anything about a paperback edition.

For the fifth book in the series, Alan returns to Shakespeare. In An Antic Disposition, Alan deconstructs Hamlet, and it’s great fun.  The fools play a somewhat greater role in Hamlet than you might have suspected.  This one is also a flashback story; it takes place even earlier than Widow of Jerusalem, so you can jump right into the series here too. I have had Antic Disposition here at the congress the last few years; it was published three years ago. The hardcover is still in print, and it's $24.95.  No, I don’t know if it’s going to be done in paperback either.

And we finally after all this time have a brand new book in the series, The Lark’s Lament, which was just published last week in hardcover at $24.95, just in time for this event – lucky for us. This book takes the series in a new direction, and finally advances the story.  It’s 1204, and the fools are in the south of France, where they get involved in some intrigue involved a troubadour-turned-abbot and some mysterious lyrics. This new book is just as good as its predecessors, and because it's a new setting and situation, you can jump into the series here too.

Whichever one you decide to try, the main thing is that I recommend all of these books very highly. It’s a great series, among my absolute favorites in the genre.  I adore these books.

Just about perfect

This review was emailed out to subscribers to my store's email list on April 6. To sign up for The Mystery Company's e-newsletter, visit the store's homepage at www.themysterycompany.com.

There aren't a heck of a lot of perfect novels; Laura Lippman's latest, What the Dead Know, may be one. I've liked Lippman's work for years -- and she's already been nominated for and won scads of awards in this genre: Edgars, Anthonys, Shamuses, Agathas, Macavitys, etc. At some point, you've probably heard me talk about how much I enjoy Lippman's Tess Monaghan series and admire her feel for Baltimore, the city in which Lippman lives and sets her books.

Even this stellar track record doesn't prepare you for the excellence of What the Dead Know, an intricate, beautifully crafted and utterly engrossing standalone mystery novel -- the best I've read in months. The book starts from a premise that's both simple and utterly baffling: the apparent reappearance in Baltimore of the victim of a 30-year-old kidnapping. A woman is picked up by police for fleeing the scene of a car accident. She's guarded about every aspect of her life except one: she insists that she's one of the two sisters who never returned from a Saturday afternoon shopping trip on Easter weekend in 1975.

That's all we know. Lippman keeps us guessing about everything else. Is the woman really Heather Bethany or is she an imposter? What happened to her sister, Sunny? Why is the woman so reticent with details about her whereabouts since the disappearance?

Question after question, built on detail and nuance both small and large. Lippman doles out information in tantalizing bits, taking us effortlessly through 30 years of the lives of her characters, each one of whom is vividly drawn.

There's a rave review of What the Dead Know in yesterday's New York Times that compares Lippman to Ruth Rendell, a comparison that occurred to me as well because of the acute insight into the psychology of the characters, and for the puzzling gamesmanship of the woman who insists she's Heather Bethany. The problem with the comparison is that these characters aren't nearly as twisted as Rendell's, nor is the narrative nearly as dark. Part of what makes this book so effective is how much like you and me these folks are, and how much this suburban Baltimore landscape resembles our suburban Indianapolis. Perhaps a better comparison is Joesphine Tey, another master of weaving suspenseful stories from more ordinary situations and people.

Questions I hope you're asking

This is a slightly modified version of something I posted to DorothyL this morning.

Something I've come to realize lately is that in many ways, this isn't that big a business. Sure, we've know all along that there are many hardcover mysteries for which sales of five, six, eight thousand are considered good numbers -- successful, profitable, etc. At some companies at least; there are the Simon & Schusters of this world who say they won't stoop to that level. But on the other hand if every single St. Martin's Minotaur title were selling north of eight, nine thousand copies -- i.e. just a couple more thousand each -- with, of course, a few titles selling much more, that company would be happy.

Like I said, I've known this, but some of the implications of this have only become clearer to me recently. For one thing, it's now more evident to me than ever before that all we really need to do is to change the behavior of a comparatively small group of individuals in order to create a publishing business more to our liking. You know what I mean. We all hate the part of the business that throws too many resources behind books that aren't nearly as good as the books that are being overlooked and drowned out of the marketplace. We hate this, but we understand that we can't change publishers' behavior at the top of their lists: we're still going to see them spend way too much money to push bland mediocre generic marketing-department-driven books. Some of which we likely enjoy -- but even so, you know what I mean. That's just the way big corporate publishers are (no matter how foolish).

On the other hand, we ought to be able to affect everything else -- the "midlist" or the bottom of the list or whatever you want to call it. The reason we ought to be able to make a difference here is that the numbers really aren't that big -- again, just a couple more thousand copies per title, the movement of just a few dollars out of some distribution channels into other, more productive ones, etc.

There are 3,000 plus folks on DorothyL. Put together the customer lists of a handful of even the smallest of booksellers and you'll get to that number pretty easily. Add up the number of public libraries in 10 states and you'll get to 3,000. The point is that changing the behavior of 3,000 book buyers is all you need in order to create vast changes in the way that mysteries are published in the United States. And if you change just a few things about the way mysteries are published, distributed and sold, you open up many more opportunities for better, more substantial, quirkier, more interesting books.

So I'm reading all the various comments here about buying books in various formats, and why we're making these choices with all this in mind. And I'm asking myself what kind of business do we want this to be? What books aren't being published or aren't being published well? How do we want books to be sold? Can library buying practices change?

I have some vague ideas about all this, which I hope to have an opportunity to develop in the weeks and months to come. And, I except, each of you might have a few ideas too, if you stop to think about it -- which I hope you'll do.

Stocking the store

A woman working on a dissertation on cozy mysteries asks:

What are the rules (if any) in your bookstore regarding purchasing self-published books? Does your bookstore purchase any self-published books? How do you make this decision? I'm also wondering if there are any rules that apply to books produced by small presses. Are they less likely to be purchased by your bookstore, more likely, or is there no difference between small press books and large press books when it comes to placing them in your store?

Here's my response:

At The Mystery Company, the rule on self-published books is that we look at them one at a time.  We will stock intriguing, well-produced and properly priced self-published books that are offered to us on competitive terms.

The sad fact is that setting criteria like this -- 1) well-produced, 2) properly priced, 3) competitive terms -- virtually insures that self-published books eliminate themselves from consideration, even before we get to the question of "intriguing."  Let's face it: most self-published books aren't intended to be stocked in stores and we know this because most self-publishers have made little or no effort to figure out what being stocked in stores means.

I think you're asking the wrong question, though.  The real question is not whether stores will carry these books but whether readers will buy them.  Like any business, we are responsive to our customers.  Will our customers be interested in a self-published title?  If yes, then we have to be interested.  If no, then we don't have to be interested.  Are readers interested in most small press titles?

In fact, we stock and sell many titles published by small presses -- and some presses that were small in the recent past but aren't so small today.  Poisoned Pen, Rue Morgue, Crippen & Landru, my own Crum Creek Press/Mystery Company, Felony & Mayhem, Ramble House and others have supplied titles that in the past 12 months have outsold many, many titles published by the big guys.  Among the most fun titles we've had to sell in the past year are self-published: Mark Schweizer's choir mystery series.  By MWA's rules, he counts as self-published.  Of course, rules that label someone like Schweizer a self-publisher are bizarre to start with -- but that's a different discussion.

At one level, there's no difference between stocking and selling titles from self-publishers, small press companies and the multi-national conglomerates; if we didn't sell these books we wouldn't be in business at all.  But at another level, there's all the difference in the world: dealing with a plethora of authors and/or small companies, many of whom have idiosyncratic if not outright whimsical ideas about what it takes for a bookstore to successfully sell its books, makes this a very difficult landscape in which to make decisions.

Teaser turn-off and the definition of a cozy

I wonder if anyone else had the same experience with Scott Frost's Run the Risk that I did. I read the paperback edition, and in terms of the novel itself, I basically liked it. It's not the most plausible book out there, but it's fun.

HOWEVER, for me, the whole experience of reading Run the Risk was ruined by the teaser chapter for the next book in the series, the last six pages of the current Berkely paperback edition. The problem? After an emotionally exhausting case that involves the kidnapping of homicide detective Alex Delillo's own daughter, we find out in these six pages that the next book is going to be about the brother Delillo doesn't know she has. The bit we get is vague and there's probably a sensible explanation for her confusion. But for me, this is a real turn-off.

Delillo is a homicide detective -- a professional -- so Frost shouldn't need to resort to this kind of personal connection once, let alone twice. Delillo isn't Jessica Fletcher; she doesn't need an excuse to be involved in a mystery. On the basis of this teaser, I doubt I'll ever read Frost's second novel, unless someone I trust persuades me otherwise.

We talk (a lot) about the difference between a cozy and other kinds of mysteries. One of the defining features of a cozy series is that the detective has that personal stake in the murder -- otherwise he or she has no reason to investigate. With a professional, it's exactly the opposite: when there's a personal stake, sensible rules of professional conduct suggest that the officer step aside and let others conduct the investigation. Under this definition, then, it seems to me that Scott Frost's series featuring LAPD homicide detective Alex Delillo is best described as cozy.

Discounts and dealing with booksellers

Another email discussion list that I've been reading is Murder Must Advertise (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MurderMustAdvertise/?yguid=28841185). Here are a pair of posts that I contributed recently, on the issues of discounting and the relationships between stores, authors and publishers"

On Jan 10, 2006, at 4:02 PM, MurderMustAdvertise@yahoogroups.com wrote:

"The reason I have my books linked to amazon is because they are almost always on sale there (at 32% off) so it is a better buy for my readers."

Janet's comment something I hear a lot, and it's among the more disheartening things that I hear.

I address this in part in something that I've posted on my (very intermittent) blog, and it's an issue that I talk about whenever I have the opportunity to reach a group of committed readers. Here's a link to the blog entries; scroll down towards the end for the part that directly addresses discounting: http://mysterycompany.typepad.com/jimhuang/

The main point is this: low prices come from somewhere, and they have consequences (to quote John Dicker, the author of THE UNITED STATES OF WAL-MART).

If all you're interested in is a low price, then you can't at the same time expect authors to be paid reasonable royalties, publishers to spend reasonable amounts of money to promote books and neighborhood independent bookstores (and even big box chain stores) to carry any midlist books. Where do low prices come from? The come out of the margin necessary to do all of these things.

The consequences are even more severe. If all you're interested in is a low price, they you can't expect midlist books to be published and distributed in any sensible fashion. Before long, these books won't be published in the first place, and the stores that depend on being able to sell these sorts of titles won't be able to stay in business. All we'll have left, in terms of publishing for a "mass market," is bestsellers.

Think that's too apocalyptic? Think about why most of the big mass market publishing companies have in varying degrees walked away from the genre. Why doesn't Pocket Books have a mass market mystery publishing program? Discounting isn't all of the reason, but I believe that it's a very significant part, more significant than most people realize.

Two other things:

It's interesting to see how titles that should be published as traditional mass market paperbacks (with a suggested retail price of $6.99 or so) are being published instead as trade paperbacks for $13.95 or so. As far as I can tell, Amazon doesn't discount mass market pbs, so readers pay full price for these books -- reluctantly, since there's an appearance of a better deal on other titles. Amazon does discount the trade pbs, creating an impression of getting a bargain -- 32% off sounds like a good deal. Until you realize that 32% off $13.95 is $9.48 or, in other words, $2.49 more than you would have paid had the book been published in the right format to begin with. (Incidentally, in my store's discount program, the discount applies to all books, regardless of format.)

Finally, while it's true that Amazon discounts some titles, bear in mind that many more are sold without a discount and Amazon also imposes a surcharge on many small press titles (and even older titles from big companies. Amazon gives, but it takes away as well. (And I won't even get into the whole issue of the Amazon Advantage program, and the competitive issues that program raises....)

If you'd like to see a particularly weird example of how Amazon discounts/fails to discount/imposes a surcharge on books, take a look at how it sells Alan Gordon's Fool's Guild series of medieval mysteries -- THIRTEENTH NIGHT, JESTER LEAPS IN, WIDOW OF JERUSALEM and ANTIC DISPOSITION. (The middle book in series, #3, DEATH IN THE VENTIAN QUARTER, is out of print at the moment.) How well is Amazon serving buyers interested in Alan's work?

FOLLOW UP POSTED ON JANUARY 12:

"At one point, I went down the IMBA list and I sent out promo copies of one of our books...THREE STRIKES YOU'RE DEAD by Robert Goldsborough. I then called the stores to follow up. I offered promo materials, reinforced my terms and had three stores take me up on it. I actually had a couple stores tell me they don't deal with small press pubs. Now I don't consider us small press, we have published over 100 titles now and we have bent over backwards to accommodate the Indy stores. How do
we get them to acknowledge us?"

I'm one of booksellers who ordered this title. Took me five, six months to do it, but we now have this book displayed in the store in a way that the author and the publisher should be happy with. We've made it our reading group selection for February, and I'm looking forward to hearing what my customers have to say about it.

There's far more to say on this topic than I could possibly cover this morning and still do my job, but here are a few quick points:

Be persistent, patient and polite. The latter really matters. You'd be surprised by how few pitches are polite and respectful.

Don't ask for support from a store if at the same time you're working to undercut the store -- that's why the Amazon-only linked websites are so problematic, and may even extend to the Amazon Advantage program (about which I'm more than a little conflicted). If you're an author, are you supporting your local store when you're asking for that store's help?

Karen writes that she doesn't consider herself a small press. Bear in mind that your competition isn't any random other small company, it's Random House, a company I've been dealing with directly for 18 years. It's not just that RH is larger, but because I have a long relationship with RH, it's a little easier for me to be confident about every aspect of dealing with them.

I know how to order Random House books, I know the discount schedule, I know what the books are going to be like (both in terms of literary quality and physical quality), I know what the company is likely to do (and not do) to help me sell their titles, I know how to return their books (they're already set up in my shipping system), I know how to send payments to them (they're already set up in my accounting system), etc. That's a lot of "I knows" that I probably don't know about most small presses.

This is why persistence matters. Your message may not get through the first or even the fourth time, but if you have a strong message, it will get through. Sooner or later, all those "I don't knows" will get turned into "I knows."

It's remarkable how few pitches I get from small presses help me with this kind of information. Are your books sold on competitive terms? If they are, why isn't that obvious? Can I easily find your company's terms? Are they listed in the American Booksellers Association handbook?

What are competitive terms? For trade books -- hardcovers and trade paperbacks -- Random House sells at 46% off with free freight.

Bob says his publisher is difficult to deal with. I hate to put it this simply, but that's pretty much an automatic case: I don't deal with publishers that are hard to deal with. Why should I? There are plenty of companies whose policies, practices and terms indicate they might actually want my business. A company with un-competitive terms or that throws up roadblocks is telling me that they don't want my order. You don't have to be at 46% and free freight, but you'd better be close.

This isn't rocket science. Where most publishers (big and small) fail is in the basics. Providing clear and complete information in a timely fashion, making it easy to order, selling on competitive terms, packing carefully, shipping in a timely manner, sending statements predictably, making returns straightforward, making it worthwhile to receive and use credit received, etc.

Booksellers aren't as hard to work with as you think. You just have to be willing to work at it.