Tag: Booksellers Corner

Bookseller’s Corner

The Bob and I

I want to tell you about OCC’s October speaker, or rather his books. I was first introduced to Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in 1987. A friend of mine who is also a bookseller said he had just read a new author in paperback mysteries and his name was Robert Crais.

I ordered The Monkey’s Raincoat–Yeah, a funny title, but I almost didn’t read it because the main character’s name was Elvis. I don’t know why but that was too cute, but I took Jim’s advice and I am so glad I did. Here was a new voice in mystery fiction and he spoke to me in a way that I understood. I could hear his dialogue in my head. Elvis was young and very cool. He was sexy and funny and he liked women. Well, The Monkey’s Raincoat went on to win all sorts of awards and Robert “The Bob” Crais became a big time famous author and I wait for the drop date of every book he writes.

I have been “stalking” RC in the nicest sort of way since the early nineties and he has never disappointed. When Bobbie took over as Program Director and asked us for a wish list, Robert Crais was first on my list.

THANKS, BOBBIE!

Take my advice and read The Monkey’s Raincoat and all the rest of his books. I have handed his books to hundreds of people over the years and I can honestly say I’ve never had a complaint. I recommend that you read the Elvis/Joe books in order because Elvis and Joe grow as characters and Robert Crais grows as an author and he was great to begin with.

Happy Reading,
Michelle Thorne
OCC/RWA Bookseller
RWA Bookseller of the Year 1998
www.bearlyusedbooks.com

Bookseller’s Corner

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I HATE BOOKS AND THE CALENDAR!!!
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By Michelle Thorne
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Two weeks a year I am allowed by the Book Gods to hate books.

Last week was the spring portion of our game. We had our semi-annual book sale last Saturday. Yes, I know it was the day before Easter. I had to have the postcards printed twice, because the original ones had the sale on Easter too. How did I miss this?

In 25 years this has never happened, Easter has never fallen on my book sale. I blame global warming. It somehow changed the moon cycle, as I’m now told that Easter depends on the first full moon after something…I really wasn’t listening, but NOBODY SENT ME THE MEMO.

Suffice to say, I didn’t look at the calendar very carefully, I just looked at the numbers of the first full weekend in April. Why, you might ask?

Good question! Well, I’ll tell you, because I was surrounded by books, they were everywhere, they were multiplying at night when I went home. I would shelve them only to find more. They were like dirty dishes, just when you think the kitchen is clean, you find one more glass to wash, don’t you hate that.

I’m allowed to HATE housework all the time. It never gets finished. I’d rather just move to a nice clean house about every three months, but I hate moving too. Now I feel much better, the rant is over.

I don’t hate books anymore, all the unsold over stock just left via the back door to the West Covina Friends of the Library where they will be on sale again this weekend, the store is neat and pretty much in alpha order and just the way I like it, and my week of book hating is over.

I’m reading a really great ARC by Susan Kearney called Kiss Me Deadly, that’s one of the perks of being a Bookseller and loving it 50 weeks of the year. Am I one lucky girl or what?

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

Always,

Michelle

Michelle Thorne is the owner of Bearly Used Books…123, Home of A Great Read and OCC’s Media Director. For all your reading needs contact Michelle at:

Bearly Used Books…123
Home of A Great Read
123 So. First Street
La Puente, CA 91744
(626) 968-3700

Booksellers Corner

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Book Groups

By Michelle Thorne

What a Book Group can do for you.

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted anything, but this was one of my things to do in the New Year. I really don’t like resolutions because they are sorta like rules and I immediately want to break them, so I just make a list as suggestions. As I recall, I talked about my book group last time and suggested that you should belong to one or start one. I think I said that if you are serious about writing, you should be serious about reading, and reading widely. So put this on your to do list.

1. Join or start a book group.

2. Read.

Now here’s what a reading group can do for you. A friend of mine, who is an editor, said that sometime as little as 10 books in a series romance line is all that separates the #1 book in a month from the book that was in last place. 10 Books. Amazing. My book group has 11 members. You do the math. You should reach out and “touch “ book groups all over the country. You could virtually “visit” a meeting with just a speakerphone at the book group. In your jammies. Jayne Ann Krentz did one with us a few years ago and although my girls froze when actually confronted with one of their all time favorite, Jayne and I had a very nice chat about her books, I can talk about books for literally hours if need be.

I recommend that you ask you publisher to put some book group questions in the back of your book as a jumping off point, a mapquest for your book. Go to a bookstore and look in the back of books in the Chick Lit section or, and I really hate to say this, but to give the girl her props, any Oprah books, although I would never recommend you read them. They have some great questions that you can “borrow” and tailor to your book. If your publisher doesn’t want to put in ??? in the back of the book, simply put in your author notes “Visit my website for book group discussions questions. Easy.

But the most important thing I can tell you today is take some time for yourself and READ. I’m pretty sure that’s why you wanted to become a writer. You enjoy the written word. You like a great story. I give you permission to stop writing for an hour and read. After all, I am the BOOK GODDESS, if only in my own tiny little brain.

Happy Reading,

Michelle

P.S. What would YOU like to know about book selling?
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Michelle Thorne is the owner of Bearly Used Books…123, Home of A Great Read and OCC’s Media Director. For all your reading needs contact Michelle at:

Bearly Used Books…123
Home of A Great Read
123 So. First Street
La Puente, CA 91744
(626) 968-3700

MICHELLE THORNE: Atlanta , I Don’t Know Nothing About Birthing No Babies

I know I said last time I was going to talk about how to use a Reader’s Group to grow your market but I have been reading The WRITERS VIBE BLOG about our “Young Ones” National Conference stories from last year and I thought I’d tell you about my first conference. You all know I love National Conferences. I have more fun and it’s probably because I don’t get all caught up in the agent /editor thing or the workshop thing or the fear thing. I LOVE TO WRITE, REALLY, I do, but I don’t have a lot of ego invested in it. You do, but here’s the secret, you have to relax and let your work speak for itself. Go to your interviews, schmooze with whoever you can, but SHOW NO FEAR OR DESPERATION. Publishing peeps can smell it. Have some fun, and here’s my story to prove my advice.

My first conference was in Orlando, FL an it just happened to be the year the Nora/Janet deal exploded and you couldn’t get near a women’s loo because that’s where all the great dish was going on. Well, I really had to pee, so I grabbed an elevator to go to my room and who happened to be on it but the “Male Troika of Agents…Ethan Ellenberg, Evan Fogelman and Steven Axlerod. They tried not to make eye contact and went into a defensive huddle. But it was a long ride and they were consummate gentlemen, so they asked what I wrote and I said “Checks.” I said I was a bookseller and then they became very interested in me: Did I have time to take a meeting? Yeah, right! What was selling in my store? What genres were big this year? The thing was I didn’t want anything from them and they relaxed. We spoke for a few minutes and I touted some of my OCC friends, and then, thank god, we arrived at my floor and I could escape to my room. I really did have to pee.

Every year I see one of those guys and they say “Hey it’s the check lady”. So relax, make a good impression, and have some fun. All these “important people” are just that, people. Follow up on any contacts and connections you make in Atlanta , but if you expect to “close the deal” there, you’ll probably disappointed. Be in the moment! Soak up the atmosphere. Set goals and agendas, but don’t be crushed if they aren’t fully realized. Since we’ll be in Atlanta, as Scarlett says “TOMORROW IS ANOTHER DAY”, Come hang in the OCC suite (It’s going to be awesome with a few surprise and lots of fun and special guests) I’ll be there and I have lots of stories. I’ve been in books since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Go to The Writers Vibe blog and read Louise, Dana and Michele’s blogs. They’re great. They’re authors on the verge of getting that first publishing contract. They’re smart, funny and very well informed about the publishing business. Good to know. For added inspiration, OCC’s own Mary Castillo, author of IN BETWEEN MEN, met her editor at conference!

Next time Reading Groups to Grow Your Numbers, for sure.

As god as my witness, I’ll never be hungry again! (I know, it’s a sickness)

Michelle Thorne
Bearly Used Books…123
Home of A Great Read
OCC Media Director
123 So. First Street
Historic Old Puente, CA 91744
(626) 968-3700

Michelle Thorne: Book Groups

By Michelle Thorne

I love my book group. 10 women. Married, divorced, widowed, and single. From 70+ years old to our young one at 38. Children, no children and furry children. Work at home and outside the house. Over 350 years of reading romance and everything else. Do we all get along, mostly. Do they drive me crazy, sometimes. Do I love them, ABOULETLY!!!

We have been meeting once a month for almost 15 years. We started out with six members and we tightened and expanded as needed. When we started, we really had only two rules: No Oprah books and we didn’t want to be socially redeemed. When we started out, people were so serious about book groups. If you didn’t want to open a vein at the end of reading the book, you were doing something wrong. I couldn’t understand it. Books had always been my refuge. They’re where I went when all else failed. Books made me happy. No one in their right mind would be an independent bookseller if they didn’t love books. I hear all you out there questioning my right mind but that’s for another day. Anyway, books have always made me happy, not sad and depressed. So that was how the group started, and it is An Oprah-Free Zone.

Now you know the first rules but there were more to come. We started out with munchies during the meeting, but we meet at 6pm, so for a year or so we had potlucks. What a fine mess that turned out to be. Sometimes we had roast beef and cous cous.

Then we had theme dinners. Better, but still some odd “taste sensations”. We moved on to 1 person, one dinner a year, pizza once and we go out to really nice restaurant at Christmas time. Our latest change was last year when we instituted “you feed us…you get to pick the book” Great idea, but we are an “Oprah-Free Zone” no more. Okay, 15 years have passed, we grown, we’ve matured, but I still don’t like to be depressed when reading. So another rule change, if you want to read deeply you must let the shallow have another choice. It works, for us, in fact some of our best sessions have been when we all read a different book and then gave a short synopsis. A months worth of great reads laid out one after another.

So why an I telling you this. If you write, I assume you read and you should. READ, Read, read! In your genre, outside your genre, fiction, non-fiction…everything. If you are like most authors I know, you tend to hole up in your offices, on deadline or not, and let those little self-editors in your head make you doubt that you can ever write another coherent sentence. You read, you critique partner’s latest missive, and they read yours, but not for pleasure or knowledge. You probably sell yourself short and think “I should be writing.” But back to reading, you probably mean to read, but again you don’t give yourself permission to just read for you, and that’s why you need to join or start a reading group.

It’s really easy. You can check with your nearest bookstore and see if they have an established group already, or you can post a notice that you want to start a reading group. I suggest that you don’t announce that you are a writer, or you’ll find out more about your fellow members likes and dislikes than you wanted to know, and they will look to you for brilliant criticisms as an author, rather than just a reader. Also you’re doing this for yourself. You’re in a group that meets once a month and you HAVE to read the book. Cool! You have to read a book. It’s like a job and I know you take your work seriously. Whatever the group picks for a read, it will give you a great look at what is going on out there with other authors and how your fellow book clubbers are reacting to them. Please, Please, Please, even if you don’t join a book club, give your self a break and read. You know you want to.

More next time on how Authors can use book groups to grow their readerships and numbers.

Books are like shoes…You can never have too many.

Michelle Thorne
RWA Bookseller of the Year 1998
Bearly Used Books…123
Home of A Great Read
123 So. First Street
La Puente, CA 91744
(626) 968-3700