How not to freak out in front of celebrity authors

by Jenna Todd

An author can be a very important person to a reader, someone who, through their books, we have invested much time into. With a busy year of writer’s weeks ahead of us, now seems a good time to ask: How much of that enthusiasm should we display – or hold back – to make the author feel comfortable?

A majority of authors have the fortune of not being recognisable, their author photo and blurb our only tiny glimpse into their personal life. It’s difficult to decipher whether an author actually wants to be recognised, especially if they are just visiting the bookstore as a pedestrian. If they slide through a transaction unnoticed, have we as a bookseller failed at our job? If we do recognise them, should we say something to confirm our book industry insight? Are we required to give some positive feedback in terms of customer interest and sales?

Sometimes, the tides are turned on us. There’s a trick that some authors play on booksellers.
Customer: Do you have “xx xx” in stock?
Bookseller: We don’t have it at the moment, but can order it in for you?
Customer Author: I am the author of this book. Have you read it? Why is it not on the shelf?”

Of course there is the time when an author must step into the spotlight to promote their book. It must be quite strange to emerge from a writing cave to be thrust into spotlight of your readers. Author events must feel like continual birthday parties, where you’re not sure if your guests will turn up.

Kate Atkinson promoting Life After Life at Time Out Bookstore in 2013

From experience (as a spectator), here are a few don’ts when speaking to an author:

• If an author has written a book on a specific subject, it’s best to presume they know they know more about the subject than you do.
• It’s not okay to bring up your own body of work when asking an author a question in a Q & A, or to hijack a Q & A in general.
• Don’t lead with questions about the author’s divorce and/or love life.

And some Do’s:

• Do your research, read up on what the author you’re about to meet has been asked before and try and ask something different.
• Be respectful of their time, be aware of other fans waiting.
• Engage with authors via social media – link them in tweets with your reviews and book love.

I’ve met a couple of my favourite authors and thankfully, they have exceeded my expectations. That said, I can’t help but turn pink, and as I speak to them the thought that I am actually speaking to them hazes my very ability to concentrate on our conversation. The most important thing I want to tell them is that I am a bookseller and how much I enjoy selling their books.

My friend Emily Adams is a bookseller at Third Place Books in Seattle, Washington which has hosted a multitude of incredible authors, from Paul McCartney to John Green.
“I treat authors like anyone else; they are people doing a job. Give them kind words and a smile. Thank them for visiting your local bookstore, and buy a book at the host store to show your appreciation.”

The Third Place Team with former President Jimmy Carter, who visited to promote his book A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. Emily is in the blue floral dress.

I searched even further afield to another bookseller friend, Josh Cook from Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He’s also a published author, so he can offer advice from both sides.

“Think of them like you would someone you met a party once who you thought was really cool. You’d probably go up to re-introduce yourself, but not if they’re clearly having dinner with their family or talking on their phone, or in a rush to get somewhere, and you probably wouldn’t try to talk to them for ten minutes right off the bat. I think the same rules apply for a celebrity you get a chance to meet. Don’t worry about embarrassing yourself or anything like that, just be honest, respect their personhood, and have fun, and odds are they’ll be honest, respectful, and grateful that you’ve shared with them their impact on your life.”

So that’s it, just be nice. Keep it cool. And as I’m writing to a group of wonderful book people, I’m sure that won’t be difficult.

Many thanks to my American bookseller friends Emily and Josh for contributing to this piece.

by Jenna Todd, Manager, Time Out Bookstore, Mt Eden

How to Choose a Book*, by Jenna Todd

*at your local independent bookstore.

Prepare yourself
Put away your phone! Fill up your parking meter! Your bookstore is ready and waiting for you.

Are you ready to have a conversation? Are you ready to be led down the path of the unknown? It’s time to stand shoulder to shoulder with your literary comrades as you take part in one of the most precious and personal tasks known to man: choosing a book.

An inviting Time Out Books window

The Great Good Place
As you step into your local store, you will feel something quite powerful. That’s the power of words. These books are written and published with you in mind and this bookstore is filled to the brim with titles chosen by booksellers, for you.

Sociologist Ray Oldenburg (right) believes that alongside your home and work, you need a place where you can gather and be part of a community. He has coined this The Third Place.

This bookstore opens its doors everyday just to be your Third Place. It wants to be a part of your routine, a place of comfort and discovery.

A mere corner of Unity Books Wellington – start here and work your way out!

Judge a book by its cover
Start big.

I recommend you make a round the whole store at least once. This is where unexpected surprises may come your way.

Narrow down.

Choose your section – Fiction! History! Cooking! Cultural Studies! Scan the covers or spines. Let the fonts and colours tell you to grab them. Let’s be honest, there are so many books with terrible covers. Covers where you know the stories’ protagonist would despise their outer skin. But don’t let this deter you.

Something will lead you to pick up a book and it’s hard to explain how and why this happens. The best way to think of it is as a fateful match.

Time Out Bookstore staff in 2012. They may not be dressed in evening wear in-store…

Ask the experts
Floating around the bookstore, will be some very happy people. These are your booksellers.

They have been hired because they, like you, love to read. They have towering piles of books, surrounding their sleeping heads, hoping to absorb the words so they can pass on their opinion to you.

Your bookseller will probably ask you a few questions. What are some of your favourite books? What have you read lately? Watch them carefully after you answer, as you will see their brain calculating and eliminating. Then follow them around the store as they mumble to themselves, putting together a curated pile for you.

Making the final decision
By now, you may have gathered quite a pile of books and, unfortunately, these choices just may exceed your budget. (Ed’s choices from her review pile to the side!)

This is where you will have to a) thinking about your upcoming reading spots and b) get in touch with how you’re feeling.

Will you be carrying this book on a plane? Or will it sit firmly on your beside table?
Do you feel like delving into a new author? Or would you little to settle into a familiar voice?

The elimination process is a difficult task, but you will make the right choice. Read the first paragraph of all your finalists and, somewhere amongst their text, one of them will whisper the strongest, “I’m the one!”

Heck, you may just give up and say, “I’ll take them all!”

Congratulate yourself
You have not only just gained a precious item for your bookshelf. You now have a ticket to any time or place. Your imagination will be stretched and you will discover something you would not have known before.

This book will sit upon your shelves for years to come. Its cover will become a memory trigger for this exact moment of purchase and the unfolding moments in which you absorb its tale.

Conservations will be sparked as future guests to your home approach your bookcase, tilt their head sideways and finger its spine.

This new book is yours, but its story will be shared. And that’s pretty special.

by Jenna Todd, Manager of Time Out Books, Mt Eden

Booksellers NZ conference from the pen of Jenna Todd

Jenna Todd from Time Out Bookstore was presenting her findings about the Kobo Scholarship this year at conference, but that didn’t stop us asking her to keep a note of what else happened!

Nielsen Book Data Presentation
Nevena Nikolic from Nielsen (left, first on left) reviewed the latest consumer trends in New Zealand book buying. The total market is still in decline, but the figures are not as dire looking as last year. Children’s books has the smallest drop in sales.

The Luminaries provided a huge boost in sales for NZ fiction – it has sold 40,000 copies in NZ to date and it’s at the top of both the general and indie booksellers charts for the year to date. (Hopefully we will have another New Zealand win the Booker this year – any takers?!)

Nevena also said that according to their statistics, 10% of New Zealanders currently own an e-reader, and are purchasing about 1 e-book a month.

What are our future readers reading? with speaker Wayne Mills
Wayne Mills (left), the founder of the Kid’s Lit Quiz gave an insightful presentation what our future readers are reading. In 2012, all participants in the Kid’s Lit Quiz were given a simple survey: They were to give their favourite book, their favourite author and also what they were currently reading.

Over 1500 children voted, who mentioned over 7300 book titles. The clear favourite was (unsurprisingly) the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Almost all of the favourite individual titles were part of a series, was a movie or both, such as The Hunger Games, The Lord of the Rings and Percy Jackson.

The idea of the Kid’s Lit Quiz is to increase the awareness of children reading for pleasure and to combat the mis-match between what children want to read to what they are required to read for school. The results of this survey will be published in a paper for teachers. Mills also indicated further plans to survey more countries, as well as questioning New Zealand children again in 2020.

There is a definite period of change in the way we read, but there is growth in the teen market and events such as The Kid’s Lit Quiz really enrich the way our young people interact with literature.

The Future of New Zealand Publishing
Tony Moores headed this panel of excellent publishers and it was great to hear where they’re at and what their plans are for the future.

Nicola Legat (right) spoke of the changes that Random House has made since the downturn in book sales since 2008. They have put in a huge amount of work into their new website, book app and making ebooks as well as reducing their list. While Nicola admits that publishing is about money in the end, Random House are completely committed to producing high quality New Zealand stories that create a cultural conversation. Each book they publish is released with a strategy and they are feeling more committed to booksellers more than ever.

Robbie Burton from Craig Potton Publishing spoke of their shrinking print runs, especially with the loss of the Red Group in New Zealand. However, the good news is, they grew 1% last year. He believes now is the time to emphasise localism.

Melanie from Allen & Unwin focused on the acquisition of Murdoch Books and what positive outcomes this will bring. They will still be focused on non-illustrated non-fiction, but not exclusively. They have plans to double their NZ publishing programme in the next 24 months.

by Jenna Todd 

We have a piece by Megan Dunn on our website about Michael Williams’ presentation. In The Read next week, we will provide Greg Randall’s full presentation, as well as a full write-up about it, and an article by him related to his presentation and further questions. 

Jared Raines and Jenna Todd: Kiwis’ Take on U.S. Bookselling

This article is by Alex Mutter, and reproduced from Shelf Awareness.

Jared Raines (left) and Jenna Todd (3rd in), two indie booksellers from New Zealand, attended Winter Institute 9 in Seattle, Washington, thanks to a sponsorship from Kobo and a contest run by Booksellers New Zealand (the N.Z. equivalent of the ABA). As part of the arrangement, the two booksellers also spent the week after Winter Institute working at two Seattle-area indies. Todd, manager of Time Out Bookstore in Auckland, worked at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park and Ravenna, Wash., while Raines, owner and manager of Paperplus Northlands in Christchurch, worked at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle.

Jared Raines    
Raines, whose own store is an approximately 2,560-sq.-ft. general-interest bookshop with a copying center, said that the most obvious differences between Paperplus Northlands and Elliott Bay were the sheer size and volume of stock of the latter.

“There is also less of a focus on sideline product in the U.S. than we have in N.Z.,” Raines added. “Most bookstores in our group have a very strong personal and commercial stationery offering.”

Raines’s store, which was opened by his family 33 years ago, has been franchised by several different brands and has traded under a number of names, the first of which was Target Books & Stationery. Raines began working in the family business in 1996, when he was 14. In 2010, he took over full management of the business. He currently employs 12 staff members; during the holidays, that increases to 15 or 16.

Another key difference between bookselling in N.Z. and the U.S., Raines said, was the lack of wholesalers in the former. N.Z. indies, he explained, really have only publishers as their main suppliers.

“This does at times cause issues, as publishers make printing decisions based on sell-in numbers,” Raines explained. Indies typically cannot afford to buy three or four months worth of stock at release, which often leads to the underprinting of N.Z. titles. And, aside from Random House and some local publishers, the majority of large publishers have consolidated their New Zealand operations with their offices in Australia. This has led to complications with shipments; a delivery within 3-5 days is considered fast. If the wholesale model were adopted in N.Z., Raines asserts, that could go a long way in solving these problems.

Jenna Todd
Todd was struck in a similar way by the size of Third Place Books. Her own store occupies approximately 700 square feet of a long, narrow heritage building, with an upper floor devoted to events and community gatherings. Time Out carries around 17,000 volumes across many genres; the store’s only focus, Todd said, was on “the best of the best.” She reported that literary fiction, children’s books and coffee table books do particularly well.

The frequency of author events at American indies and the relatively low price of books compared to N.Z. also struck Todd. Author visits are rare for most N.Z. indies, although Time Out is fortunate to have author Eleanor Catton as a regular customer (the launch party for The Luminaries, Catton’s Booker Prize-winning novel, was held at the store). She attributed both differences to New Zealand “being at the bottom of the world.”

“However,” Todd added, “one thing I learned when I was visiting all of these excellent stores in Seattle is that we just slot right alongside their high caliber–Time Out is just as excellent and special!”

Todd has worked at Time Out for four years, and has been manager for two. There are 12 staff members, most of whom work part time and are involved in a range of creative endeavors (Todd, for example, is a photographer, and the store also employs a director, an actress, a writer and a musician).

What they learned
Todd said overall of the Winter Institute that “there was just immeasurable value from just talking and spending time with all of the wonderful book people who attended WI9. It was such a fantastic experience.”

Similarly, Raines said he appreciated the people at WI9. “I really was made to feel like part of the U.S. bookselling community,” he said. “The most interesting thing I learned while there is that we all have the ability to survive the changing retail climate that is hitting our industry; we must work hard to be involved in our community, and be more than just a store full of product.”

And as for what he brought to Elliott Bay, Raines reported that his American counterparts were frequently interested in his retail system and his store’s security camera system. He also provided, he added, the “terrible Kiwi accent and colloquialisms!” –Alex Mutter

This piece was originally published in Shelf Awareness for Tuesday 11 March, the American Bookselling Association’s newsletter.

Jenna’s experience at Third Place Books, Seattle

Guest Post from Jenna Todd, one of our Kobo scholars to Seattle.

One of the best things about Third Place Books is its name. It was named after sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s idea that everyone needs three places. Your first being your home, second – your work or school, and finally a Third Place- where all walks of life interact. Third Place Books is the deliberate and intentional creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them.

Third Place Books has been operating since 1998 about 30 minutes North of Seattle city. It is HUGE and is located on the top floor of the Lake Forest Park Town Centre (pictured). Housing 200,000 books, I would say it’s about 200 times bigger than Time Out. Second hand books sit very comfortably among the new titles and it has the wooden shelves, leather chairs and friendly staff that make it super cozy and welcoming.

I was very lucky to be staying with some new friends who lived near the store. I had actually met them as customers at Time Out while they were holidaying in New Zealand. (It always pays to chat to people!) So I had a very comfortable home base, with the Gibauts and their cat, also named Jenna.

On my first day, I had an in depth tour of the large premises and then I was off to Third Place’s second store in Ravenna (left). The Ravenna store opened in 2002, is a lot smaller and it also has a greek restaurant attached as well as a pub downstairs. We had arrived on this Monday to prepare and observe an author luncheon for Ishmael Beah, the Sierra Leonean author of A Long Way Gone. For $40US, patrons received a copy of his new book, Radiance of Tomorrow and a set menu lunch. 30 or so guests paid, came and listened to him speak and read. They had many exciting authors booked for future months and they had just recently had Ann Patchett as a guest.

On the Wednesday night, we had an author talk from Ruth Ozeki. RUTH OZEKI! (Jemma with Ruth above) This was a small talk that had 120 customers in store. She is such an engaging and wonderful speaker – it was such a treat. Third Place has had the most amazing authors come though. John Green drew a crowd of 1000 (these large events are held in the community commons area.) Paul McCartney and Julie Andrews are fondly remembered guests. Oh to be on the major tour circuit!

Over the week, I browsed the shelves, stood at the info counter, observed a rep meeting and tried to get my head around their computer systems. Most of all and what I found most valuable, was speaking to the staff – which were completely open and engaging, and were extremely generous with their time. One hilarious thing I learned was that bookshop customer questions are universal, “I woke up to the radio last night, and I heard about this interesting book but I don’t know the title or author…”

A store the size of Third Place runs quite differently than our wee store. They have over 30 staff, who have every hour of their shift scheduled. Each staff member has their own genre section, putting out stock and retrieving returns. Third Place own an espresso book machine (shown below), they can print an out of print or self-published title in about 5 minutes! They have events about 4 or 5 nights of the week. And their books are very cheap, their margins are great and customers pay the small amount of tax at the counter.

I don’t think I could ever sum up the results from my scholarship fully. I learned so much that I think I have learned things that I don’t realise I’ve learned. I am extremely grateful to Kobo and Booksellers NZ for giving me this opportunity, it’s so exciting that young booksellers in New Zealand are being celebrated and nurtured. Thank you, thank you!

Article by Jenna Todd.

For her report on Wi9, please link through here.

Bookselling is a people industry: Wi9 Seattle for Jenna Todd

I’m finding it difficult to put in to words all that I soaked in during the American Bookseller’s Winter Institute in Seattle, Washington; but I will try my best!

We arrived on the Sunday afternoon that the Seahawks were playing a game to get into the Superbowl finals. Which meant that the city was eerily dead, the notorious traffic was a breeze and there was a hilarious amalgamation of easily distinguished football fans and booksellers at our hotel, the Westin Seattle. Our New Zealand contingent (pictured below: Jared Raines, Mary Sangster, Jenna Todd and Lincoln Gould) came slightly earlier to recover from the long flight and also attend a dinner with the 50 other international Wi9 attendees. But over the next few days, the football fans were out, and 500 booksellers, publishers and authors filled two central hotels to the brim.

The ABA organised many of these visiting booksellers to go on a full day Seattle bookstore tour; something I had really been looking forward to.While exhausting, I did find it extremely enlightening. We visited a large variety of stores – some were huge, most were medium-sized. We saw a children’s bookstore, a university bookstore and a travel bookstore (just like Notting Hill.) We ferried to a store on an island – the common factor of all of these stores was that they sold socks. I did not see a store as small as Time Out – but I was extremely happy to feel our store was just as fantastic as the stores we were visiting.

Seattle is the home of Amazon and 15,000 of their employees. Despite this, the Indie bookstores I visited seem to be on the up in terms of both sales and community engagement – thanks largely to a nationwide change in consumer behaviour, dubbed the Localism movement. There is good reading about the Localism Movement here. You can also find good reading about the independent bookstore movement worldwide here on the Indiebound NZ website.

The Wi9 officially started on a Tuesday night, at a reception at the large and beautiful Elliott Bay Book Company on grungy Capitol Hill (above). We drunk tap wine, ate sliders and celebrated being booksellers! The atmosphere was terrific and this continued throughout the week.

The conference blew through very quickly. Author Sherman Alexie spoke of his love of Indie Bookstores and author Dan Heath spoke of being decisive. There were daily workshops for international booksellers. Indie Booksellers from all over America told us what to read this year. We listened to Scholastic authors speak while eating ice-cream sundaes. There was a room of advanced reading copies that we could just take, box up and send at a FedEx desk set up in a corner. We could also meet authors of these reading copies and get them signed! (see Jenna below with author Ruth Ozeki)

There were so many special afternoon sessions to choose from and attend – I’m sure every attendee of Wi9 would have had a unique experience. I learned about selling sensitive teen fiction, I listened to how bookstores run their killer events, how to push word of mouth marketing and listened to owners of successful independent businesses in Seattle.

It was a whirlwind of ideas; meetings and swapping business cards over filtered Starbucks and boxed lunches. We ate delicious dinners with the most interesting people and then continued on conversations in the Westin lobby until 2am.

Wi9 bought some of the most wonderful and passionate booksellers together, and I felt incredibly lucky to be a part of these conversations.

The best comments I heard about the book industry was from European International Booksellers Federation chair, Irishman John McNamee, who dropped a pearl of wisdom every time he spoke. ‘Machines don’t write books and machines don’t read books. Bookselling is a people industry.’ The main thing I believe I have taken away from the Wi9 is that we need passionate booksellers and publishers to continue and grow the wonderful communities we have based around our bookstores. ‘We do not choose our customers, they choose us’ (another gem from John) and we need to give them reasons to continue spending their money locally.

by Jenna Todd, Kobo scholarship recipient 2014, and Manager of Time Out Bookstore in Mt Eden