My Fibonacci book @ Dali Museum

This was a cool. One of my bookseller friends, Caroline (above) spotted my Fibonacci book on sale (in copious quantities) at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The artist Dali referenced the Fibonacci Sequence in many of his works. I love when one of my books connects with a museum gift shop. Their priorities are vastly different from traditional bookstores, and they’ll keep a book in stock long after the other stores have returned them and moved on.

* * *

Meanwhile, Caroline’s employer, Malaprops, is in the news this evening. This New York Times article announces that they are one of more than 50 indie bookstores that will receive a grant from mega-author James Patterson.

Turkey & Bookstores

Turkey & Bookstores

I haven’t had one of these weekends in…ever.

Friday Denise is doing a book signing 12-4 pm at the Books-A-Million in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the only bookstore in the city that is the setting for her book, The Girls of Atomic City. I’m tagging along. It’s the first time either of us has ever signed on Black Friday. I’m not sure what to expect. On a day overrun with “doorbuster” sales, are people really going to visit a bookstore? We’ll see.

Saturday afternoon we’re both volunteering to work 3-5 pm at Malaprop’s (see photos above), our local store here in town, as part of a nationwide event called Indies First, first promoted by author Sherman Alexie. 

Basically, a bunch of writers all around the USA (and several nations overseas) are hand-selling at their favorite indie bookstores for the day. This map gives you an idea which authors are volunteering. Denise describes the event in a column appearing today in the Huffington Post.

Again: Not sure what to expect. In the past, we’ve hawked our history titles in gift shops at historic sites around the country. Those signings always went well, but convincing someone face-to-face why they should buy your books is not something I enjoy doing. That’s why Malaprop’s asked us to pick a handful of other authors’ books to pitch, so we’re trying that. I have no idea how I’ll perform in that situation.

One thing I’ve learned is to always bring a notebook to book signings and plop it right there on the table next to you. That way, people can sign up for your mailing list on the spot. Some people sign up even if they don’t buy your book, intending to buy it online later. Our email list has grown to more than 2,500 names since we started doing that. We only mail out one or two blasts a year, but it’s been totally worth it.

If I don’t talk to you, have a great Thanksgiving.

Bookstore hopping in Asheville, North Carolina » MobyLives

The blog Moby Lives has a nice post today about indie bookstores in my town of Asheville, NC. They profile four such shops, but I recently counted as many as eight in the city, and up to a dozen in the outlying areas.

They are a huge mix: two B&Ns, several used bookstores, a dedicated children’s bookstore (Spellbound), a revered rare/antiquarian (The Captain’s Bookshelf), a bookstore/wine bar (Battery Park Book Exchange) and a couple of indies selling new books, the most famous of which is Malaprop’s. The stores have interesting personalities. Accent on Books was in the book news a few years ago because they had logged numerous orders for the luxury edition of Carl Jung’s $195 Red Book when it was released in 2010. (Must have something to do with the fact that the city has a Jung center.)

I can’t really offer an explanation for the profusion of book haunts, but we do have a university and we’re the state’s leftiest city.

That does not mean these stores are not endangered. And it’s not a given that they are patronized particularly well. There’s a weird split in attitude between downtown and outside-the-city shoppers who don’t like to come downtown and pay for parking. When I recently mentored a high schooler who was writing her own children’s book, she suggested we meet at the B&N at the mall.

"What about Malaprop’s?" I said.

"What’s that?"

Adults have told me the same thing.

Asheville's Stephen King Mystery

For a small city of 70,000, my adopted hometown of Asheville has a high number of bookstores. I counted up to 10 once. Strangely, they seem to be evenly split, too, between new and used bookstores. One of the used bookstores reported today that they’d found a sales receipt tucked inside a book apparently signed by author Stephen King. (I could be wrong, but I think the image below shows a carbon copy signature. Remember those?) The local blog Ashvegas has the story here.

By coincidence, Moby Lives has a nice piece about this 25-year-old bookstore…