Opinion — A Tale Of Two Bookstores, Indie Bookstore Celebration On November 29

As I’ve mentioned a number of times in the past, bookstores and libraries are sacred places — all that knowledge and art and ideas, not to mention adventure.   The only other human-made places that provided that kind of inspiration for me were movie theaters.  One of the benefits of living in San Francisco is that most every neighborhood has a bookstore — at least one.

Also, as discussed a lot lately, the bookstore business, as a business, has and is facing major challenges. Years ago, the big box bookstores came through our cities and towns like glaciers during the ice age.  It was tough.  Some bookstores regrouped and survived. Others vanished. Then, if I can extend the climate metaphor, came global warming in the form of Amazon. An over reach on my part perhaps, but the point is technology surged on two fronts.  On-line ordering, unlimited inventory combined with the new instant and portable e-book formats have made life for traditional, independent booksellers and those of us who love them very difficult.

What can bookstores do to deal with changes in the marketplace? I’d love to hear from owners of those stores who have met the challenge. As a writer, and much like independent bookstores, I’m working on my own way to say relevant in this publishing environment.  My only advice to bookstores, unasked for as it is, as both a customer and a writer, is what not to do.  Here is a short, personal story.

When some of my earlier books went out of print, I decided to do something about it.  I found a talented graphic designer and published them myself.  I also published a mystery novella, too short for the traditional publishers to even consider. While regular distribution channels were next to impossible for me monetarily, I wanted the novella, which I set in San Francisco, to be on local bookshelves.  I went around, on foot, to the city’s independent bookstores to peddle my books and was met, generally speaking, with a less than enthusiastic welcome.  I managed to place some on consignment. 

 

The experience was interesting.  I found that the stores in a small, local chain, Books Inc., to be among the most knowledgeable, most helpful and most welcoming.  When I peddled my little trade paperback Mascara – Death In The Tenderloin to the Books Inc. store on San Francisco’s Chestnut Street, the buyer took five and had me fill out a form. This happened at a few other stores.  What made the Chestnut store different, though, was that a few days later l received an email from the buyer. “We sold out.  Bring over more books.  A check is in the mail.” I did. And it happened again.  Another e-mail, another check and another request for more books. The cycle repeated a few more times before the expected lag in interest occurred. They had put my books in the local writers section of their mystery bookshelves. They also ordered some other books from by my usual publisher through traditional channels. The experience was a good one. When I buy books, I do so at bookstores that reflect the city and the neighborhoods they serve.  I also recommend the best to my friends.  All the Books Inc. stores I’ve been to – four of them – have a staff who seems to like readers and writers and books. The Books Inc. store on California which also actively supports local writers set up a book signing and ordered a bunch of my books even though the publisher had a “no return” policy on hardbacks.

There was another bookstore.  I won’t name it.  It is located in a dynamic neighborhood, an area I regularly frequent.  The place looks good. I came in with my books and talked to the guy who decides what to do with local writers looking for a consignment agreement.  He eyed me with suspicion.  He examined the book as if I was selling a fake Louis Vuitton handbag.  He took two books, I believe.  I didn’t hear from him or anyone for a while so I stopped in to see where I was put.  I couldn’t find my books — not in mysteries, not in plain view anywhere. Perhaps they had sold, I thought.  I didn’t want to be a hovering, pestering writer. I already felt as if I were unwelcomed, and today’s employee was busy checking backpacks and bags.  I left and called later.  They didn’t sell any I was told and because I didn’t come in during the required time, the books were disposed of. I didn’t argue. The terms were probably on the slip of paper I signed, the one with my phone number and e-mail address. I didn’t go back.  Ever.

It wasn’t the money that bothered me.  It was the attitude. I no longer buy books from them, I steer people away. There are a number of warm and friendly bookstores to recommend — some listed below. No need to encourage people to visit a store that treats local writers and customers in such a cold, robotic way. It’s a shame.  At a time when independent bookstores are incredibly challenged and have to be at their best to survive, I would think that personal relationships and local connections would be important.  After all, these are things Amazon is unable to do.

An Update On The Upside:

City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco

While San Francisco, like many other places, has lost many fine bookstores in the last few years, all is not lost.  Here, the legendary City Lights in North beach thrives, as does the incomparable Green Apple in The Richmond. Green Apple has also put a branch on the other side of the park in the Sunset. The fantastic (in more ways than one) Borderlands is on eclectic Valencia Street in the Mission. The bookstore, which was well known for science fiction, fantasy and horror, now offers a comprehensive selection of crime fiction as well. Also a café! The Alexander Book Company occupies three floors in the city’s financial district near the SOMA district. The renowned Book Passage from Corte Madera operates a small, but lively branch, popular with commuters and tourists, in the bustling Ferry Building.  The busy West Portal Book Shop is, where else, on West Portal Avenue in West Portal. Browser Books has been on trendy Fillmore since 1976. And the charming Christopher’s Books anchors Potrero Hill’s charming 18th Street.  Barnes & Noble recently closed its last store in the city.  Borders is long gone. Where can readers go for the kind of warmth and inspiration as well as being the company of likeminded souls? It strikes me that for smaller, independent bookstores willing to relate to their communities and their neighborhoods, the future is bright.

On Saturday, November 29 independent bookstores across the country will celebrate with author and illustrator appearances.  Here is a list of participating stores.  For a list by state, click here.

Incidentally, a national list of independent bookstores and a list of mystery bookstores are always just a click way on any page of my blog. Look for the icon on the right.

The Ultimate Independent Bookstore — Happy 60th Birthday

When I was in high school I discovered the Beats — Corso, Ginsberg and a whole slew of writers and poets that were unlike any I had read in literature class. In fact, these writers who were obviously treading on the established views of everything, weren’t even mentioned in the classroom. However, because of a smart, brave and progressive librarian — thank you Ms. Cohen wherever you are — I found them.

Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, more than any other book, set my mind on fire. So years later, many years, when I learned that St. Martin’s Press was going to publish my first novel, The Stone Veil, I was thrilled. But for some reason I hadn’t grasped the notion that I had actually become a writer. The New York Times gave the first book a short, but generally favorable review and that too made me feel good. Borders had my books on the shelves in my hometown and I was even nominated for a prize. But the feeling of legitimacy didn’t arrive until I found a copy of my third novel, Eclipse of the Heart, in the downstairs mystery section of City Lights Bookstore in the Italian San Francisco neighborhood of North Beach.

Though I was never to be on the cutting edge of much of anything, let alone literature, I had long admired those who were. And those who were riding that sharp edge had roots in that specific bookstore. Perhaps even more important to me was the fact that City Lights published Ginsberg’s Howl and fought against attempts to ban it all the way up to the Supreme Court where the bookstore’s fight helped preserve freedom of the press for all of us.

City Lights is still publishing books others might consider too controversial or not commercial enough for mass distribution. The second floor is dedicated entirely to poetry. The main floor shelves are full of fine, timeless literature from around the world. There is also a section of limited distribution, hand-made independent magazines and collections of prose and poems. Down a narrow stairway, into the cellar, are mysteries and science fiction as well as the best picks of books on a wide range of subjects.

The North Beach bookstore is a San Francisco historic landmark, anchoring a neighborhood full of historic landmarks. It should be designated a national treasure.While most of the City Lights authors — Rexroth, Burroughs, Bukowski, Shepard and Bowles to name a few — are gone, the poet and painter Ferlinghetti, born in 1919, can still be seen bicycling on Columbus and Grant.

(first posted June 29, 2011)

261 Columbus Avenue (415) 362-8193 www.citylights.com

Book Notes — Musicians And Prose: The Low Life, Years Before And After Today Before And

If you want something to read that’s uncommonly good, you might have to look to the smaller, independent publishers to get it. Also, if you stick with some of these publishers, you get the advantage of knowledgeable people separating the wheat from the chaff all the while getting the good stuff the bigger publishers, interested in trends, ignore. Two of these risk-taking publishers are Akashic Books, New York, and City Lights, San Francisco. The books featured here are: The Dewey Decimal System (Akashic Books), Nathan Larson’s first book, and Los Angeles Stories (City Lights), Ry Cooder’s first collection of short stories.

Before getting into the books, it should be noted that these two authors have quite a bit in common. Cooder is a professional guitarist, singer and composer (Paris, Texas soundtrack, among others) and Larson is a professional guitarist and composer (Boys Don’t Cry soundtrack, among others).

Larson’s book is a sustained wound. Set in the near future, a partially patched together man — brain and bone — works for an unscrupulous D.A. in a devastated New York City. The only true survivors of whatever happened to NYC are the criminals, the corrupt politicians and the rich — if that is not all redundant, anyway. Lots of violence, but the hero, if you could call him that, is a far cry from the Jack Reachers of the world. Dewey Decimal is vulnerable, often wrong, constantly confused and disoriented, as well as incredibly neurotic — though he is a survivor in a world most couldn’t and apparently don’t survive. Style and substance merge here. We share his perceptions not just through the observation of the narrating protagonist but also through the jumpy, fragmented style itself. The readers are not just observing a character who is often adrift but become adrift themselves. It is the state of character’s mind and that of his city we feel, even when seriously, we don’t want to.

Instead of moving forward into an ugly future, Ry Cooder backs us into the ghost of Los Angeles past — back to the forties and fifties. Instead of the staccato, almost frantic style of Larson (not a complaint), the notes here are slightly longer, the images having taken time to relate, are clearer, oddly wistful. I say “oddly” because there is not much in the way of sentiment here either, unless forlorn is sentimental. In one story a motorman is let go after years of taking train number 606 out to the ocean and back. What we discover about the character is that he has a deeper and more meaningful relationship with his trolley than with any human, including his wife. The notion that this trolley can take us through Los Angeles’ old neighborhoods and give them life is a lot of what that story — and the collection — is about. What I found was a writing approach that is at once deeply historical (as in preservation of the way things were) without being academic. The stories are told through, in Hollywood terms, the extras. While the stories may focus on one or two characters, these folks are neither particularly heroic nor tragic. In fact, they are barely memorable (also not a complaint) in any conventional sense. They simply are, as is the city. What brings these characters together may very well be of a criminal nature, but the crime is rarely the central issue.

Neither book was likely to come out of the big publishing houses. So we can thank what we call independent or small presses like City Lights and Akashic for making sure we have access to unusual, high-quality fiction.

San Francisco Bookstores — City Lights in North Beach

This begins a series of short articles on independent San Francisco bookstores. While their numbers are dwindling, there are still many colorful, one-of-a-kind bookstores in various colorful, one-of-a-kind San Francisco neighborhoods.

When I was in high school I discovered the Beats — Corso, Ginsberg and a whole slew of writers and poets that were unlike any I had read in literature class. In fact, these writers who were obviously treading on the established views of everything, weren’t even mentioned in the classroom. However, because of a smart, brave and progressive librarian — thank you Ms. Cohen wherever you are — I found them.

Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, more than any other book, set my mind on fire. So years later, many years, when I learned that St. Martin’s Press was going to publish my first novel, The Stone Veil, I was thrilled. But for some reason I hadn’t grasped the notion that I had actually become a writer. The New York Times gave the first book a short, but generally favorable review and that too made me feel good. Borders had my books on the shelves in my hometown and I was even nominated for a prize. But the feeling of legitimacy didn’t arrive until I found a copy of my third novel, Eclipse of the Heart, in the downstairs mystery section of City Lights Bookstore in the Italian San Francisco neighborhood of North Beach.

Though I was never to be on the cutting edge of much of anything, let alone literature, I had long admired those who were. And those who were riding that sharp edge had roots in that specific bookstore. Perhaps even more important to me was the fact that City Lights published Ginsberg’s Howl and fought against attempts to ban it all the way up to the Supreme Court where the bookstore’s fight helped preserve freedom of the press for all of us.

City Lights is still publishing books others might consider too controversial or not commercial enough for mass distribution. The second floor is dedicated entirely to poetry. The main floor shelves are full of fine, timeless literature from around the world. There is also a section of limited distribution, hand-made independent magazines and collections of prose and poems. Down a narrow stairway, into the cellar, are mysteries and science fiction as well as the best picks of books on a wide range of subjects.

The North Beach bookstore is a San Francisco historic landmark, anchoring a neighborhood full of historic landmarks. It should be designated a national treasure. While most of the City Lights authors — Rexroth, Burroughs, Bukowski, Shepard and Bowles to name a few — are gone, the poet and painter Ferlinghetti, born in 1919, can still be seen bicycling on Columbus and Grant.

261 Columbus Avenue (415) 362-8193 www.citylights.com