Rhys shares Pub Day for We Three Queens.

 RHYS BOWEN:  The problem with writing three books a year is that there always seems to be a new publication day to think about.  Today I'm flying to Phoenix to do an event at the Poisoned Pen in Scottdale then on to Houston to Murder by the Book. These are two of my favorite stores and ones that have been so supportive to me over the years.  

When I started writing mysteries, back in the stone age, there were hundreds of independent bookstores across the country, a good many of them were mystery bookstores. For my first mystery novel I visited every mystery bookstore in the Bay Area. There were several including my beloved M is for Mystery in San Mateo. Every time a new book came out I had plenty of places to sign.  

I should point out that when my first book was published it had a print run of 2500, hardcover copies. This means that not a lot of people are going to know about me. So I reckoned I had to attract readers one at a time. I spoke to any bookclub or book group that wanted me. I visited every bookstore that would have me.  John retired about that time (1997) and we drove across the country 3 times, using a different route and visiting every bookstore along the way. I met lovely people and was asked back to do events at many of them. One great experience was the Savoy bookstore in Wichita KS. I met them years ago when nobody had heard of me.  Probably signed ten copies. On my last real big booktour right before Covid I did an event there and there were over 100 people. Everyone crammed in and standing at the back. What a thrill!

                          

My first event at Aunt Agatha's in Ann Arbor consisted of me, Robin Agnew the owner and a Welsh woman. My last event they rented an outside venue. One time they made lovely wedding invitations for Four Weddings and a Funeral. I was even invited to do an event on Mackinaw Island where Robin's family owns the iconic hotel. I'm so sad that they closed. Many fond memories.

As I write this piece I realize there are too many stores to mention them all. McIntyres in North Carolina with their belted cows. They were a favorite. And the annual mystery festival at MysteryLovers in Oakmont PA. The first time I did that I saw this long line waiting to get a book signed by me. I thought I had died and turned into Sue Grafton! I still see Kathy Harig and her Mystery Loves Company as she is the bookseller at Malice. I once did a lovely event on an old steam train in Madison WI through the bookstore there. I say lovely event but it was hard to talk with no mike and the carriage rocking side to side.

                                         

So many of these stores are gone now, and booktours have shrunk since Covid. It's so easy and convenient to do events via Zoom. The one I am doing today at the Poisoned Pen (one of the stores that still flourishes and in fact has become more successful thanks to Zoom) it also broadcasts live on Facebook and on Youtube. I find myself speaking to an audience of 2000 instead of maybe 50 or 60. 

It's funny but when I started to write this piece I didn't intend it to be a stroll down memory lane about bookstores, but we are coming up to Small Business Saturday and if everyone can buy a book at a local bookstore we can keep them in business! Not necessarily mine but I'd love to tell you about it briefly:

   WE THREE QUEENS is Royal Spyness book number 18! Georgie has survived for a long time, hasn't she? not only survived but flourished. Now she lives in a grand house and enjoys a peaceful life... until her husband Darcy is asked to do the new king a favor. He wants to marry Mrs. Simpson. Can Darcy and Georgie hide her out with them until the news breaks? Golly, as Georgie would say. This in inconvenience and stress enough but then Sir Hubert, the house owner, announces that a movie will be shot at the house. The story of Henry VIII and two of his queens.  So now there is chaos, difficult people all around, a kidnapping and a murder. Will Georgie ever get a quiet life? And who is the third queen? I'll leave you to find out.

And just let me say that this is a perfect escape read for trying times. What are your favorite escape reads? I'll sign a hardcover copy for one of today's commenters. And see some of you at the Poisoned Pen or online tonight, right?

What We're Writing Week: Pen in Hand

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm happy to say the copyedits on HID FROM OUR EYES are done, the final book design is proceeding apace, and the advance reader copies (ARCs) are starting to get mailed!

Which means right now, much of my writing is pen on paper. Over the course of writing a novel, I fill up about half a composition book on notes, ideas, branching decision trees, outlines, etc. etc. I draw little arrows between characters to see who links with whom. I make lists of what each character wants, fears, is willing to do. It's very messy and very necessary to my process. This is a page from the early part of planning HID FROM OUR EYES:

Over the years, I've tried doing this work on sheets of large paper, on index cards and on fancy plotting software programs. (Not judging - I was finally forced to upgrade from Word 97, so just about any program from the 21st century is fancy to me.) I've enjoyed bits and pieces of brainstorming on these different platforms, but I always come back to the old composition book. 

I'm also doing some old fashioned pen-and-paper work for book store owners. My publisher is sending out ARCs to certain  booksellers, in the hopes of getting quotes for their sales catalog.* Up until a few years ago, Minotaur still had physical catalogs; now it's all moved onto a combined sales presentation and ordering site, enabling them to link to cool things authors are doing or to insert rave reviews from other booksellers. I'm writing personal notes for each of the ARCs to be sent out. The beautiful cards are from my friend, Maine artist Shari Goddard Shambaugh.

If you're a reader, you're used to the idea that authors and publishers are trying to market to you, but publishers spend as much time flogging books to the book shops and libraries you'll be getting them from. (Please consider pre-ordering from your local independent book store!) 

This What We're Writing Week has been one of the most interesting ever, because you can see so many different types of writing that makes up a career, and so many stages of the process - Hallie is freelancing and Hank is writing reviews. Rhys is finishing a first draft and Lucy is revising one. I'm sending mail off to book stores and Debs is getting ready to visit them. And, I'm assuming, Jenn is doing ALL of the above! Writing a book is one (great!) thing, but making a living as a professional writer is another.

So my question, dear readers, is what part of the writing life surprises you? And what sorts of things are you writing this week?

*If you're a bookseller reading this, don't worry - there will be LOTS of ARCs going out. The first batch is just for quotes. 

Favorite Small Businesses by Jenn McKinlay

Jenn McKinlay: Now, I’m not here to bash Amazon…much. Truthfully, I love that I can order random stuff and have it at my house ON THE SAME DAY. It boggles, truly. Laser pointer for King George needed ASAP because I’m on deadline and he’s being a butt? Done. It came within hours. I didn’t even have to get in my car and drive anywhere. Mind blown! 

Obscurely shaped pots for my orchid, which suddenly decided to have babies? Actually, they’re called keikis, but whatever. The containers and fertilizer arrived in a week with a bonus five dollar reward because I didn’t make them deliver on the same day. Crazy, right? What madness is this? I remember when Amazon was mostly books and they were losing money like an oil leak out of a cracked engine. Look at them now! So, I don’t dislike Amazon, -- after all, they sell my books -- but as randomly fabulous as they can be, they simply can’t beat some of my favorite small businesses both here in Arizona and in the northeast. 

Why? Because knowing your customers and your product and, dare I say it, specializing in a thing matters. I like brick and mortar. I like talking to people who know their subject inside out ,upside down, and backwards. I like tips and tricks that can only come in person, face to face, instead of on YouTube, which admittedly, can also be cool, but still I crave the human interaction. So, in alphabetical order - because, librarian - here are some of my favorite small businesses:

Arcosanti is an experimental town, known for its molten bronze bell casting business. I have several of these bells hanging on my front porch. They are my early warning system when the monsoons roll in. The community built out in the desert is pretty cool to tour, very reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, but its architectural/ecology mashup concept is the brainchild of the Italian-American architect, Paolo Soleri.

The Bells!

Gaspereau Valley Fibres Yarn. I’m an addict and it’s a problem, but this place explodes with all the fiber loving eye candy a gal could want, plus they offer classes in everything from felting to weaving. Yes, please! And they carry local Nova Scotian yarn, which I love! I go every summer and stock up on projects for winter. Also, you can email them with orders, although I haven't tried this yet from the States.

Long Winter Farm is a Maine soap company, that I visit when I’m back east and making my annual trek to Canada. They rose to infamy when the owner humorously crafted a lip balm called Nasty Woman - I ordered three – but the hippie nerdy vibe of all of their products makes me happy and their product descriptions make me laugh. They sell a soap called Unicorn Farts, people. I personally wiped them out of Sea Sprite body cream – yes, it smells like the ocean!

Poisoned Pen What can I say? It’s my home away from home. I’ve been going to the Pen since I moved to the Valley in 1992, three years after Barbara Peters opened her iconic bookstore. From Paul the dog to the painted outlines of bodies on the floor and bloody handprints on the tables, I love every inch of it. Plus, they put author videos on Youtube. How can you beat that? Here are three Reds in action!

 Hank at the Pen!

Rhys at the Pen!

 Jenn at the Pen!

Queen Creek Olive Mill Let me start with bacon infused olive oil. After that, really, what more needs to be said? This is a working olive mill out in Queen Creek, Arizona, that also hosts a fabulous restaurant and catering. I took my mom for the tour on her birthday and we had a blast, noshing on an olive/cheese plate, buying exotic olive oils and the products made from them – they even had cupcakes! When I’m stumped for a gift, I go to the mill. Also, I always think this would be a great setting for a cozy mystery series...hmm.

Olive Harvest!

So, Reds and Readers, what are some of your favorite small businesses? Share your top picks with us! Oh, and if you need a special day to give a boost to your local businesses, Small Business Saturday is on November 30^ththis year!

"Showrooming" and the Independent Bookseller’s Dilemma

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Today I'm proud to be hosting  bookseller Robin Agnew of the terrific independent bookstore, Aunt Agatha's Mystery Bookshop, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Aunt Agatha's is a charming shop, chock full of  great mysteries, hand-picked favorites for display, and a warm and knowledgeable staff eager to match readers with that absolutely perfect book. Alas, the new-ish customer practice of "showrooming" has caused this small business owner to take pause and have an existential conversation with her inner curmudgeon. Welcome, Robin!

show·room·ing

noun, informal:  the practice of visiting a store 

or stores in order to examine a product before 

buying it online at a lower price.

ROBIN AGNEW: I often work in the store on Saturdays, usually our busiest day of the week, when our college town welcomes lots of out of town visitors and shoppers, especially in the summer when the weather is nice and it’s pleasant to walk around downtown.  

Often visitors to the store will snap some photos.  Some of them like the ambiance of our store which is, to put it mildly, packed to the rafters with books and book-ish smells. Some even take a photo in front of the store by our logo. I like that and find it charming.

More recently, however, I’ve found that many people use cameras for a different reason – to take a picture of a book they plan to then go online and buy for, I’m assuming, less money.  Now, I can certainly accept that people will go online and buy things.  I do it myself,  That’s anyone’s prerogative.

What I find difficult to accept is the fact that we have taken a great deal of trouble to populate our store with the widest possible variety of mystery and crime novels, displaying them thematically, labeling and describing our favorites, etc.  It’s often these books that are photographed. These aren’t books that could be found browsing on online - they are particular recommendations made by us with our particular sensibility.

I recently had a nice family – older parents, late 20s or early 30s daughter – who came in, browsed, and the parents picked up and bought a book.  Their daughter merely picked up books I had carefully selected to display and photographed them, all the while chatting pleasantly.

She was assuming I could certainly understand her need to save 4 or 5 dollars.  Being in a downtown, I see all kinds of people, from the genuinely destitute to the clearly wealthy. I’ve often given a discount or merely given books to people who obviously don’t have the money for something to read. I don’t even mind giving away a novel to an obvious drug addict – maybe that novel will give them a bit of solace, I hope so.

But why middle-class people feel entitled to go ahead and seek the “best deal,” the “biggest discount,” while at the same time demanding your service and attention I find difficult to fathom. I recently posted a whine about this on facebook and got a staggering number of responses, many from authors and booksellers. My dilemma: to put up a sign, or not to put up a sign?  Is it too curmudgeonly?  My husband thinks so.

I got answers ranging from charging a photography fee (appealing, but certainly difficult if not impossible to collect) to suggestions for signs saying “No photos,” “These books never run out of power,” “Buy local,” “Want to remind you that buying a book from us instead of online guarantees good karma” (this from a former bookseller, now a writer), “Photographs $5 payable in advance,” “Our books are shy.  That is why we wrap them in brown paper before leaving the establishment,”  to “No Drinking, Smoking, Electronic Purchasing, or Swearing.”

And from a couple booksellers I respect:  “Signs, probably not, comments specifically to the individual, yes…The challenge is to make your point politely.”   And from a longtime friend and colleague, “Independents should embrace being curmudgeonly – folks already think we are just because we work in bookstores.  Mostly, I think that the answer to this issue is simply to keep doing what we do, which is engaging customers one on one when they walk into our stores.”

I have created a sign that says “Your cell phone is not a shopping tool.”  And I know there are other reasons to photograph – to see if you already have the book, to add it to your list and come back to it later – but mostly this kind of showrooming is on the rise and while I haven’t yet put up my sign, it remains to be seen how far my embrace of codger-hood will go. I feel it coming on.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: When I saw Robin's original Facebook post, I tried to make her feel better by saying I used electronic media the other way around — basically, what I do is download hundreds and hundreds of free sample chapters, read them at odd times (on the subway, waiting at a doctor's office), mark down which one's I really like, then go find them at our local bookstore or the library. 

Lovely Reds and readers, what's your opinion of "showrooming"? Have you ever seen anyone do it at a bookstore? If you were a bookstore owner, how would you handle it?

Tell us in the comments!

Aunt Agatha’s

213 South Fourth Avenue
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104
734.769.1114

Hours of Business

Monday - Thursday 11-7
Friday & Saturday 11-8
Sunday 12-5

store@auntagathas.com

Hurray for independent bookstores day!

ROBERTA: We hear so much bad news about independent bookstores closing, I thought we could use a day to celebrate our favorites. I'm lucky to live in Madison, CT, which hosts one of the best bookstores in the country, RJ Julia. But I love each indy I've visited because of their interesting selections, friendly, well-informed booksellers, and wealth of events they bring to a community. Can you think of a better way to spend an afternoon than perusing a room full of books and choosing which you'll bring home? (I'm making it sound like a singles bar--trust me, the bookstore experience wins hands down!)

To celebrate independent bookstores on "Anything can happen Friday", here are links to two blog posts that feature some of those stores. The first article (I should confess) is from my own husband's website, Top Retirements, in which he ponders whether you can choose a retirement community by its bookstore. The second essay is from Jim Huang, owner of the Mystery Company, an independent mystery bookstore in Indiana. He talks about his store's involvement in the community.

And now your turn--tell us about your favorite bookstore. And then go out and buy some books today!

Ode to a great store...

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

-- Jerry Seinfeld

HALLIE: A lot of us knew it was coming, but that big FOR SALE sign out in the front of the Kate's Mystery Books gives me serious separation anxiety about potentially losing our wonderful independent mystery bookseller in the red Victorian house on upper Mass Ave in Cambridge and, for years, the heartbeat of the Boston crime fiction community (she as one of the founders of Sisters in Crime).

I had my first signing there...September of 2000 and a line snaking out onto the sidewalk in the rain, friends there to cheer for my first (finally!) Her Christmas parties where you can count on a Robert Parker sighting--are legendary. She has to schedule signing authors like a fleet of buses coming into South Station because there are too many of us to be docked there at one time.

JAN: I interviewed Kate once for The Improper Bostonian and she told me a wonderful story about the early years of the store. Authors who would become big names were still newbies, and helping her out on a nuts and bolts level. Robert Parker came in to install bookshelves, which she showed me, noting that they weren't perfectly level. She said he really had no choice but to become a bestselling author because carpentry wasn't an option for his career.

Anyway, to me that story illustrates Kate's longstanding impact on the mystery world. She's not just a bookseller, she's an incubater of new talent. Still, life moves on, so I wish her the best of luck with the sale of her store.

RO: On a totally personal level, I'm sorry that when my first book comes out in February, it doesn't seem as if I will get to experience the rite of passage that hundreds (thousands?) of mystery writers before me have, a signing at Kate's. I was looking forward to it as a sign that I had "made it." That I was finally "real", like The Velveteen Rabbit.(Don't mean to sound obnoxious, but I think you all know what I mean.)

As a New Yorker/CT'er Kate's was not my local shop; I heard about it, and Kate from NE'ers, and at Crimebake. Although I live closer to Borders and B&N, I'm going to make a conscious effort to spend my mystery dollar at the wonderful Partners&Crime in the NY's west village...
Good luck, KM!

HANK: I happened on a pal, more of a friend of my husband's than mine, on the street the other day. He's a judge, very erudite and thoughtful. Kind of--ivory tower, as judges sometimes are. Makes life and death decisions--well, not death, since it's Massachusetts, but 30-to-life, that's for sure.

Anyway, he was kind enough to have read my book, and said he loved mysteries set in Boston. And in fact, he said, he was off to Kate's to pick up his latest stash.

Really, I said? You go to Kate's?

I picture him, more easily, sending off some frightened clerks to the stacks at the courthouse library. Or ordering from Amzon where he didnt have to deal with real people.
But no, he said Kate was the only one who really knew her stuff. He just reads what she gives him.

Where will he go, if she closes?

There are lots of great bookstores here, no question. With wonderfully knowledgeable staffs and owners, and they are lovely places to visit and I've spent waaay too much money in them.
But Kate's brain, and her history, that's what you can't replace.There's an open storefront here in West Newton, Kate! Come move to my neighborhood!

HALLIE: Great idea, Hank. We'll all be waiting to hear...who knows, Ro, we may be able to fete your book in February at Kate's after all. She specializes in making authors feel Real.

QUIZ: Name a mystery novel with Kate's Mystery Books in it. HINT: There are LOTS of them, and it may even be the scene of the crime.