Taking advantage of a Hollywood vacation my wife won at her office Christmas party this past December, I decided to visit a few West Coast indie bookstores with copies of my novel, Tamper
(Please welcome a debut Litkicks piece by Michelle Glauser, who runs her own blog and describes herself as “a Mormon chocolate-lover who studied English at the University of Utah and American Studies at the University of Leipzig in Germany, where I focused on women’s autobiographical writing and wrote a master’s … Read the rest
(Another installment of Alan Bisbort’s bookselling memoir.)
Because our bookshop was located within eyeshot of the U.S. Capitol’s snow-white dome, we still retained some guilt by association with the political world. You had to walk to the corner and then look eight blocks west to see the dome, but … Read the rest
(Here’s another selection from Alan Bisbort’s memoir of his years in the small bookstore business. — Levi)
Dollar Bill was a regular at the shop, though there was nothing about his looks or manner that suggested a love of books. He was a diminutive but powerful-looking man with stiffly chivalrous … Read the rest
“Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop.”-George Orwell, “Bookshop Memories”
For ten years I worked in the second-hand book trade. Five of those years were spent at Wayward Books, an antiquarian book … Read the rest
(Hopeful writers should know that there are many paths to literary success. Here’s Alan Bisbort, author of books like Beatniks: A Guide to American Subculture and Cell 2455: Death Row, on how he stumbled into his best-selling series. — Levi)
Can you tell me what two literary legends met … Read the rest
(Last week I talked to Ron Kolm, who’s been a friendly and productive presence in downtown New York’s literary universe for decades, about his newest anthology. Here’s the second half of that interview, where we talk about what it’s like to be a friendly and productive presence in downtown … Read the rest
1. I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, but I’ve never before had the pleasure of watching a bookstore get born. I met blogger/bookseller Jessica Stockton Bagnulo three years ago when we both joined the Litblog Co-op at the same time, and I noted it here in January … Read the rest
I’ve gotten a lot of reaction to my posts about the clueless way literary novels are priced. I’ve tried to establish that our industry’s practice of selling only expensive premium editions for a novel’s first year is dysfunctional and self-defeating beyond any reasonable explanation, and at least half of … Read the rest
