Another Bookstore On Board

This is how you get your book placed in the front window of a bookstore:

I was meeting former colleagues at JM Seafood in Chicago’s Bridgeport community Friday for dinner. I texted one of the former colleagues that I had arrived and she told me she was a couple of buildings down at Tangible Books, an independent used bookstore. She said I should stop by. I had brought a couple of copies of my book to give to my ex-colleagues, but then I started to think that those books would be better served inside Tangible.

I tried a plan, one I’d used before.

I picked up three books at Tangible. This is a shrewd move of mine; I go to independent bookstores and grab two or three books with the idea being that the manager or book buyer would be more open to stocking my memoir when they see me patronizing their business. The last time I tried this, it fell flat – I bought hundreds of dollars’ worth of books from a Chicago suburb independent bookstore that will go nameless, gave a copy of my book to its book buyer and haven’t heard a word from her about it since. This was more than a month ago.

At Tangible’s checkout, I asked the cashier who the book buyer was. He pointed at himself, a fellow named Joe. I started my spiel about how I’m an indie author serving as my own agent, that my book would register with Chicagoans and educators and asked would he have any interest in stocking it.

“Sure,” he said. Simple as that, which threw me. Most of these bookstores direct you to their website to fill out a consignment form. You wait a few weeks, you don’t hear from them and you reach out again. This is what I was expecting.

“Uh, uh, I have a couple of copies in my car. Uh, uh, can I bring them to you?”

“Sure,” he said. Simple as that.

I retrieved the books and handed them to Joe, my new best friend.

“Why don’t you sign them,” he said.

“Uh, uh, sure,” I mumbled.

Wow. The Meandering Maestro is autographing books now. Norma Desmond, I, too, am ready for my close-up.

“How much you want to charge for them?” Joe asked.

“Well, I charge 16 dollars on Ingram. I don’t know, I just want to build a readership. How about 5 dollars?”

“Five dollars!?” Joe said. “C’mon. We’ll make it 10.”

Deal. But Joe wasn’t done.

“I’ll put one of them in the window.”

And so he did. Imagine that. Fifteen minutes earlier, I had never even heard of Tangible Books. Now they were putting my book in its front window.

Thank you, Joe.

How ’bout that?