The More Books I Know About, the Less I Know About Books: A Season in the Trenches
By Kris Kleindienst
Two months. Twenty publishers’ sales representatives. Two hundred (or more) publishers. Thousands of titles, perhaps as many as are already on the shelves at Left Bank Books. The month of March will add a dozen more sales reps and another hundred publishers to my “this is what I did” list for the first quarter of the year. I am buying books that will be published now through August. In June, I will start buying books to be published August through December. (Bill, my calendar counterpart, has already bought most of the 2008 calendars we will be putting out in the fall!)
In between these marathon sessions of “frontlist” buying, I try to keep up with the backlist: books already published that are selling. Two months into the spring/summer buying, my head is so filled with new titles that I no longer can remember which are already out, which are coming out, and which are just jumbles of titles that I have made up in my head. If a customer asks me about a new biography of, say, H.L. Mencken, they might be thinking of something they read a in a review last fall, but to me, a new biography would be a book coming out in May. There might not even be a new biography of Mencken, but if that customer asks about it, I rustle through the title jumble in my memory and the simple power of suggestion tells me there probably is a new biography. I just can’t remember anything about it. Is it from one of forty or fifty university presses we order from? Was it just reviewed on NPR? Maybe the one I’m thinking of wasn’t about Mencken at all but about A. J. Leibling. When a computer search finally sorts this out for me, the customer is long gone, having picked up a copy of The New Yorker and a greeting card instead. I feel like the more books I know about, the less I know about books.
Sitting with sales reps is a huge part of my life. I have lunch with some of them far more often than I have lunch with friends. We talk about everything: bookselling, movies, life, kids, politics, even the books we’ve read. Our relationships are odd—conducted over catalogues of books with expenses paid for by multinational corporations.
Most of the reps who call on me come from out of town so when they make an appointment to see me, they’re making a travel plan as well. Now that there are almost no independent bookstores left in the area, we may be the only account some of these reps come to St. Louis to see. Mindful of this, I make an effort to be prepared for their visit, to look at catalogues ahead, check backlist sales, make sure we have room and time to meet when they come. This can take more time than their actual visit. I cringe when a rep tells me a story about the little store in Acme, South Dakota he drove 300 miles in a snowstorm to see only to be told that the person with whom he made the appointment was on vacation. I never want to be that story, although I have certainly provided fodder for other stories, I’m sure.
You tend to be unguarded with someone you spend entire days with two or three times a year, often at a coffee shop or even around your own dining room table; someone upon whom you depend for your livelihood, someone who also depends upon you. Sales reps can be unintentional confessors for batty buyers who use the occasion to free associate from the titles they are discussing to vent, rant, confide, confess and otherwise commit thoughtless acts of verbal indiscretion. We buyers do this even though it is accepted wisdom in the business that if you want something known, you should tell a sales rep. Most of the industry news worth knowing comes from the sales reps and some of the juiciest gossip does as well. I feel it is better to get good gossip than to be good gossip.
But I digress. I don’t do the buying in a vacuum, although some days I wish I did. I do a lot of it in our famed executive bunker, space that is roughly 12x20 feet where up to six people may be working at any given time not counting the sales rep with whom I am holding these deeply intellectual conversations. Jay may be hammering out website changes at one desk; Barry and Anne may be on their phones to publishers a few feet from me; Andrea may be ripping packing tape off a roll for boxes of books she is sealing, a procedure which produces a deafening sound; something may be printing off the really loud dot matrix printer next to my desk; and, just as the noise dies down, the Fed Ex guy may arrive to make eight or nine trips through the office with our outgoing packages. In this rarified atmosphere, I decide on everything from the latest installment of Walter the Farting Dog to a reconsideration of Derrida. Luckily, I now have the help of Erin, who is training to be my assistant buyer, though that means she now spends time in our little submarine-sized office.
Truly, I love being a bookbuyer. I get to shop everyday. But I have to admit that if you want to know if there is a new biography of Mencken in print, you might want to ask a friendly Left Bank bookseller. Their heads haven’t exploded yet.
Two months. Twenty publishers’ sales representatives. Two hundred (or more) publishers. Thousands of titles, perhaps as many as are already on the shelves at Left Bank Books. The month of March will add a dozen more sales reps and another hundred publishers to my “this is what I did” list for the first quarter of the year. I am buying books that will be published now through August. In June, I will start buying books to be published August through December. (Bill, my calendar counterpart, has already bought most of the 2008 calendars we will be putting out in the fall!)
In between these marathon sessions of “frontlist” buying, I try to keep up with the backlist: books already published that are selling. Two months into the spring/summer buying, my head is so filled with new titles that I no longer can remember which are already out, which are coming out, and which are just jumbles of titles that I have made up in my head. If a customer asks me about a new biography of, say, H.L. Mencken, they might be thinking of something they read a in a review last fall, but to me, a new biography would be a book coming out in May. There might not even be a new biography of Mencken, but if that customer asks about it, I rustle through the title jumble in my memory and the simple power of suggestion tells me there probably is a new biography. I just can’t remember anything about it. Is it from one of forty or fifty university presses we order from? Was it just reviewed on NPR? Maybe the one I’m thinking of wasn’t about Mencken at all but about A. J. Leibling. When a computer search finally sorts this out for me, the customer is long gone, having picked up a copy of The New Yorker and a greeting card instead. I feel like the more books I know about, the less I know about books.
Sitting with sales reps is a huge part of my life. I have lunch with some of them far more often than I have lunch with friends. We talk about everything: bookselling, movies, life, kids, politics, even the books we’ve read. Our relationships are odd—conducted over catalogues of books with expenses paid for by multinational corporations.
Most of the reps who call on me come from out of town so when they make an appointment to see me, they’re making a travel plan as well. Now that there are almost no independent bookstores left in the area, we may be the only account some of these reps come to St. Louis to see. Mindful of this, I make an effort to be prepared for their visit, to look at catalogues ahead, check backlist sales, make sure we have room and time to meet when they come. This can take more time than their actual visit. I cringe when a rep tells me a story about the little store in Acme, South Dakota he drove 300 miles in a snowstorm to see only to be told that the person with whom he made the appointment was on vacation. I never want to be that story, although I have certainly provided fodder for other stories, I’m sure.
You tend to be unguarded with someone you spend entire days with two or three times a year, often at a coffee shop or even around your own dining room table; someone upon whom you depend for your livelihood, someone who also depends upon you. Sales reps can be unintentional confessors for batty buyers who use the occasion to free associate from the titles they are discussing to vent, rant, confide, confess and otherwise commit thoughtless acts of verbal indiscretion. We buyers do this even though it is accepted wisdom in the business that if you want something known, you should tell a sales rep. Most of the industry news worth knowing comes from the sales reps and some of the juiciest gossip does as well. I feel it is better to get good gossip than to be good gossip.
But I digress. I don’t do the buying in a vacuum, although some days I wish I did. I do a lot of it in our famed executive bunker, space that is roughly 12x20 feet where up to six people may be working at any given time not counting the sales rep with whom I am holding these deeply intellectual conversations. Jay may be hammering out website changes at one desk; Barry and Anne may be on their phones to publishers a few feet from me; Andrea may be ripping packing tape off a roll for boxes of books she is sealing, a procedure which produces a deafening sound; something may be printing off the really loud dot matrix printer next to my desk; and, just as the noise dies down, the Fed Ex guy may arrive to make eight or nine trips through the office with our outgoing packages. In this rarified atmosphere, I decide on everything from the latest installment of Walter the Farting Dog to a reconsideration of Derrida. Luckily, I now have the help of Erin, who is training to be my assistant buyer, though that means she now spends time in our little submarine-sized office.
Truly, I love being a bookbuyer. I get to shop everyday. But I have to admit that if you want to know if there is a new biography of Mencken in print, you might want to ask a friendly Left Bank bookseller. Their heads haven’t exploded yet.
posted by Left Bank Books at 1:27 PM
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