A Note About New Books That's Too Long to Tweet

We started carrying new books a year or two into our now approximately fourteen-and-a-half year run.  The big title back then was Yann Martel's Life of Pi, and what seemed like dozens of people a day would drop into the old shop at 2418 Main to ask for it.  My standard reply -- "No, it's too recent for us to have used, you should go buy it new at [LOCAL INDEPENDENT DISCOUNT BOOKSTORE] down the road" -- felt dumb, especially with all the repetition.  Some people thanked me for the information and headed off, never to be seen again.  Others said something like, "I support you and I want to buy it here.  I don't care if it's new or used."

Enough of this, and even I got the message.  We opened a wholesale account and brought in a few Life of Pis, plus half a dozen other titles, and sold them at full price, tax off.  Sales weren't anything to cheer about, but all the original books eventually sold and we ordered some more, plus a few additional titles with what profit we made from order #1. 

A few years of this, and the front room was full of new books.  We went to 20% off on almost everything, then, a year or two later, added a two-tier discount -- 20% off in-shop/30% off prepaid special orders -- and sales abruptly went through the roof.

We -- despite me still thinking of us as the tiny neighborhood bookstore that could -- are now receiving extra discounts from most of our suppliers based on our sales volumes, which are substantial. So, as a "Thank you" to everyone who ordered from us in the early days, and then waited patiently for their books to arrive while we worked out "systems," I'm going to try an additional experiment, starting this week and running through Christmas.

Most, but not all, $30+ cover price hardcovers in all of our three locations are now 30% off in-shop, & 40% off if ordered directly from their publishers, which adds a few days to the special order process. I'm curious to see what this does to our volumes and the sort of titles ordered in.  Again, this is an experiment, and I reserve the right to cancel or modify it at any time.  But it should make for an interesting next few months.

New JK Rowling: 730am tomorrow @ Main Street

JK Rowling's Casual Vacancy is now in house, and goes on sale tomorrow morning at 730am sharp at Main Street.  30% off Canadian cover price!

Launch Party: Stephen Miller's THE MESSENGER

Our friend Stephen Miller reads from his new thriller The Messenger (Random House of Canada) this Friday, 3 August 2012, at Main Street.  Free admission; cash bar; limited seating.  Doors 6:30, reading 7pm sharp.

Via Random House:

"Stephen Miller’s potent immediate novel of a young terrorist loose on the streets of the United States is perfect for the readers of intelligent character-driven novels such as John Updike’s Terrorist and Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland.  In this harrowing exploration of a young woman’s mission, Daria has been sent to America and she holds the power of life and death in her hands.  This is the story of two outsiders existing in the margins of their respective worlds.  They are two enemies of the state:  Daria–born in a refugee camp, raised in poverty, and Sam Watterman–a scientist who told his government the things they didn’t want to hear and was discredited, an ex-pat in his own country.  Daria’s odyssey will bring her to the United States, on a journey of vengeance.  Watterman’s path will take him from enforced obscurity into the war rooms of American intelligence.  In the next 16 days, Daria will learn to question everything she has been taught.  Watterman will learn that even evil has a human face.  This is the story of two people from opposite sides of the globe, who did not know the other existed but  who will affect each other in profound–even devastating–ways."

Eileen Myles' INFERNO: A POET'S NOVEL

In response to customer requests, and by special arrangement with New York's OR Books, we're going to be carrying copies of Eileen Myles' Inferno: A Poet's Novel up at Main Street.  (Some other recent Myles titles, including Sorry, Tree (Wave Books, Seattle) and her excellent The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art are already on the shelves).  Inferno is not readily available in Canada, and we expect it to sell briskly.  Want a copy?  Call us; we'll save a copy for you and will phone or email when it arrives.  $16CDN = US cover price!

On Sale Tomorrow @ 10am: @GreatDismal's Latest

The Future of Print

Via the New Yorker, a thorough and detailed look at Kindle v. iPad, Amazon v. everybody, print v. digital, & etc. Worth reading.

On a related note, I just spent two and a half weeks on the road in the USA, where I noticed several things:

1. Almost a third of the bookstores that were open when PFB first opened in June 2000 have now closed. Of the used bookstores that remain, most are no longer buying books at all. Sales at those stores, based on my first-hand, limited, and admittedly anecdotal observation, are awful. The few stores that still regularly buy for cash are, like us, seeing more good books than they ever have before, and almost all of their owners told me that they expect 2010 to be their "best year ever."

2. Books @ PFB, new and used, are by and large cheaper than those at stores located in major US metropolitan markets (Seattle; Portland; San Francisco; Las Vegas).

3. Paperback exchanges that only carry mass market paperbacks -- a concept that's always struck me as an incredibly flaky business model -- are done, a victim of rising rents and their owners' reluctance/inability to buy for cash. The survivors' stock, which ranged from great to middling ten years ago, is now uniformly terrible.

4. Thrift stores in the States are now charging as much for recent books as we are. This doesn't make much difference to me, but it should to any bookstore owner whose business model is predicated on heading to the local thrift store first thing in the morning and loading up.

Live in Person: Peter Carey & Ian McEwan

Via our friends at the Vancouver International Writers Festival:

IAN MCEWAN

The acclaimed author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach will make his eagerly anticipated Vancouver appearance. In conversation with Jerry Wasserman.

His new novel Solar, is a darkly comic, satirical look at climate change—a stylish new work by one of the world’s greatest living writers.

VIWF members: Receive a $2 member discount for Ian McEwan event tickets. (If you have not received an email with your special member discount code, please call 604 681 6330.)

Author website

7:30pm April 15, 2010
St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church (Burrard at Nelson)
$20 general / $18 students & seniors (plus service charges)
For tickets, phone Vancouver Tix at 604 629 8849 or purchase online.

PETER CAREY

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction winner and the author of Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang in conversation with Hal Wake.

Peter Carey’s new novel Parrot and Olivier in America is a dazzlingly inventive reimagining of Alexis de Tocqueville's famous journey, brilliantly evoking the Old World colliding with the New.

Author website

7:30pm May 7, 2010
Frederic Wood Theatre, UBC (6354 Crescent Road)
$20 general / $18 students & seniors (plus service charges)
For tickets, phone Vancouver Tix at 604 629 8849 or purchase online.

We'll have new, discounted copies of both titles as soon as they are published by Random House of Canada.

PFB to World: Special Orders? Absolutely!

Lots of phone calls recently from West Side residents lamenting Duthie Books' recent closure and wondering if we carry new books. Short three part answer: yes; more of them all the time; and we can usually now obtain any in-print book in no more than a week. Even better, special orders are 20% or more off of Canadian list price, making them as inexpensive as the new books we already carry in the store.

We special order all kinds of books -- cookbooks (as above); scholarly books on gardening and anarchy and economics; obscure 19th century British horror writers and illustrated kids' books; first novels and poetry chapbooks and books on graphic design and photoconceptual art. We like carrying new books; it makes our job more challenging and interesting, and helps us keep abreast of what's actually in print these days, which, with the advent of print-on-demand publishing, seems like more titles than ever before. (It's also fun to procure books for our customers more quickly, and often more cheaply, than a large Canadian chain or an online merchant can).

The Death of Print. The Death of Local.

Phone call from a local radio reporter who wanted to know how we were coping with Amazon, e-readers, Costco, the Olympics, "the death of print," skyrocketing retail rents & etc. "Just fine," I told her. "Sales at both stores are actually up over last year." Puzzled silence. There wasn't time to add much more, because the shop was busy and because actually helping customers and ringing up sales always beats yakking with the media. But if I'd had time I would have said that we plan to be here for the forseeable future, and that having a twenty, fifty, or hundred-year horizon for your business changes how you think about short-term problems. Eg., Should I order fifty copies of Greg Iles' latest thriller, the one that's heavily discounted at Costco and London Drugs and Wal-Mart, and which, six months from now, will be clogging up the sale table at Chapters, priced $4.99? Or should I order copies of The Invisible Committee's Coming Insurrection and all of Peavar and Volokhonsky's Russian translations, and everything in print by Italo Calvino? Viewed in this long-term light, bookselling looks less like a problem, and more like a set of ongoing opportunities.

Why There Haven't Been Any Updates Here for a While Now

* 3000 volume estate collection, including hardcover first editions by Bruce Chatwin, Thomas Pynchon (pictured), Cormac McCarthy, W.H. Auden, Italo Calvino, Phyllis Webb, J.D. Salinger, David Adams Richards, & etc.

* 1000 pounds of remainder books, including lots of art, poetry, Japanese woodblock prints, high-end gardening books, cookbooks & etc.

* Tons of new books, all at 20% off Canadian list price.

If you haven't visited in a while, now might be a good time to. We're busy!

We're also raising food for the Vancouver Food Bank. Any donation of food that's not instant noodles or K.D. will receive 10% off any used book in the shop now through Christmas Eve.

Gregory Maguire's New Novel: Free!

The Next Queen of Heaven, "the best novel money can't buy."

While They Last: Signed Copies of 8 x 10

Michael Turner dropped into Main Street yesterday to dry off, and kindly signed all our copies of 8 x 10. First come, first served, while they last. He also showed off the UK paperback edition of Faulkner's New Orleans Sketches recently mentioned in passing on his blog: red and black cover, sans serif typography, a little crystalline piece of British industrial modernism, unscathed by the years.

Elliott Bay Book Company On the Move

The Elliott Bay Book Company, my favorite independent book store in Seattle, and one of the best bookstores on the West Coast, has all but moved from their Pioneer Square home in the historic Globe Building to Capitol Hill, according to the Seattle Times. Noteworthy in the article is the fact that the bookstore has apparently been financed by the owner's line of credit for the last few years.

When I visit -- maybe six times a year -- I almost always buy a book, even though that purchase is pretty much guaranteed to be more expensive than it would be back home @PFB. Elliott Bay's astounding selection helps me find things that I couldn't have found any other way, and that service -- exposing me to books that I might otherwise never have seen; "curating" the stock so I don't have to wade through endless shelves of NASCAR books, entertainment biographies, communicate-with-your-dead-pet books & etc., is worth paying for.

Last time I was in EBBC, I walked behind a couple making notes of books they wanted to buy on a Blackberry, in order to buy them later, at a discount, from Amazon. Which will work just fine for them until EBBC and everything like it is gone, at which point Amazon, which is no slouch in the competition theory department, will be more than happy to jack their so-called "bargain prices" right back up to full retail.

Now in Stock: More New Books Than Ever!

A month or two ago, we decided to start stocking new releases from most major publishers, in addition to the usual assortment of used books, out-of-print books, and publisher's remainders. Mornings now routinely begin with a parade of courier vans arriving at Main Street's front door, and we've built new shelves at both stores to handle the influx.

Our new book ordering guidelines are very simple: will anyone still care about the book a year from now? If someone buys a book from us, reads it carefully, and brings it back for store credit or cash, will we want to see it again? Questions like this eliminate 90% of the new releases in most major publishers' catalogs. We will happily sell what remains for years to come.

So, no thanks to Sarah Palin's ghostwritten autobiography. Yes please to Barabara Kingsolver's first novel in nine years (above), and Anthony Beevor's history of D-Day, and the Momofuku Cookbook, a new edition of Wade Davis' perennially requested The Serpent and the Rainbow, & etc.

Also noteworthy: the strengthening Canadian dollar means that many of our new books are now priced way below US cover price. Just saying.

New Dispatches From The Land of Molecular Gastronomy

2008's best cookbook, now available in a relatively affordable ($50 CDN, after our standard 20% discount) trade hardcover edition.

Heston Blumenthal's magnum opus, a blend of autobiography, full-color food porn, recipes for oak tree essence, Bacon and Scrambled Egg Ice Cream, "jelly of orange and beetroot," snail porridge, etc., and 100+ pages of kitchen science (detailed instructions for working with vacuum sealers, liquid nitrogen, agar, dehydrators, centrifuges, etc. etc. etc.). Plus illustrations by Dave McKean.

Blumenthal, whose Fat Duck earned three Michelin stars in 2004, never went to cooking school; he's positive proof that genuine fascination counts for more than education.

Make Your Own Bread, Miso, Kimchi, Sauerkraut...

Sandor Ellix Katz's Wild Fermentation. Part cookbook, part ecological manisfesto, part biochemistry textbook. Another one of those titles that we finally broke down and ordered new after being asked at least twice weekly for it. Also includes recipes for delicious alcohol, including coffee-banana flavored t'ej (Ethiopian honey wine). Awesome bibliography and supplier lists, too, if you can't wait to get started making pickles, brined meats, yogurt, gv-no-he-nv (Cherokee sour corn drink) & etc.

"Do You Sell New or Used Books?"

Both now, side by side. We can obtain any title currently in print in North America within two weeks or less, typically at 20% off its Canadian list price. This month, we helped our customers find everything from James Patterson's latest high-seas-and-murder adventure, to Guy Debord's Society of The Spectacle, to "that kids' book from the 70s with the little worm." (Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, starring Lowly Worm).

Richard Stark: Back in Print at Last

New series of trade paperback reprints of Donald E. Westlake's hardest-boiled pseudonym. Master thief Parker (no last name) sets up clever score after score, only to be hamstrung by crooked partners, the cops, the mob, bad timing, weird coincidences, & etc. Parker keeps ticking along like a little clockwork toy, trying to adjust to circumstances, to fix things. But every one of his clever solutions invariably makes things worse.

Some of the finest noir novels ever written. Highly recommended.

George R.R. Martin's A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Coming Soon! (Maybe)

Cover art from the eagerly-awaited next volume in Mr. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire sequence. Random House now claims the book will be published on September 29th. We have our doubts, having heard this story a few times since 2006, the year the manuscript was supposed to have been completed, but have gone ahead and ordered copies anyway. If you'd like one held for you when -- if -- it arrives in the fall, please call or email.

Major Renovations @ PFB

No posts for a week or two now, because we've been busy upgrading Main Street's front room to cope with an influx of new books and recent arrivals. Lots of new display space for our ever-expanding selection of new books, and a few smaller A-frame units to hold some of the more interesting new arrivals, including Joseph O'Neill's terrific short novel Netherland (Dutch investment analyst lives in post-911 NYC, plays cricket, and registers the city around him in succinct, lucid sentences equally reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Ford); Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife (First Lady to fictitious unpopular president reviews her life); John Huddy's Storming Las Vegas (Soviet-trained Cuban ex-commando and associates knock over five Las Vegas Strip casinos, three armored cars, & etc.), and lots more.

New stereo speakers in the back of the store, too; no more bass blaring at the desk!