5. Books last longer than three minutes.
4. If you don't like what you find between the covers, you can toss it aside and find another book right away.
3. With books, length isn't important.
2. A book can make you sick, but not the kind of sick that requires a trip to the clinic.
1. You can have a new book every night, and they don't get jealous.
Also at MLF, I had the opportunity to see some very cool authors, including Melanie Lynne Hauser, Steve Alten, Jay Bonansinga, Tina Jens, David Ellis, and many others. Great time, good crowd, I'll be back next year.
David Ellis and I then spent the weekend in Michigan, doing a library event in Romeo County with luminaries such as William Kent Krueger, P.J. Parrish, Julia Spencer-Fleming, M.G. Kincaid, Michael Koryta, Lee Meadows, anf Terence Faherty. Great panelists, great crowd.
The next day we took the show over to the Kerrytown BookFest, with equally wonderful results.
Last night Dave, P.J. and I did an event at Schuler's Books in Okemos, which was well-attended and a lot of fun.
Mr. Ellis and myself also managed to drop-in 15 bookstores in Michigan, for drive-by signings. One of my running jokes was to point Dave to the remainder table whenever we entered a new store and say, "Sign those first."
And then, karma showed up to smack me in the face.
There, in a Border's Outlet store, were three hardcovers of WHISKEY SOUR... for $6.99.
I've been remaindered.
I went through all the stages of grief:
- Denial (that's not my book...)
- Anger (I thought I sold out the print run!)
- Bargaining (if my publisher gave me a few more months, I would have sold them.)
- Depression (Boy do I suck.)
- and Acceptance (It happens to everyone, sooner or later.)
Naturally, I bought all three copies.
Dave was merciless the rest of the trip.
Ah, I wanted to go to the Romeo talk, but I had a book signing in Troy that afternoon. How'd it go? I wanted to be in the audience and when it came time to ask questions, ask you if you could sing and dance "I'm a Little Teapot," to the beat of Queen's "We Will Rock You," or whatever it's called. Damn. Missed my chance.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Mark Terry
Damn it! And I paid full price!
ReplyDeleteAh well....
$6.99!? I paid that much for the paperback.
ReplyDeleteCan you explain how remaindering works? I should know, but I don't have a good handle on it.
ReplyDeleteIt's finally happened... the last of the greats has fallen.
ReplyDeleteA moment of silence, please.
:p
Remaindering: A publisher sells asmuch of the print run for a book as it can, usually at a 40% - 50% discount.
ReplyDeleteAfter the orders stop coming in, there is no need to keep the books in a warehouse any more, becuase they cost money to store. So these 'remainders' are sold wholesale to recoup the printing and shipping cost. The publisher and the author don't make a cent.
When you go to a strip mall store that is simply called BOOKS, that has thousands of books in no particular order, all for under six bucks, those are all remainders.
The local chains also have remainder, or "Bargain", tables and shelves. Borders Outlet stores primarily feature remainders.
Hey, does anyone know why all of these stupid advertising links have showed up in my blog?
ReplyDeleteI haven't noticed any advertising links. ???
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Joe, glad to see you got right back on the horse.
Glad to see you back, Joe, and glad to see you had a good weekend. We talked about you the rest of the MLF, of course.
ReplyDeleteI paid 6.99 for the paperback, too. In Chicago. But at least it's signed.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm halfway through it, and it's great!!
Spammers have found a way to attack blogs. Blogspot has a word feature that can stop it.
"I'm A Little Teapot" to "We Will Rock You" ???
ReplyDeleteThat's just ... wrong!
The advertising links are the latest irritant from the spammers: blog comment spam.
ReplyDeleteTo eliminate them (for the time being), go to the Blogger dash board and add the "word verification" option. Folks leaving comments will need to type in a code that a computer can't read; basically this is supposed to prove that only humans are leaving comments, but we all suspect that's too much to hope for....Anyway, this should solve the problem without inconveniencing anyone too much. Try leaving a comment at my site if you want to see how it works.