We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let's mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that's just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!
There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children's books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they'll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: "Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see...we're the Authors Guild."
Enjoy the holidays.
Roy Blount Jr.
President, Authors Guild
From The Author's Guild, re-posted at the New England Independent Booksellers Association website.
Roy Blount, Jr. is the winner of the 2007 New England Book Award for Non-Fiction, awarded at the 34th Annual New England Independent Booksellers Association Trade Show in Providence, RI. Many of us here at Books, Etc. were lucky enough to be there, hear him speak, and snag a copy of his then-new book Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South. His new-new book Alphabet Juice promises to be just as witty, informative, and funny as his earlier work.
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