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Genre Bookstores hold off big chains --
I lost several independent stores I liked -- Toad Hall (a children's bookstore in Austin, TX that was forced to relocate when its lease went $$$, and then was not followed by enough soccer moms to the new location) and The Haunted Bookstore in Tucson, AZ -- a wonderful mystery and more store that apparently was crushed by two larger stores opening nearby. Adventures in Crime & Space lost their lease, and could not find anyone who would give them a lease -- even with three years rent in an escrow.
As these folks show, you must be Quick, in all its many definitions, to run a specialty store.
http://my.ev1.net/english/news/newsarticle.asp?articleID=50472816&subject=business
As these folks show, you must be Quick, in all its many definitions, to run a specialty store.
http://my.ev1.net/english/news/newsarticle.asp?articleID=50472816&subject=business
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Then again, in an age where the entire Tower Records chain may go under, this may be the end for the record and book stores.
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They were building strongly into kids' SF/Fantasy, because staffer Lori liked that stuff. But when Lori became ill and was fighting for her life, I think the details started to collapse. She did most of the newsletter -- and I note that the web site hasn't been changed in a long time. And John (? Met him on a bad name day, very good-looking man who always wore a long-sleeved tailored shirt to work) the law student is taking the bar. His brother writes around his good day work (also lawyer-ing?) but haven't seen the brother's stuff published yet.
At any rate -- Willie is the perfect model of a geeky introvert who tries to be gracious to customers. But if his head is in the clouds, forget it. He managed to offend one client so she stopped going -- and she was buying over $100 a month from him. He just didn't see her and kept talking convention stuff with another person. {Idiot...}
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Elizabeth was a Hugo finalist that year. Sorry, BP - your loss.
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Whenever I stopped in the store,I could barely get people to talk to me, even when I had books in my hand. I always got the newsletter late,after half the events had already happened.
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You can see this coming, can't you? HarperCollins had told them that they'd handle bookings -- but HC was only handling Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. You mean someone else in the HarperPrism line was asked to do an autographing?! The HC publicity person told me to go ahead and handle it myself. But some B&Ns feared angering HC/HP -- and so on. I think they considered Baen tripe -- forgetting that Bujold and Moon were also Baen.
Several B&N managers rightly ignored the entire thing, so we had a couple of gigs. But honestly -- autographings usually are worthless for authors -- too much time and effort for little response. I'd rather have an Allie Tee shirt designed and raffle it off the web site, or something. In fact, I was going to design it myself, but there are some stunning Hong Kong artists that will do limited runs for people. Hummm....
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I can't find the $%^## file right now, but it was during Jan-March 2004, I think. Her last name was Wolf(e), if you want to search. Ovarian cancer. AT stayed in Houston until late spring this year, when he found a job back in Austin.
Like I said -- a huge group of talented but seriously introverted geeks who needed a Lori to keep them front and center. Not that they appreciated all the customers she won for them.
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Ditto, here!