Can I get a copy of Tayari Jones's "Leaving Atlanta" at Barnes & Noble? Funny how novelists as fiercely staunch as Jones seems to be about shunning the corporate world so rarely publish their books under the condition that those books be sold exclusively in independent stores. And thanks for linking to my blog - my traffic has been increased significantly.

Posted by Jason Cooper on September 02, 2008 at 04:21 PM EDT #

Thanks for the response. I was, of course, being ironic, but at the same time wondering how it is that so many writers so comfortably bite the hand that so often feeds them. Cultural homogenization is worrisome, but please know that however firm a handle corporate chains might have on a marketplace, booksellers within those chains are not oblivious to what homogenization is, and that, in most cases, we actively resist it. Are we modeled for certain titles and not others? Sure we are, but we also utilize our store shortlists and staff recs shelves to bring titles too-often neglected to the attention of customers. And if the ABA acknowledges that corporate chains are part of the diversity of the marketplace, how is it fruitful, with Indiebound, to run a smear campaign against those chains? Why issue a declaration calling for a denunciation of corporate bookstores (whose employees and managers, you should know, are also members of their respective communities, and thereby the friends and neighbors of their customers)? a declaration accusing those chains of being threats? a declaration asserting that chain bookstores and booksellers are inferior to or beneath indies? The declaration language is offensive, antagonistic, contemptuous, I could go on. How is it healthy or constructive to formally target fellows in a diverse marketplace with such language? Every day I work at Barnes & Noble, I refer customers to small businesses if we don't have what they're looking for -- local restaurants, the little stationery shop downtown, the bookshop with the overwhelming collection of Penguin and Modern Library classics. I've never met a chain bookseller who didn't do these things as occasions warranted. And did it ever occur to anyone that in banding together, indies run the risk of becoming the kind of homogenizing conglomerate of which they're so skeptical?

Posted by Jason Cooper on September 04, 2008 at 12:49 PM EDT #

Sarah,
Thanks, as always, for these posts. I wanted to let you know I wound up with a 54... a couple rang a bell, but I couldn't claim to know them.

Posted by jmcc on September 06, 2008 at 07:51 PM EDT #