i haven't read it, but i saw that recently, a graphic novel for f. scott fitzgerald's the curious case of benjamin button recently came out.
i've never delved into the realm of graphic novels, and this looked like a nice place to start for me, but i wanted to read the original first.
A question occurred to me as I listened to you explain how you get through 1500 titles per year: How do you reconcile your personal feelings with your professional responsibilities? How do you manage not underselling the books you don't particularly care for or, conversely, overselling your faves?
Not sure if you can really answer that, but was curious.
Hi Stephen -- that's a great question, and I can take a brief stab at that.
The hardest part is, of course, not overselling our favorites. Passion tends to be contagious.
As for the rest -- it is really true that there are books for everybody. And while we may not love a particular title, we are very good at knowing what type of person would like the book, based on other authors, etc. And the computer systems at the bookstores help. So if I have a book that I don't care for that is similar to a book by John Smith, we'll see how many copies of John Smith's book the store sold, and that will give us an idea of whether or not the store should stock it, and how many.
On top of all that is marketing and publicity that the publisher gets for the book, so even if I don't love a book but it's going to be on NPR and likely reviewed all over the place, my feelings don't really matter, because the customers will come looking for it anyway.
Lastly, we know the floor staff at our bookstores, and we know what they like, as does the buyer. That's one of the most important factors in a buyer's decision.
Hope this helps a little. It's an art, not a science, despite the computerization of the industry.
thanks, Ann. I was hoping it was something like that. The arcane should never be taken out of the book experience, and your intuition contributes to a little bit of the magic behind a book's journey from being written by the author to being read by we readers.
Commenting by HaloScan
