Real reading, great events, price wars...

By tom on October 17, 2009 | Add a Comment

Hey, there's a boy in a balloon lost in media land! There's a new memoir from a Alaskan media-hound and possible presidential candidate, and there's a price war between Amazon.com and Walmart.com over books.  

That's right, books! I didn't think books got enough attention (or market share) for people to fight over these days. Hopefully it wont last long, but right now both of these behemoths are selling the biggest releases of the fall at a loss just to spite one another. It's ridiculous. Am I worried? Not really (I find the weather a much more frightening prospect when it comes to killing Christmas sales).

Regardless of the competition, it all comes down to the customer, and we've got great customers. We've spent the last seven years working hard to provide great books, quality events, and an important meeting place in the real world of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. People know that if they like the things we do, they need to keep buying books here or we won't be able to do it anymore.

Perhaps I'm particularly sanguine about these issues because I just finished reading Hound by Vincent McCaffrey. He'll be here on Thursday the 22nd to talk about his book. It's supposedly a mystery, but really it's a quiet, rambling meditation on nostalgia. It's so low key that when the crime finally happened I was completely shocked because I had forgotten that it was supposed to be a mystery.

      In it, Henry Sullivan is an antiquarian book dealer in Boston who spends a lot of his time at his local bar, talking with his friend Albert about how things used to be so much better than they are now in the cheap, plastic, disposable present. Several unexpected events jolt Henry out of his inertia and into action as he tries to make sense of his life and take control of his own future.

This is the kind of book that Amazon and Walmart will never, never fight over, and that's why it's the kind of book that makes me glad to do what I do for a living. The publisher is Small Beer Press, out of Easthampton, Mass., and they, too, are supremely independent.

Come to this event and meet the author, a thirty year veteran of independent bookselling. Read this book and be reminded of why reading a book, a real book that you hold in your hand and doesn't take batteries, is one of the great experiences in life.