The last
week or two at the store have been amazing—busy, productive, and full of
surprises!
Jeff
Kinney, author of the Wimpy Kid books, stopped by, and dozens of families came
by to meet him and have their books signed. Kinney was wonderful with all his
young fans and patiently signed every book, even those brought in by the bagful.
And it’s terrific for us to have lots of signed copies of The Third Wheel, the newest Wimpy Kid book, going into the holiday
season.
Yesterday morning
our whole staff had breakfast with two of our Random House sales reps, Bridget
Piekarz and Laura Baratto, who told us about some of the books they think will
make great holiday gifts. Laura went through Chris Ware’s Building Stories piece by piece, talking about Ware’s painstakingly
detailed work on this project and his ideas about multiple places to enter a
story. It may have just been me, but I think Bridget especially enjoyed talking
about the cookbooks on the Random House list—The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Foolproof, and Lidia’s
Favorite Recipes by Lidia
Bastianich come to mind. I also appreciated Bridget bringing along New York Review Books’
new edition of Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra
at the Wedding, which had come out earlier this fall and somehow I’d
missed! Thank you, Bridget!
After the
breakfast, I spoke with Laura and Bridget about possibly making a presentation
like this to our customers. They loved the idea and were very interested in
helping me get something going—perhaps a series that would include not only Bridget
and Laura but also reps from other publishers, large and small. I’m looking
forward to putting something together, perhaps in the spring.
Also,
yesterday we officially launched our relationship with Kobo. We now sell Kobo
eBooks from our website and Kobo eReaders in the store. The eReaders are
stylish and have many great features. (See our website for all the details!)
And to kick off the holiday shopping season, the pocket-sized one (called the
Mini) will be on sale for only $49 on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday.
If you’ve been waiting for a low-priced eReader to dip your toe into the eBook
pond, this might be the device for you. We also hear Kobo is planning to
release a new tablet this winter, and we’re excited about the possibility of
offering that at the store, too, as soon as it’s available. I already own an
eReader but look forward to being able to order my eBooks from
Kobo, which has a much larger selection of books than Google had.
As I write
this, the pumpkin pie is in the oven (yes, just one—some of the friends who we
used to share this holiday with have moved away, so we’re a smaller group these
days). But, after the dinner’s eaten and the dishes are done, four is the
perfect number for playing cards! And, of course, we’ll be listening to Christmas
music, because we’ve been waiting all year and, well, there’s just no need to
wait any longer, is there? And perhaps after the guests leave, I’ll curl up in
my reading chair with my new copy of Cassandra
at the Wedding. . .
Cheers,
and Happy Thanksgiving!
Lynn
Women
& Children First, Chicago
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