Rep Night Part 1: The Reps Come a Calling, and Suzanne Presents

One of our favorite traditions at Schwartz were fall rep nights, where sales reps would present titles for the holiday season (also known as the only months when most bookstores make money).

There's a bit of coercion to get booksellers on board on the good hand-sells. And there's a bit of clueing booksellers into key gift titles, who they are best marketed to, and how to sell them.

We thought, eh, one store, we we're just not big enough to warrant this kind of program to continue. But Lanora Hurley at Next Chapter and I got together and went to the reps and asked if they'd be up to presenting to both stores together.

Our first presentations were from Hachette (Suzanne from Little, Brown, Grand Central, and assorted imprints), Harvard/Yale/MIT (my guest poster John Eklund) and a commission rep from Fujii Associates (Andy, who presented titles from Workman and its imprints, Abrams, Globe Pequot, and due to some staffing changes, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). We had sandwiches and brownies from Outpost, and assorted french fries from Hollander.

Here are some of their pick highlights (there were plenty more but I'm not listing everything).

Hachette Book Group

Bear Portraits, by Jill Greenberg
From the woman who put together the popular Monkey Portraits.

Bulb, by Anna Pavord
A beautiful guide to and collection of bulbs, from the author of the very popular book, The Tulip.

The Monuments Men, by Robert Edsel
The folks who found and protected the art treasures stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, by Major Brian Dennis
For fans of Owen and Mzee, the photo story for kids of a Marine and the dog he met in Iraq.

School of Fear, by Gitty Daneshvari. Four students with different phobias must face their fears at...the School of Fears. It's very Mysterious Benedict Society.

Suzanne's fiction hand-sell push was a book that came out earlier this year, Patrick Somerville's Cradle. Somerville is a really great guy (we met him when his short stories came out) whose Wisconsin ties were overlooked during this book's initial publication. Suzanne hopes to remedy that.

Oh, and one book for us to get behind for winter--Joshua Ferris's The Unnamed. It's a very different novel from Then We Came to the End, but just as great. It's about a couple where the husband has compulsive-walking disease. Among other things, the book seemed perfect for me because I seem to have that disease.

Too much to tell! More picks from reps tomorrow.