Advice from Booksellers to Booksellers. Boswell: Move Your Thrillers!

Recently I had a visit from some booksellers, which of course is always a joyous thing. Needless to say, I was very self-conscious about the store, and made sure all our signage was updated, while Amie cleaned the cobwebs from some dark corners. Then they arrived.

They were gracious, of course.

But one of them pointed our something rather odd about our layout. Our mystery section transitioned to some specialty sections like legal thrillers and espionage, and then jumped to fiction. But somewhere around author beginning with "G," a light green case jutted out from the wall, filled with thrillers.

"Why do you have a thiller case," one asked?

"I wanted to have a home for books that are not quite mysteries, but are sort of those series-driven authors who might sell better if they were together. Conceptually they are more about the chase than the puzzle. I saw the idea at Library Ltd., a fine bookstore in the St. Louis suburbs, and it stuck with me." I am paraphrasing.

"Yes, but why is it over there? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a thriller bay after mystery and before fiction and have your fiction books wrap around through the green case?"

"Why yes, it would. I never thought of that."

Last week we moved them. Thank you, fellow booksellers!