An Update on How Things are Going--And this if Officially Grand Opening Week

Well, by grand opening, you should everything done, right? Not exactly. My mantra of "Every day is a little bit better" still holds true. Our books are beginning to come in through Jason, our accounting system is finally working such that Amie understands it (I'm hoping I'll be next) and we're beginning to get in our sidelines such as Moleskine journals, Galison boxed cards and stationery, and Melissa and Doug and Mudpuppy toys. Card orders from Madison Park and Artists to Watch are en route, as our stuffed animals from Kids Preferred.

Bev is particularly fond of the social notes line, boxed cards with a postcard-style enclosure. Shown is the popular Scandanavian Modern collection. We also have a matching journal and sticky notes. I was more of a fan of the dandelions, which are featured on our gardening table, next to our new whimsical wooden animal compasses, which are only $2.50.

Signage? Our permit for our banner is approved and I'm paying the fee on Monday morning. I expected to have a temporary banner up right away and a finished sign for our opening. Now it seems like the latter was for our opening and maybe the finished sign will be up for our one-year anniversary.

Customers are already talking about which sections they'd like to see bigger, and we're working on that. We've got more books coming in every area, but aside from kids, there's been a lot of talk about our mystery section, which probably calls for a second post. (Note: Anne's mystery group is reading John Dunning's Sign of the Book on May 19th). Also poetry, but that might have to do with the fact that our first three events were all poetry-oriented.

We know how important signage is, and we're trying to get that up; I'm not a fan of our signage typeface and wanted to change it; in the end, I decided there was a lot of money I could save by holding pat. It's a project for another year. (I'm not even positive what the typeface is: I should probably ask Barb at DTS images. I think the closest we came up with was Arial bold.

Our first bookmark is clever, but the design is effectively a bust. Sadly, I didn't really focus on this until after it was printed. We're going to chalk that up to a $35 lesson and redo it. For the next couple of days, you'll get a slightly pixilated version with a badly thought out border and dueling typefaces. I'm hoping Monday will be, not amazing, but improved.

If we play our cards right, we'll even have some tee shirts by the end of the week.

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Here's a nice piece in this week's Shepherd Express about the closing of Schwartz and the opening of the two new shops. It seemed more like an article for February, when the Schwartz closing was announced, and I'm sad that, despite being a week beforehand, there was nothing about my wonderful grand opening events, but it's still a nice cover story, and should probably remind folks not to take these new independent bookstores for granted.

Here's a piece about our upcoming events with Jane Hamilton, Anita Shreve, Elinor Lipman and Mameve Medwed. And don't forget Mequon's Next Chapter has Elizabeth Berg coming. Whatever you say about the state of newspapers, we are very lucky in Milwaukee that we have local book coverage in our paper. Please consider subscribing--I do and I can read them in my store for free! Oh, and if you do, it wouldn't hurt to say you subscribe because of the book coverage.

We took an order for Anita Shreve's Testimony from a fan in Virginia!

Here's an interesting article in the Journal Sentinel about Mary Nohl, the folk artist of Fox Point who left an amazing legacy. We're hosting the authors on June 4th.

And this great article about the new edition of The Flavor of Wisconsin has left us scrambling for books. Thanks to Terese Allen who made sure we had an event booked (on June 11th) before the article went to press.

It looks like I'm going to be on Kathleen Dunn for pledge week this Wednesday, May 6th. Dunn's show is on WHAD from 10-11 AM. Here's a link to info about the show, and it also has Nancy Pearl's recent booklist. Here are the show archives.

On Monday, May 4th at 7 PM, I'm leading my first in-store book club since 1996 in Mequon for the wonderful novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor. Hope I'm not too rusty!

Our First Email Newsletter Went Out on Tuesday and I'm Posting Most of it Right Here, Even Though That's not Really Correct Blog-i-quette.

They said it would never be done. I said it would never be done. It may never happen again. But on Tuesday, I sent out our first email newsletter. At Schwartz, we used to archive it on our website. Constant Contact has a function to archive newsletters as well. However, I was thinking of using the system to send sort of non-public emails, to staff, media, publicists, and those don't really make sense to be publicly archived. The short answer, is that I can't like you to the email right now. I can, however, print a bit of it.

You want poetry events? You've Got Poetry Events!
Monday, April 20th, 7 PM. Acclaimed poet and Wave Books editor Joshua Beckman reads from his new collection, Take It. Also appearing are local faves Derrick Harriell and Drew Blanchard.

Saturday, April 25th, 7 PM. A taste of a traditional Persian poetry night features several poems in English and Farsi. That's just a warmup for Roya Hakakian, acclaimed poet and author of the memoir Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iraq. (Hakakian is coming to Milwaukee through the sponsorship of Alverno College and the Wisconsin Society of Jewish Learning.)

Wednesday, April 29th, 5-7 PM. It's a pre-screening reception for the 2nd annual Poetry Everywhere collection of short animated films. It's also a shopping night for this worthy project. Ask for 10% of your sales to benefit the cause. Then head to the Downer Theater at 7 PM for the show. For more info, contact Christi Clancy.

We Just Couldn't Wait More Pre-opening Events
Sunday, April 26th, 11 AM-6 PM. It's a shopping day for SEED, the organization that helps Shorewood public schools. For more information contact Kathy at Fireball Communications.

Tuesday, April 28th, 7 PM. Acclaimed feminst Gerda Lerner appears for her new collection of essays, Living with History/Making Social Change, where she looks at how she transformed the history profession and established the women's studies as a mainstream field. Can't make this event? Lerner will be appearing at UWM Bookstore on Wednesday, April 29th. Contact Erik Hemming at UWM for more info

Grand Opening Preview

Our Upcoming Events. (More to come in our next email, when we hope our web site is up and running!)Wednesday, May 6th, 7 PM Wisconsin's own Jane Hamilton talks about and reads from her new novel, Laura Rider's Masterpiece.

Thursday, May 7th, 7 PM. The best of the undergraduate writers, hand-picked by C. J. Hribal and Liam Callanan. Come cheer your favorite at Boswell's first fiction smackdown.

Friday, May 8th, 7 PM. The big day, featuring Elinor Lipman appearing for The Family Man, Anita Shreve for the paperback of Testimony, and Mameve Medwed for Of Men and Their Mothers. It's Best Buddies Night--the authors are not just friends of Boswell, they're pals with each other. Bring your own best buddy. And here's my favorite part--all three authors will be guest booksellers on Friday afternoon, recommending their favorite books to all comers.

Saturday, May 9th, 2 PM. It's our talk and scavenger hunt featuring Dwellephant and Friends. It's all a celebration for the publication of Dwellephant's illustrations for the new and wonderful kids' graphic novel Missing the Boat, written by Wayne Chinsang and Justin Shady. Even I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, but five minutes with Dwellephant (you know his illustrations from WMSE, Alverno Presents, and the Milwaukee Art Museum, plus his exhibit at Hot Pop) and I was hooked!

Our In-Store Book Clubs, Mark Your Calendars
Tuesday, April 21st, 7 PM. The Shorewood Schwartz Mystery Book Group has moved to Boswell Book Company on Downer Avenue. This month they're reading Agatha-Award-winner Rhys Bowen's Murphy's Law. Contact Anne for more information.

Monday, May 4th, 7 PM. Yes, I'm trying to start an in-store book club. Why not? The first selection of the First Monday book club is Yoko Ogawa's The Housekeeper and the Professor. All you folks who loved The Elegance of the Hedgehog have got to try this. Here's a rave from Jim Higgins in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact DG for more info.

I'm not going to copy my email newsletter into my blog every week (or as often as we send it out). That's not what a blog is. So really what you should do is sign up. For now, the best way is to send an email to info@boswellbooks.com and put "newsletter" in the heading. I've got about 600 subscribers, but I think I need more than that to get the word out.

"The Housekeeper and the Professor"--A Case Study in How to Spot a Book we can Sell.

Folks always ask how we know whether a book will work for us. We get lots of reads of course. Reviews and interviews often help.

There is sort of a formula. I'm always looking for books that have multiple markets. Does the story work both as a character-driven novel and also a mystery? That would be In the Woods. Does the old-fashioned storytelling blend with a modern structure? There we have City of Thieves.

Two audiences I'm always trying to link together are the review-driven and the word-of-mouthers. You'd think that sweet spot is the book that appeals to both, but a book that gets all glowing reviews has one problem going for it--why do publishers need booksellers to tell readers that they should read it in spite of the mixed review?

The book has to be good enough to get reviews, but at least a few of the reviews have to voice complaints that the book is too commercial, too story driven, too emotional, perhaps too cliched. That would be Water for Elephants and any number of bestsellers driven by independent booksellers.

Early reviews are usually either positive, if the author is well-connected, or non-existent, if there are no logs to be rolled (ask me about that if you don't know to what I refer). If the book works, however, later reviews are sometimes of the backlash quality, analyzing the cultural response as much as the book itself. To use a comparison from the film world, one of my more erudite cinematic friends confided in me that he despises Slumdog Millionaire.

As an indie bookseller, we've had several books in the last year that had immediate response, but nowadays communication is so fast that by the time the book is out, it's an immediate hit. After seeing both The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society break out of the indies faster than my sister Merrill's cats can scoot out of a room as soon as they lay eyes on me, I decided that for fall 2008, we needed a book that would be the same kind of gem, but folks in the mainstream would find a bit offputting.

We found it in The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Say "translated from French" and "discussions about philosophy" to most self-service shoppers, and they will quickly move on to another aisle. But we were lucky enough to have the trust of our customers, and could therefore sell hundreds. The reviews didn't hurt on that one, either, though I could easily see that backlash-type review had the novel achieved the level of success stateside that it received in Europe.

So this winter I went sniffing for another success story on that level. It's been a bit harder, due to all our transition issues, and the fact that there is actually a lot more great fiction published in the winter than there is in the fall. Publishers save fall for the big guns that don't need our help, and use January through August to launch the breakouts.

My find is Yoko Ogawa's novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor. Ogawa's novellas, The Diving Pool, vanished without a trace, giving him a bad track record in the US. The book was sold into us very quietly, we didn't even put it at every shop.

It wasn't until our fall rep night, where several publishers meet with our booksellers to talk about hand-sells and gift options, that we had any inkling this was something special. Mary Ellen, our recently-retired Macmillan rep, got the chance to talk up one book from winter 2009 and said this was her favorite book on the list? Really? I didn't even remember it.

It's the story of a woman who is hired to care for this mathematician who has been in a terrible car accident. He's lost his short-term memory and can't recall anything from longer than 80 minutes previous. He's already driven off a number of domestic workers. They sort of hit it off, and when he insists her son stay with her during her work hours, he starts giving the two of them math lessons.

It's a philosophical tale filled with number theory where the reader has to fill in some of the details. It's actually quite accessbile but the quotes from Paul Auster and Nobel prizewinner Kenzaburo Oe lend it gravitas. Ogawa is acclaimed in Japan but not enough to get the great reviews; hence the book was released as a trade paperback original. Oh, and if you'd like to read an Oe novel, I've been told that A Personal Matter is a good place to start.

Mathy? Translated from Japanese? See, there is a formula. The fact that the book is actually quite wonderful is the key, but the other little details make it stand out from all the other wonderful books out there. It also keeps it from selling off the shelves at Target successfully, at least for a while.

And it's not just any math, it's number theory. That's the one branch of math that's easy to explain but very hard to prove. Just ask anyone who has struggled over Fermat's Last Theorem. Readers like the former, but don't care much about the latter.

Here's the Auster quote. We booksellers know how he came across the book, but the fact is, he doesn't give quotes to everybody, so this still means a lot.

"Highly original. Infinitely charming. And ever so touching."

--Paul Auster

And now you know our secret. Go open a bookstore!

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Addendum--I wrote this piece several days ago, but posted it on the 26th. Coincidentally Motoko Rich wrote a piece in today's New York Times on Europa's success with translated titles, most notably The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Now all we need is for Janet Maslin to write a rave about Little Bee. I'm pretty confident she would love it.

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State of the store. Among the paperwork I've filled out this week was my membership form for the American Booksellers Association. Once I have that, I can start on two projects that many customers have been asking about, our gift cards and our web site. Neither can be functional until the bricks-and-mortar store is live. I'll keep you posted.