Consider the difference between the "Oh, oh" factor and the "Oh!" factor. For both booksellers and customers, having certain titles in stock is a measure of a shop's credibility. The Shame List I wrote about two weeks ago is something that gradually accumulates over time.
"Oh, oh" titles are those books that a customer reasonably expects to be carried by any good bookstore (Great Expectations or 1984, for example). Nobody likes to stare at an empty slot on the shelf or a computer screen's mocking 0 under the "on hand" category, and then have to mutter sheepishly, "We can special order that for you."
And "Oh!" titles? These are books that establish an individual shop's identity (its biblio-fingerprints) and include staff picks that can often be sold in casual conversation away from the section, or even as a last minute nudge at POS. When a bookseller is in full handselling mode with an enthusiastic reader, the goal is to keep saying, "Oh! You'd love this one..." and pluck it from a shelf rather than "Oh, oh" and where do we go from here?
Several readers responded with their own Shame List thoughts and recommendations.
"Having spent my professional life in the book business on all fronts, I am now working in a small store in Cable, Wis.--the home of the Birkebeiner (the world's best cross-country ski race)," noted Jane Kent Johnston of Redbery Books. "Our customers are lake home owners who come from the Twin Cities, Chicago, Madison, etc.; many are artists who have opted for life in a beautiful, nature environment; and those who have chosen the northwoods life. They are an amazingly well-read population. So, my Shame List is Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, Plainsong by Kent Haruf, Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olssen, A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems."
Angela Cozad, events coordinator for Lafayette Book Store, Lafayette, Calif., "was a buyer for many years at Tower Books and we didn't call it the Shame List; we called them the 'Sacred Cows.' The turns were low but they legitimized the section and sometimes the whole store. Titles included War and Peace, Call of the Wild, My Antonia, any and all of Penguin Classics, the Sunset Western Garden book, Runaway Bunny, Fahrenheit 451, etc. It was storewide, not just fiction-based. We actually tried to have one per rack because we felt they were so important."
On Twitter, @LIBERTYBAYBOOKS wrote that although Shame List was an unfamiliar term, "one book on my list is Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins."
Another perspective was offered by Peter Ginna, publisher and editorial director of Bloomsbury Press, who observed that he "once read a piece by an author about her 'Middlemarch test.' If she went into a bookstore and it didn't have Middlemarch, she knew it was a writeoff. Maybe that's setting the bar too low, but I would certainly agree that if there's no Middlemarch, the backlist pickings are going to be slim."
Ginna added that he is "a big history reader, and I often find that it's harder to find a good selection of history backlist titles than a good fiction section. Some otherwise good indie stores I won't even bother going into if I'm looking for a history book. Here's a random selection of titles I'd look for to see if a store had a good history buyer. All of these are important and enduring works that are also wonderful reads:
- Plutarch's Lives
- The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga
- The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
- At least something by Richard Hofstadter (my vote, The American Political Tradition, far less boring than its title)
- A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
- Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson
- Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer
"Inevitably, as a publisher, my first test for any bookstore is, how many of my books do they have? I don't expect even a good shop to have every one of my titles, but the ones that have at least a few intelligent selections prove themselves to be smart and discriminating. Extra points for faceouts, double points if they have a couple of the new ones on the front table."
More must-have titles coming next week. And please tell me what's on your Shame List.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)