In Which I’m A Good Book Pimp

The one fun/odd thing that happened this weekend… after Jimmy and I went out for sushi with LA Williams and our friend, Scharba, we all headed over to Barnes and Noble.

There was a young, professional woman in the SF/F aisle, browsing. We were talking about some books and covers – Jimmy and I – and she interrupted to ask for recommendations. She was looking for new books to read.

I went into YardDog Press Book Pimp mode. I asked her what she liked to read. For her it was Fantasy. I recommended – since we’d just been talking about them, Allan Cole & Chris Bunch’s Far Kingdoms series. The first two have just been re-released by Cosmos with the original Tom Kidd/Gnemo Covers.

She picked those up, and we discovered she’d never read Anne McCaffrey – B&N had one copy of Dragonflight. And then, because we were all there, I showed her The Book of Angels LA Williams did with Ruth Thompson — and introduced her to LA Williams. One – it’s always fun to pimp a book when someone responsible for it is standing close by, and Two, it was the only one on the shelf. We like selling out a book.

I did tell her about my stuff – or at least Redheads of the Apocalypse. I wasn’t carrying a purse that night. I had no cards. Shoot. I hope she finds me.

But this is the thing, as an author, it’s a GOOD THING to pimp more than your own books. You DO want to sell your book — if I’d had one in B&N, I probably would’ve sold it to her, too. But creating a genre reader or ENCOURAGING a genre reader is the key to the game. It’s the long-term investment.

Now, just so you know — this is not an isolated incident. Nor is it something I only do at conventions. I’ve had this same thing happen to me at several Half-Price Books, and other retail outlets. I don’t know what it is, but people ask me random questions like that. I think I give an “I work here” type vibe or something. Whatever it is – I always try to be polite and give a decent answer when someone ask me questions in a store.

You never know when you’re going to sell a book to someone.