I’m not going to write about politics today. I’ve beaten that dead horse so many times that its bones have turned to dust, which has become soil, which has grown grass that is feeding an entirely new generation of horses who will, someday soon, be dead enough to beat.
Today I want to talk about bookstores.
Okay, not about bookstores per se, which are amazing places full of ideas and adventures dreamed up by millions of authors from all around the world.
Bookstores used to be a place of wonder for me. I’d ride my bike for an hour to reach the nearest Waldenbooks to peruse the fantasy and sci-fi section, looking for a new read. I devoured authors, always on the lookout for a cover that would fire up my imagination, or a blurb that would light up my teenage sci-fi mind.
How things have changed.
Yesterday, we went with a couple friends to a Barnes & Noble that has a restaurant/cafe, and even serves flights of beer and wine. I had mixed feelings about the trip, and I wasn’t sure why.
The food was not bad, although we did go a bit heavy on the fried side – still, when was the last time we had the chance to eat fried zucchini? I don’t drink, but the wine was apparently decent too.
But when we went out into the bookstore itself after lunch, I had this sudden urge to run. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to see all the lovely books.
My love affair with the idea of the bookstore was clearly over, and I’m not sure if or when I’ll ever be able to get it back. It took me a while to figure out why.
It started with Kindle, but not in the way you think. I’d been getting some books electronically for a while, but still had a strong preference for physical books. Then in 2015, we moved and downsized dramatically, ending up in a house a quarter the size of our old one. I donated two-thirds of my books to the library, and squeezed the remainder into two packed book shelves in our living room, crammed behind the couch and bravely holding their ground between the coat closet and the kitchen door with literally half-an-inch to spare.
There is, quite literally, no room for more books, and that alone has kept me away from bookstores.
But what hit me with the force of a hundred dead horses yesterday was the fact that I will probably never see any of my books in those stores.
I grew up dreaming of being an author. I wanted to write amazing worlds and share them with others. To walk in the footsteps of my idols. McCaffrey. Tepper. Asimov. Clark. Anthony.
So I wrote a bunch of books… and the people who read them seem to enjoy them immensely. And yet, I have tried every path I can think of over the last eleven years to break through the gatekeepers and get them into bookstores, with no success.
I’ve published books with a decent-sized small press who promised to get my books into these stores, and was even on the brink of doing so when the publisher crashed and burned, leaving me and countless others in the wreckage.
I’ve self published books, and gathered the contact info for thousands of bookstores, letting them know about my work and its amazing reviews, hoping someone would listen. The silence was deafening.
And I’ve tried to get an agent, going through three long and painful rounds, sending out hundreds of queries, only to be told (in a hundred different ways) that “your work just didn’t move me the way I hoped.”
And so I found myself standing there in the bookstore yesterday. On every table and every shelf, are thousands upon thousands of authors for whom the gates were opened, who were welcomed into this sacred place that now seems forever out of my reach.
I am fifty-six years old, going on fifty-seven next month. With each passing year, the likelihood of me scoring an agent and making it big diminishes. My chances are slipping through my fingers.
So where I used to see magic in a bookstore, now I only see electric fences, meant to keep me and my ilk out.
I looked up an old mentor the other day. She writes a successful mystery series with one of the big publishing houses, and it’s even been turned into a TV series. She was a community schoolteacher when I knew her, and now she has a multi million dollar home in the US and a flat in London.
I feel great admiration for her, and at the same time, great bitterness that the same gatekeepers who deemed her art worthy never seem to see the value in mine.
Let me be clear. This is not a takedown of bookstores. They are amazing places, and the people who run them are truly dedicated to disseminating knowledge and beauty in the world.
But the publishing world is badly broken, and no one seems to have a way to fix it, or even care.
I wish bookstore owners they would find a way to open up their walled gardens to people like me, authors who put out quality work that never seems to find its way into the Big Five.
And then maybe one day I will be able to open myself up to the wonder of the bookstore again.