Call to ‘book nerds’ rouses author volunteers
Best-selling novelist Wally Lamb, a two-time Oprah Book Club pick, has signed thousands of copies of his books. But he’s never sold one, at least the way booksellers do.
That will change Saturday, when Lamb and more than 1,000 other authors become volunteer booksellers for a day at more than 400 independent bookstores.
It’s part of Small Business Saturday, which began three years ago as way to support local businesses in an age of online shopping and national chains. This year, author Sherman Alexie added a literary twist he dubbed “Indies First.”
In an open letter to other authors in September, Alexie, best known for his semi-autobiographical novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” urged “book nerds” to become booksellers at a local bookstore on Small Business Saturday.
“We will make recommendations,” he wrote. “We will practice nepotism and urge readers to buy multiple copies of our friends’ books. Maybe you’ll sign and sell books of your own in the proc- ess.”
Lamb, who’ll be at R.J. Julia in Madison, Conn., says he signed up “to celebrate the survival and resurgence of America’s in- die bookstores,” and “to extend my personal thanks to R.J.’s, one of the best and most readerfriendly indies in the country.”
The Connecticut resident will sign copies of his latest best-seller, “We Are Water,” along with his two Oprah picks, “She’s Come Undone” and “I Know This Much Is True.” And he’ll recommend several debut novelists and short story writers: Hannah Kent (“Burial Rites”), Amanda Coplin (“The Orchardis”) and Jacquelin Gorman (“The Viewing Room”).
Alexie will make the rounds of five bookstores in Seattle.
Dan Cullen of the American Booksellers Association says “it’s been completely a grass-roots promotion, spreading largely via social media.”
Lamb, 63, a former high school English teacher, says he has limited retail experience.
In high school, he worked at a drugstore and recalls selling a “a lot of condoms, called rubbers back then, and kept discreetly in the back room.”
In graduate school, he worked at a convenience store and “sold a lot of Slim Jims and more condoms.”
Saturday, he’ll be selling books.