Shelf Life

In a charming kind of looping, last week author Suzanne Strempek Shea, who has worked part time in a bookstore for the last three years, helped sell copies of her new book, Shelf Life (Beacon, $20), an account of her first year as an author working part time in a bookstore.

The store is Edwards Books in Springfield, Mass., and on Good Friday, PW Daily was on hand as Edwards began selling some of the 400 copies Shelf Life that had arrived the day before--and which now fill several tables and shelves and are impossible to miss on entering the store.

"It's so funny to write a book and sell it, which I did with my memoir and novels," Shea said. "But selling a book about bookselling here is even funnier."

In fact, adding to the looping quality, at least one customer Shea discusses in Shelf Life came into the store on Friday: Bill MacGregor, by whom "you can set your watch," as Shea writes. (A banker, he regularly stops by the store after work.) On Good Friday, MacGregor bought a copy of Shelf Life, which Shea enthusiastically signed. She also highlighted his name where it appears in the book.

It was not a difficult sale, to put it mildly, and the transaction seemed only to highlight Shea's enjoyment of bookselling. As an employee, she said, for her, "bookselling is like having grandchilden. "You get to have all the fun and give them back at the end of the day."

Her bookselling experience also gave her an edge over other authors curious about how their new books are doing: when she arrived Friday morning, Shea checked the computer inventory and saw that "only" 390 copies were on hand, meaning 10 had been sold. Working behind the counter has also changed Shea's experience touring or simply visiting other stores. As an author, she wanted mainly to see how and where her books were displayed. "Now I see how things are set up, how the counter's done, what sidelines they have," she said. "It's almost paid research."

She also talks with booksellers differently, she said. For example, she asks how certain books are selling or where they buy sidelines. In general, she said, her experience at Edwards has given her a greater appreciation of independent booksellers, particularly "the things they do to get people in."

The author of Selling the Lite of Heaven and Hoopi Shoopi Donna, among other titles, Shea was recovering from breast cancer surgery in 2001 when Janet Edwards, owner of Edwards, where she often shopped, asked if she knew anyone who might be interested in working the store. "I was spending too much time alone at home," she said, so she took the job, which had more of a healing quality than she expected.

"It's such a fascinating thing," Shea continued. "If I could have landed anywhere, I couldn't have picked a better place. It's such a welcoming environment. They're good, good people, like family. They're a blessing."

In Shelf Life, Shea captures many of the blessings and difficulties of bookselling, made all the more poignant because Edwards is in Springfield, an old New England mill city whose downtown has struggled for many years. But her spirit, like that of her colleagues, is contagious, and other booksellers will find many of Shea's observations familiar and knowing--and delightfully expressed.

She sets the tone in the beginning, noting the variety of interests the store's customers have. "They all have many questions. And so they come to me.... I have what everyone is seeking. Because I sell books."

One customer, for example, is a pilot looking for "a book on rekindling love." Janet Edwards spends half an hour with him, finding what he needs, a book that gives him an idea. Later that day he returns to the store to show a pair of gold earrings that he hopes will help in the rekindling effort.

Shea appreciates the attachment many customers have to the books they find, which extends to how they hold them. She writes: "The hugging to the chest is something I see often in the store. Maybe it's the natural way to hold a book, as there is sort of a natural way to hold an infant or a watermelon. But since taking note of it, I have observed that people in the CVS downstairs don't go walking the aisles with even the most costly Pantene clutched to their bosoms."

At the same time, Shea laughs at some customers' classically dumb questions. Among them: "This trilogy has only three books. Where's the fourth?" Or the vague demand, "I want a book by that woman who was on TV the other morning." With a newcomer's perspective and imagination, she has fun with certain elements of the business many of us in the industry have too long taken for granted. For example, she translates ISBN to herself as "I Sell Books Now." Similarly, when she mentions the computer system, she describes it as having "the frog-vocabulary name IBID."

She captures the importance of bookselling for herself as a writer and other writers. "I know what it's like to create the work. Now I am finding out what it's like to watch that work go off to its audience."

She traces the rhythms of the store during a typical day as well as from season to season, and artfully sketches the personalities of other booksellers at Edwards. Gregarious Janet Edwards, for example, explains why she keeps the store open: "It really is a world begging for connection. And you don't have to look very far to find it. It's unbelievable what happens when people come through those doors. Maybe community is lacking elsewhere, but here, in this store, sometimes we know too much about one another."

Happily Shea works in a kind of bookstore that encourages booksellers to take the initiative. As Flo Edwards, Janet's mother, puts it: "Suzanne can do anything she wants." So Shea becomes involved in most parts of the business. She nearly single-handedly introduces sidelines to the store. She helps organize and put on events. The only problem about working at Edwards, it seems, is the employee discount and temptation all around her. "It's like working in a candy shop," Shea said. "I spend so much money!"