bookstore « Robin Writes

Yes, RHP has released our eighth book!

First, there was REDUCED:

A devastating biological agent is about to be released, to be tested in remote areas. Rumor has it, though, that there is more to this than meets the eye. One group makes plans to hide out, and survive, in case that rumor proves to be truth. Meeting at an abandoned summer camp near St. Louis, Missouri, a dozen old friends gather after the alarm is raised.

Life becomes more precious, more tenuous, as time passes. Government controls tighten, people are herded into the city…or killed. Towns are obliterated. And soon, the enemy agenda becomes obvious.

Abby will come face-to-face with death, bear the responsibility for a young girl, and endure the severing of childhood relationships in the most terrible way imaginable.

From mere concealment to reconnaissance to aiding a rebellion, where will it end? Will the entire region be decimated, and who will be left alive to know?

Then, we had REUSED:

Colonel Barton has been replaced, and the new commander is sending his henchman, Major Blake, to scour the outlying areas and remove any insurgents. Abby and the girls have remained in the cave at the camp, relatively safe for now, but plans are underway to eliminate all of them…for personal reasons, known only to the commander himself.

Soon, however, worlds will collide as Captain Alison Hinson is transferred in from Chicago. In spite of her background, Alison is horrified by the tactics of her superiors in the field and begins to question her own stance on the new government. As she puts together the pieces of the past, she realizes that she and Abby are kindred spirits, faced with a mission not of their own choosing, but of circumstance.

Across the country, while officials and mercenaries live the high life, the citizenry are faced with more sanctions, more regulation, and fewer necessities. Pockets of rebellion are quickly quelled, but incidents continue to increase as more people make the decision to go underground. Literally.

From abandoned caves below St. Louis itself to a subterranean river winding north into Illinois, REUSED will tell you more, perhaps, than you truly wish to know about the potential for the utter collapse of our civilization.

And now, RECYCLED!

The population was REDUCED.

But some were REUSED.

And now, RECYCLED:

Abby is enroute to Chicago to find the children, and she has one final objective: to defeat the government and take back her life.

But Jules is focused on another mission, to return to St. Louis, and to Mario.

Will Abby succeed? Will Jules survive gang warfare? Who is Riley, and what is her secret?

RECYCLED is officially being launched this Saturday at All on the Same Page Bookstore, and is available NOW – at Rocking Horse Publishing, at Amazon, and on Kindle.

And just to make is easy, you can click on any of my books on the right side of the page and order directly from there!

However, if you go my website, you can get all three for just $30. And I’ll even sign them!

Oh, yes, this blog post is indeed running late today – by about eight hours! I intended to write about something entirely different but, in light of today’s designated “thinking day,” my new topic just barged right on in here.

And yes, it’s about bookstores. I worked on the accounts today, out of necessity; not to pay bills, just to see where we sit.

And we seem to be sitting in a deep, dark hole. Surrounded by a musty scent of decay. There used to be a rope dangling from the top, but what’s left is broken and frayed and just out of reach. So here we sit.

The last time I blogged about this, in a different venue, I was called “whiny.” I’m not whining, and I’m not asking for a handout. I didn’t do that the other time either. What I did do was ask people to support local businesses, and I pointed out that if one person from each household purchased one $3 used book from us, each month, we could pay those bills I mentioned earlier.

How many books does the average household purchase in a month’s time? I couldn’t find that, doing a quick search, but in 2009 this average household spent about $118 in a year on books. So, with 5K homes in our city, that comes out to over half a million dollars each year. I guarantee you that that is so far from our annual sales that there is NO COMPARISON!

Where are these books coming from? Amazon? Probably. I don’t really care, I just know that either my city is illiterate or they’re going elsewhere to buy books. Other indie stores? Maybe. Most of them have been in business longer than we have and many of them have much bigger budgets for advertising.

On the other hand, when I’ve mentioned how odd it is that we STILL have people coming in almost two years after our grand opening, asking how long we’ve been here, other booksellers have told me that they have that problem too. I mean, my city is roughly ten square miles in size and our store is on the main drag, so to speak. Is everyone who lives here homebound?

Funny story, and yes, I’m going to mention it. I met our mayor last month, introduced myself. He said he knew who I was, had seen me online, etc., THEN – he asked if our bookstore was IN HIS CITY. My tongue is still sore from clamping down on it to keep from doing ANYthing but smiling and nodding.

Maybe it’s E-readers – is that the problem? Do people just talk about how much they love “real” books, but secretly just put them on their Kindles?

I don’t have any other answers, but again, let me stress that I’m not whining – we took a big risk, and if it all goes under, it goes under. And if that happens, I wonder how many people are going to say, oh, there was a bookstore there? I wish we’d KNOWN.

Bottom line: come into the damn bookstore already. Buy a book. Three bucks. It won’t kill you. I promise. We’d like to be here so you can do that. In ten years. Or two. Or in six months. Or, hey, we might end up living there – we’d be open 24/7, just like Amazon.