buy « Robin Writes

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.

This week, I’m going to tell you how it all started and why some people think I’m a prepper. Am I? Maybe…

I grew up on a farm. My great-great-great grandfather started that farm in 1850. We lived there from the time I was born until I was three, then again when I was 13 until I left for college. My earliest memories are playing in the yard around the old farmhouse, washhouse, smokehouse, and in and out of the barns and chicken coop.

Those of you who are wondering about that last, well, my abject fear of birds came later, when I was about six or seven!

My great-grandfather was still farming in the late 1960s and I followed him around the garden and played with his pet squirrel, Curly. My dad took over in the 70s and that’s when the Monsanto connection began. Keep in mind, please, before you shut your browser and delete me from your friends’ lists, this was before the average person – including many farmers – knew about GMOs and what they did.

Growing up, I loved being outside. I camped and rode our horses, hiked, explored. And I was very interested in history and the “old days.” If I’d had a time machine, I would have gone back, not forward.

I’ve been writing for years, and kept saying I was going to write a book. Someday. No one ever discouraged me, and in fact kept telling me to it – now! So, finally, the book that had to be written was started and finished last year. REDUCED came out in late August 2012. REUSED followed in mid-December, and RECYCLED will be released next week.

Three books in one year – I don’t recommend it!

The basic premise of REDUCED is “what if.” “What if” one of these government screws we read about on an almost daily basis reduced the population to nearly unsustainable levels? “What if” everyone had to start over – no electric, no Internet, communications towers inoperable? A lot of people think this could happen, regardless of the catalyst, and the more I read, the more intrigued I became.

As an old Girl Scout, I know the value of “be prepared” so I started doing a little preparing myself. Just a little. I’m not a fanatic or anything, although I do apparently have a crazy cousin who’s planning to gather people to move to Oklahoma at some point.

Anyway, I do some prepping, sure. And the characters in my books did, too. And after it all went down, they had to scramble a bit to survive – although it helps when the competition for supplies has been, er, reduced!

My characters heard about something going down, soon, but there was no announcement, no emergency sirens, nothing like that. And they were ready, for… well, they didn’t really know how bad it was going to be. And they spent the next ten years or so surviving. And fighting back. But, when it’s all over, for the most part, this decade-long crisis, it’s time to buckle down and go back in time and start over. And no, I’m not talking about time travel – back to pioneer days, homesteads, and again, surviving.