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OPENING DAY / PLAY FALL
April 3, 2007

Aside (and along with) the Tattered Cover's LoDo store, I suspect no other bookstore is as proximate as Elliott Bay is to a major league baseball park. We're a ten-minute stroll from Safeco Field. Every year, from April through September, there is a rhythm to the days and nights, accented by whether or not the Mariners are in town, and what time the game is if they are. Baseball fans, by and large, are good foot traffic for us. There are readers amongst them. The pace of the game is such that other pleasantries can be engaged in, or the draw of being outside on a nice summer day alluring enough that one or two in a group might be there more for the sun and company (and the paperback book to be read) than the game itself. Or, as has been the case with the last-place M's these past years, books can be resorted to when the game has gone south.

Elliott Bay is also located - even more closely - to the stadium where pro football is played. Fortunately, there are about ten of those games a year. Whether it's alcohol-inflated bluster, a much more narrow demographic that attends, or what, that crowd is by and large not a book-shopping one.

Monday was, then, in Seattle and elsewhere, the opening of baseball season. From noon on there were people around, some you think you hadn't really seen since the previous season had wound down. Many were attired in Mariner gear. Some, you could tell, could see that it was chilly and packed/dressed accordingly so. Others, thinking baseball a promise of sun and summer, had their short-sleeve baseball jerseys, even shorts, on and mitts in hand. I suspect the concessions vendors selling fleece blankets did some business before the day was done.

There is a peculiar restiveness to Opening Day, an air of wanting to hurry up and be there (less lingering in the store this day than there will be as the season unfolds). Of course, upon getting there, one gets faced by baseball's uniqueness. However much an event it is, it's but one of the 162 games - the six months to come - the team will play. Win or lose the first game, there are still 161 to go. And then the game itself - the reminder that it is one of the few mass activities watched that isn't marked by time. People have their own clocks to tick by but the game itself does not. 4-0 in the 9th inning does not mean the team ahead will win. The basketball team ahead 96-82 in the last minute, the football team ahead 28-10, the soccer team ahead 4-0 in the last minute - they, you know, will prevail.

For myself, I almost dressed warmly enough. Yes, I go to these. The afternoon out-of-the-store meetings I have too few of. A 3:30 start is also nice as it means a fair amount of the day's work can be done (only so many emails likely to come in after that point ...).

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(I have no idea how the asterisks just typed in will run once this gets posted ... trial and error, trial and error...)

April 2, besides opening the baseball season, is also the first big deadline of fall requests for the New York publishers, at least those with formal  processes in place. Even as I'm heading out the door for Safeco Field, I see the note from the Penguin person who's to field these: will I get something from you? Yes, yes, but later. Let's see what Felix Hernandez is up to in April before we wonder at length about Junot Diaz in September.

The catalogues HAD been pored over ... the first full set for fall seen. At this point, aside from a print-out with some print-run, expected media, and projected tour city information, one is pretty much on one's own in plotting all of this. All the adult lists are there blended, to a degree, so that one sees the likely fiction highlights as being Garrison Keillor, Stewart O'Nan, Junot Diaz, Sylvia Sellers-Garcia (a newcomer, but Riverhead gets a benefit of the doubt), Marina Lewycka ... not a lot in that realm, good as all those may be. (There are others in the catalogues, but not listed for U.S. travels, such as William Trevor or Israeli novelist Michal Gorvin who don't seem to be coming over, but when it's buying time, will certainly merit attention.) The strengths, in quantity. seem to be in non-fiction. When things are written up, proposed, cases made, much is mentioned of off-site possibilities, and potential collaborations.

There are several among them I'm keen on, though it's early and nothing has been actually seen here yet. The title that most sets me off, waywardly no doubt, is the one by former advertising executive Michael Gates Gill, entitled How Starbucks Saved My Life. The premise: the author loses everything in life (marriage, job) and finds himself (in the larger way) by taking a job as a barista at a Manhattan Starbucks, learning from his twenty-something supervisor, learning service, etc. To my mind, this book has one 'market' or sales channel clearly marked, that being Starbucks itself. That COULD have represented opportunity to Elliott Bay, in that we are, besides being so close to major league baseball, the closest book retailer to the Big Beanhouse, Starbuck's corporate headquarters (a shout and holler south of us on 1st Avenue). They do seem to be back in the book business, though, so for both retail sales and in-house use (all those employees, no associates ...  partners is their term), they probably have their own means for getting these from Gotham.

Having this all happen within a Starbucks is no doubt smart in sales and marketing (what would the larger, synergetic market have been for having a book called How Shaman's Drum Saved My Life?). There'll be sales within Starbucks, at least, and probably some without. Will other enterprises respond in kind? Perhaps Sterling will suddenly produce How Barnes & Noble Saved My Life. Some savvy packager can come up with similar titles for Home Depot, McDonalds, Target, Wal-Mart (hey) - nothing like showing how good these mass-scale corporate enterprises, increasingly (and finally) being recognized for how much they ultimately drain out of communities, are for the people that work in them. We all could use a little (near or-) minimum wage time in our lives, can't we? One thing to wonder about: Mr. Gill is being shown as going on an eleven-city tour: will the time away come from accrued vacation time, or will he have to trade shifts at his barista counter to get the time off? (No, I know Starbucks is NOT like that ...)

Posted by Rick Simonson on April 3, 2007 | Comments (1)