On any given week, at least half the titles on the national bestseller lists are crime fiction—books rooted in the mystery and thriller categories. Mystery bookstores, says St. Martin's/Minotaur publisher Andrew Martin, “remain one of the most vital aspects of old school bookselling, especially as publishing becomes more and more reliant on mass merchandising to the broadest audience.” No one, Martin says, knows their customers—and the books they want—better than mystery booksellers. “It's about handselling the broadest possible range of books to a knowledgeable, often idiosyncratic audience.” We spoke with five different mystery booksellers about business, new titles and more.
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
For J.B. Dickey, owner of Seattle Mystery Bookshop, it's not so much a matter of who he anticipates selling in the run-up to Christmas—it's what.
“We always do a lot of business with signed books as gifts when people are looking for something special,” he reports. Dickey acquires signed books from publishers even when authors are not scheduled for store appearances. Among these to be available shortly are Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky (Putnam), L.A. Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker (Dutton) and Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson (Morrow). “It would help us quite a bit if more publishers would make more signed copies available to us,” he adds, “particularly when fewer and fewer authors are touring these days and when those who do bypass us for the big chain stores.” Still, frequent writer visits continue to bolster the store's promotional efforts. Recent signings have included those by Stella Cameron (A Cold Day in Hell, Mira), Eric Stone (Grave Imports, Bleak House) and Mark Coggins (Runoff, Bleak House).
Among the staff picks that Dickey anticipates selling well this season are a substantial biography, The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman (Pantheon) and an enormous, 1,100+-page paper original, The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age—The '20s, '30s, & '40s, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage).
Seattle Mystery Bookshop, which opened in 1990, also specializes in books by local authors, such as Mike Lawson, who Dickey thinks will soon be making a bigger name for himself following The Inside Ring (Doubleday, 2005) and The Second Perimeter (Doubleday, 2006).
The store does best with PI, police and amateur sleuth yarns. In general, medical thrillers tend not to rise high on a list of reader favorites, nor do historical or cat mysteries. “Two of the biggest trends we've seen are romance writers writing romantic suspense, people like Jayne Ann Krentz, Stella Cameron and Tami Hoag,” Dickey notes. “Also growing in interest are books that we call urban fantasies, novels mixing crime and mystery with horror.” He cites Laurell K. Hamilton, whose new hardcover from Ballantine is A Lick of Frost, the sixth entry in the Meredith Gentry series featuring a former PI from L.A. who is half-human and half-faerie. “Kat Richardson, who lives here, has written two for Roc about vampires and ghosts,” says Dickey. Greywalker and Poltergeist were Roc paper originals, but next August, Richardson's Underground will be upgraded to a Roc hardcover.
“Another thing that's good for the mystery world,” he says, “is the huge increase in smaller mystery publishers. As major houses continue to gut their lists, we can turn to places like Rue Morgue, Felony & Mayhem, Poisoned Pen and Bleak House.” In fact, one of the books on the store's October list of hardcover bestsellers was In the Shadow of the Glacier by Vicki Delany, published by Poisoned Pen. —Robert Dahlin
Mystery Bookstore
It's not always easy to pinpoint what kind of mysteries the customers prefer, says Linda Brown, assistant manager at L.A.'s Mystery Bookstore. Cozies take a backseat to edgy “neo-noir” and the retro pulp published by Hard Case Crime or Bleak House, she says, but everything is popular, including international thrillers, police procedurals and, lately, short story anthologies like Akashic's City Noir series.
Brown expresses enthusiasm for many new books, including three Minotaur titles—Killer Riff (Nov.), the latest in Sheryl J. Anderson's “fun chick lit series” featuring Molly Forester; Person of Interest (Nov.) by Theresa Schwegel, “a solid police procedural set in Chicago, with great characters and stories”; and Duane Swierczynski's Severance Package (Jan. 2008), “which has bite, a fast pace and wicked dark humor.” She's also high on TheCrazy School by Cornelia Read (Grand Central, Jan. 2008)—“she's going places, with her distinctive voice, understated characters and plotting.” And not to be overlooked is native son T. Jefferson Parker, “a forever favorite in SoCal and our store. L.A. Outlaws [Feb. 2008] is his newest, set in L.A. and not San Diego, so we're excited. There's lots of humanity behind his writing.”
Brown says the store staff is always on the lookout for exciting new talent. Megan Abbot (The Queenpin, S&S, June) is high on Brown's list (“dark and brutal but almost poetic”), along with Eric Stone (Grave Imports, Bleak House), “who writes compassionately about the seamy side of Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai” and Lisa Lutz (The Spellman Files, S&S, Mar.), whom Brown finds “hysterical.”
Given that staff enthusiasm can make a book a store favorite, what can publishers do to help the sell-through? “We really want them to tour more authors. We can do six events a week. Our customers love meeting the authors. Also, we would like more support for advertising costs for promoting those events. The publishers send us posters for some authors but if they could help us with co-op... it's very nominal, if they could increase that so we could cover our costs and get the word out. We would also like deeper discounts. Costco gets a much larger one, and we understand why, but the irony is we can buy books at Costco for 11 cents more than we can buy from a publisher. There's something wrong with that. We hand-sell the books and take care of the authors, and Costco doesn't. I understand, but it's not quite right.”
In addition to author readings and signings, Brown and crew have launched two series: “A Date Night with Crime” and a midday “Lunch Date with Crime,” during which customers can order sandwiches and listen to their favorite authors discuss their work. “We're always looking for ways to accommodate people's schedules, not just our customers but also the authors. People are way too busy. We're looking for ways to help them take a break and grab a book.” —Suzanne Mantell
The Poisoned Pen
Since its founding in 1989, Poisoned Pen, which started as a dedicated mystery bookstore, has broadened in scope to a more general stock with strengths in general fiction, history, travel, SF/fantasy and general nonfiction—“In short, we sell whatever we like,” says owner Barbara Peters.
But much of what Peters likes are authors on the crime beat. Forthcoming books of more than passing interest, she says, include two from Putnam—Sue Grafton's T Is for Trespass (“I'm impressed by the ordinariness of the people and the crimes Kinsey faces. And Grafton takes a risk by introducing her main villain as a narrative voice so we can get inside this psychopath's head”); Sara Paretsky's Bleeding Kansas (“digs into her Kansas roots and deals with issues of discrimination against blacks and Jews”); and from Forge, Douglas Preston's Blasphemy (“shows his intimate knowledge of Arizona geology/geography in a work of speculative fiction probing the religious right and raising some vibrant questions”). She adds to her list Leighton Gage's Blood of the Wicked (Soho Crime, Jan. 2008), a first novel set in Brazil in which landscape becomes a palpable character. “Style rules with me more than plot,” she says. “And I like to learn from as well as be entertained when I read, or be provoked into a new point of view.”
The tastes of the store's customers are varied, but in mystery, Peters says, there's a yearning for a return to more of the traditional mystery, and an increasing boredom with thrillers. “As I wrote to them in our Enews yesterday about Cussler's The Chase [Putnam, Nov.], 'I am so ready for old-fashioned storytelling like this. When everything is cosmic or global, you become blunted, as if you listened to a symphony with nothing but huge crashing chords, no piano or andante bits.' ”
One writer Peters is rooting for is Archer Mayor, whose recent move to St. Martin's, she hopes, “will give him a national push if everyone concerned gets active to make one.”
Peters notes that her store gets substantial publisher help in the form of reading copies, catalogues and input from sales reps. But she adds that, like other mystery shops, Poisoned Pen depends heavily on events—she had 300 in 2007. “To do a good job, we need to get event books in early and, ideally, hold signed stock for at least 60 days afterward to allow the full effect to bloom. The sales window for any title keeps shrinking; one reason, at our store anyway, is that to keep cash flow moving, we have to cut our holding time very short. If all our cash is tied up in event books, we also end up shorting the rest of the books on publishers' lists by buying thinly or on demand. My dream would be to get 90-day event billing for titles so that we could maximize an event's impact without losing our ability to serve the whole community of authors with their front- and backlist titles.” The bigger the event schedule and the more celebrity authors are included, the more the problem is compounded, she says.
With or without this dream, in-store events keep staff very busy. A partial author lineup for January includes Sara Paretsky, Douglas Preston, Peter Robinson, C.J. Box and Stephen J. Cannell—a good start on next year's 300? —Suzanne Mantell
Mystery One Bookshop
The charge? Inciting homicide and havoc. The crime scene? Milwaukee. The perpetrator? The usually mild-mannered 14-year-old Mystery One Bookshop.
The store's “Murder and Mayhem in Muskego,” held November 9—10, drew more than 200 mystery fans and some 22 authors—including superstars Laura Lippman, Robert Crais and Greg Rucka—to signings at the store and panel discussions at the suburban Muskego Public Library. “It was a marvelous event and the appreciation the fans showed was wonderful,” says owner Richard Katz. This was only the second year for this event, but it's proved so successful that Katz plans to make it an annual occasion.
While special events and signings are essential to the store's success, Katz makes “a hands-on relationship with our customers” the store's first priority. “They're looking for quality writing with great characterization and trust that we'll always recommend good stuff to read.” But Katz points out that hand-selling does have its limits. “You can't hand-sell a bad book no matter how much money the publisher has put behind it.”
Topping the store's current list of must-reads are Rucka's Patriot Acts (Aug.), which earned a starred PW review; Gregg Hurwitz's The Crime Writer (Viking, July), and Jeff Lindsay's third novel featuring Miami cop and serial killer, Dexter Morgan, Dexter in the Dark (Doubleday, Sept.). The success of these titles, says Katz, reflects the changes he's seen in customer buying habits over the past several years, with readers moving away from cozies in favor of the “deeper, slightly darker crime novel. We're losing the older generation of readers and the generation coming up today—the 20s through 40s—isn't interested in a soft mystery. When they read, it's the darker novels and the big thrillers from authors like Barry Eisler and Lee Child.”
When it comes to the future of the mystery novel, Katz believes readers will be looking for “modern crime noir with a great perspective,” and sees three up-and-coming novelists ready to meet that challenge. Michael Koryta, the 20-something Edgar finalist whose latest Lincoln Perry novel is A Welcome Grave (Minotaur, June); Charlie Huston, who was cited by PW as “one of the crime genre's rising stars” in its starred review for The Shotgun Rule (Ballantine, Aug.); and Duane Swierczynski, who Katz describes as “a Philly guy who's written three really dark 'Elmore Leonard on LSD' novels, The Wheelman [Minotaur, 2005], The Blonde [Minotaur, Oct.] and Secret Dead Men [PointBlank, 2005]. I'm particularly looking forward to his next book, Severance Package [Minotaur, May 2008].”
When asked how publishers might help maximize sell-through, Katz is adamant that they should “make better use of an independent store's Web site—particularly when it comes to the reviews we post. Some publishers will give us a list of books they want reviewed and those titles are the only ones that come with co-op dollars. While we never use that as a criteria for reviewing a book, the revenue that comes from co-op is important for the store. It would be nice to be able to review and praise the writers we really like and still get co-op money to support the Web site and increase the writer's sales.” —Lucinda Dyer
Partners & Crime Mystery Booksellers
At Partners & Crime, holiday sales are a major focus. In fact, though the Greenwich Village store, which has a 1,000-sq.-ft. selling floor, schedules author appearances during the year, the calendar is kept clear at the close of the year. “We don't normally schedule events then,” says store partner Maggie Griffin, “because we're so focused on holiday sales.”
Those sales enjoy a wide-ranging definition at the store. “When we're looking forward to selling holiday books, it's not only books that are brand-new in November or December, but also great books that came out during the year,” explains Griffin. So the store expects to do well with titles such as Lee Child's Bad Luck and Trouble (Delacorte) and Robert Crais's The Watchman (S&S), as well as Greg Rucka's Patriot Acts. The last title was published in the summer, but, says Griffin, “It will continue to sell well through the end of the year.”
Griffin has high hopes for some new books as well, like Chris Grabenstein's Hell for the Holidays (Carroll & Graf, Oct.), a sequel to last year's Slay Ride. Additionally, trade paperbacks “make great stocking stuffers,” Griffin says, pointing to both newly released paperbacks of quick-selling hardcovers like Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale (Washington Square Press) and paperback originals like Theo Gangi's Bang Bang (Kensington, Nov.) The latter, Griffin notes, is a “gritty crime novel” literary enough to boast a blurb from Madison Smartt Bell.
Griffin, who says she's “been working in bookstores since before [she] could legally work,” has noticed some changes afoot in the last couple of years, namely the increasing popularity of mysteries set outside the U.S. “I think it started with Henning Mankell,” she says. Upcoming foreign titles of interest include The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø, coming from Norway via HarperCollins in December, and C.J. Sansom's Winter in Madrid (Viking, Jan.). A couple of books set in Korea are of interest as well: Martin Limon's The Wandering Ghost (Soho Crime, Nov.) and James Church's Hidden Moon (Minotaur, Oct.), which follows on the heels of A Corpse in the Koryo (Minotaur), one of the store's “partners' picks” when published in 2006. Griffin describes these selections as titles “where we're saying, buy this now in mint condition because it will be worth money down the road.”
One of Griffin's favorite new writers is Matt Beynon Rees, whose work features a Palestinian protagonist. She describes this character as “a teacher, but sort of a detective.” Beynon Rees's second title from Soho Crime, A Grave in Gaza, is due in February.
Speaking of February, the early months of the year are no longer the mystery book graveyard they once were. Says Griffin, “We used to say everyone gets credit card bills from the holiday at the end of January, so February is dead, but now I think people are often disappointed that they didn't get as presents what they hoped to get, so they buy themselves books in January or February. There used to be no big books in January or February. Boy, is there a sine/cosine wave to that.” —Natalie Danford
