Solo

Episode 87 – You, Your Book, And Bookstores

Mark Leslie

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In this solo episode, Mark offers a perspective on bookstores, booksellers, and bookselling, and shares ideas on how authors can best get their books into bookstores.

Prior to the topic, Mark shares a personal update about the move back upstairs to his renovated office, discusses a comment on a previous episode, reminds listeners about the contest to win a print copy of Patrick O’Donnell’s book COPS AND WRITERS, and also thanks Patrons and talks about the patron perks.

Mark then shares a word from this episodes sponsor…

When discussing bookstores, Mark covers these topics:

  • The importance of relationships and community
  • Understanding the business side of print bookselling, including the margins
  • How returns work and how that effects a bookseller’s willingness to stock books
  • Doing book launches and signings for different bookstores at different times of the day and seasons
  • How Mark got chain bookstores to order his self-published book (and how that partially backfired)
Book launch for ONE HAND SCREAMING (self-published) Chapters Sudbury – 2004
  • How bookstores order books VS how consignment works
  • The rules, and why bookstores might sometimes make exceptions to those rules in particular situations
  • The origin of the Stark Publishing brand
  • Why Mark tied an onion to his belt back in the day
  • 7 things to consider when working with bookstores and trying to get your books into bookstores
  • And more….
A lunch time book signing at a Barnes & Noble in downtown Pittsburgh (2006)

Links of Interest:

Published by Mark Leslie

Writer, editor and bookseller who haunts Southern Ontario. Craft beer enthusiast. Author of thrillers and horror novels such as A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK, EVASION and I, DEATH. Also writes a series of stand-alone non-fiction titles exploring ghosts and the paranormal which include HAUNTED HAMILTON, SPOOKY SUDBURY, CREEPY CAPITAL, TOMES OF TERROR, HAUNTED HOSPITALS, and MACABRE MONTREAL. Editor of the anthologies CAMPUS CHILLS, TESSERACTS SIXTEEN, FICTION RIVER: EDITOR'S CHOICE and FICTION RIVER: FEEL THE FEAR.

3 thoughts on “Episode 87 – You, Your Book, And Bookstores”

  1. Love your podcast!

    FYI, this was the last episode showing in my iCatcher podcast feed, so I thought you’d taken August off. But when there still weren’t any episodes in the feed for September, I decided to look up the podcast online. Turns out that your podcast feed URL had changed. I manually updated it in the app and now I have the August podcasts to look forward to. Yay!

    Reply

    1. Hi Vanessa. Thanks for the kind words and for letting me know.

      Something odd happened with the feed at the beginning of August when Apple changed some of the categories. I thought I had fixed everything but it obviously didn’t filter everywhere. I heard, also, that the feed in player.fm stopped and that my listeners there had to re-subscribe to the adjusted version of the feed. Apologies for the hassle, but thanks so much for sticking out the bumps in the ride….. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Pingback: Episode 207 – Library and Bookstore Strategies – Stark Reflections

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