Two or three times in my life I have been wandering the bookstore when I just randomly came across some child, holding one of my books, and begging his mother to buy it; and the mother telling the child no, either because she wasn’t in the mood to buy something for him right now, or because to her eye my book looked like a piece of trash.
I have all three times watched the entire exchange, which was always less than a minute long, and all three times I felt the overpowering urge to interfere by identifying myself, which I always rejected as counter-productive and likely easy to perceive as threatening. On all three occasions I refrained, and walked away feeling bad.
This is of course countered by those occasions at school and bookstore signings where some wide-eyed, awestruck child comes up to me with a copy of GUSTAV (or before that, SPIDER-MAN), that she clearly regards as a life treasure. I have seen that a whole bunch of times, and it is wonderful. Such occasions lift my spirits and energize my muse, when they happen. The only difference is that they are canned events, where my work is clearly at the center of the day. In candid everyday life, I have only personally witnessed, “Mom, will you get me this?” and “No, I’m not getting you that,” the reply twice uttered with a certain degree of revulsion. It was always a gentle kick in the teeth and I was always faced with the awareness that my part in the transaction is already over.
It’s a sobering realization.
Comment By: Michael Rapoport
August 4th, 2015 at 9:18 am
Leaving you and your justifiable authorial pride out of the equation for a moment: If one of my kids comes up to me begging me to get them a particular book, I’m probably going to buy it for them, unless there’s something specific I find objectionable about it. Because if they want it that much, that means they’re that much likelier to actually READ it, and to like reading it. And as any parent can tell you, anything that makes a kid enjoy reading is worth its weight in gold.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 4th, 2015 at 9:18 am
Yeah, but kids are hard-wired to ask for the next thing, even if they just now got something. For one of those women, there are any number of reasons why she might have said no, in favor of keeping her money in her pocket. Two *specifically* said, no, that doesn’t look good for you, and I grimaced and let it pass.
Comment By: Jackie Eliason
August 4th, 2015 at 9:19 am
We have always told our son that if there is a book he is interested in, no matter what the subject matter, we will get it. Read. Read. Read.
Comment By: David Vineyard
August 4th, 2015 at 9:19 am
One of the few good thongs about writing is we generally don’t deal with negative feedback in person.
Ouch.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 4th, 2015 at 9:20 am
I am trying desperately to conjure an image for “One of the few good thongs about writing.”
Comment By: Michael A. Burstein
August 4th, 2015 at 10:17 am
Another thing to keep in mind is that you don’t know the family’s financial situation. Although one hopes that if they can’t afford the book for the kid at the moment, they will go to the library.
Comment By: Greg Cox
August 4th, 2015 at 10:17 am
Not one of my books, but I once watched with fascination as two fans talked themselves out of buying a book I had written the cover copy for–based entirely on the book’s length.
“Hey, this sounds cool.”
“Kinda short, isn’t it?”
:”I don’t know. It sounds interesting and I really like [AUTHOR}.”
“Yeah, but it’s really short . . ..”
After a couple of rounds of this, they walked away, leaving the book on the shelf.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
August 4th, 2015 at 2:18 pm
At this point, thanks in no small part to the incoming flood of ARCs and new publications, plus my increasing willingness to patronize the library, I have such a huge stack of unread books — not just the ones that came of late, but a couple of shelves of those I never got to review that I merely want to read someday — that these days, I only *BUY* a new book if I am absolutely assured that it’s the next one I’m going to read.
Comment By: James Cole
August 4th, 2015 at 3:19 pm
Sorry Adam.
Comment By: Ken Schneyer
August 4th, 2015 at 6:17 pm
Aww, 🙁