Welcome to our spring/summer series, The Advocates. We wanted to pay tribute to the bloggers, writers, book stores, fairs, conferences, organizations, teachers, and anyone/anything else who has helped us, or the crime fiction community, on our writing and publishing journey. The Advocates is the result.
Fact and Fiction Bookstore
By Gwen Florio
I fell in love with Fact and Fiction decades before it became my local bookstore, when I wandered into the downtown Missoula shop in the mid-1990s as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, working on a story about western writers.
“Go to Fact and Fiction,” someone said. “Barbara knows everyone.”
That would be Barbara Theroux, the store’s founder, now enjoying a richly deserved retirement. How influential is Barbara? James Lee Burke, winner of every crime fiction award on the planet, doesn’t do readings—except for his annual January book launch at Fact and Fiction, which this year saw readers fly in from California and Florida. He co-dedicated his 2018 novel, Robicheaux, to her.
Just inside the door of Fact and Fiction is a sort of Writers Wall of Fame, photos of many of the authors who’ve made the trip to Missoula, Montana, which is on no one’s idea of the beaten track. And yet: Craig Johnson of “Longmire” fame makes the eight-hour drive from his Wyoming ranch for readings there. People lined up at 7 a.m. for tickets to David Sedaris’ appearance. And when Lee Child came to town, the store arranged an event on the nearby University of Montana campus to accommodate fans.
The wall isn’t nearly big enough for the photos of everyone who’s read there. Fact and Fiction hosts anywhere from two to six readings a month, said present-day manager Mara Panich-Crouch, and the lovely thing about that schedule is that it makes room for newbies as well as the Big Names.
“It’s kind of a community service,” she said of the readings, “giving the literary community a place to gather and share.”
I gave my first reading of my first novel at Fact and Fiction, and it felt like the world’s best karma. And in fact, the filmmaker who optioned my second novel read it because he wandered into Fact and Fiction one day looking for a regional book and someone there suggested mine.
That kind of support from local bookstores—from simply stocking your book, to hosting readings, to recommending it to customers—can’t be overstated, especially when you’re just starting out.
If you’re lucky, you live somewhere near an indie bookstore, and already have a relationship with the people who run it. If not, get to know them yesterday, advises Panich-Crouch—especially “if you’ve never been in my store before and want me to carry your book. You don’t have to buy a lot—just come in here and there so I recognize your face.”
Other advice:
- “Understand and listen to what we say works and doesn’t work.” For instance, don’t call the week before you’d like to hold your event. “We need time to get publicity, and to guarantee people will be there.”
- But self-promotion is key. “Authors who promote their own events get so many more people than the ones who do nothing.” Work social media—but don’t overdo it by posting about nothing other than your book.
- Know your regional market. Is your book set in Seattle? Let stores there know when you hit them up for a reading. Same goes for subject matter. Montana readers like “environmental-style books, anything to do with bears.” (Come to think of it, I bought several books on bears in Montana bookshops over the years before finally moving here.)
- Finally, “always be willing to give the bookstore a copy of your book so they can review it. That’ll cost you money, but promotion is money.”
Her favorite thing about running a bookstore? “To get to talk to somebody and connect on a reading level, to talk about the books we love … and the community aspect of it all. The free advance readers are pretty nice, too.”
Her least-favorite probably has to do with the fact that Panich-Crouch also is a published poet, and so she understands the existential dread that creeps ever closer as a reading date approaches:
“The biggest emotional component for me is the fear that no one shows up, especially if an out-of-town author has a very small turnout or nobody at all.”
If that happens, her advice is to roll with it:
“Depending on the author and what kind of person they are, we’ll just say, ‘Hey, let’s close up the store and we’ll go have a drink and chat.’ Most people who’ve been touring for awhile have had their evenings where they can see the weather is bad, or look outside and see a lot of other events that evening.”
Here’s my own advice: Whether nobody shows up or you get a standing-room-only crowd, take your bookseller out for a drink, anyway. We’d be nowhere without our advocates. They deserve all the appreciation we can give them.
Gwen Florio is the author of the Lola Wicks mystery series, termed “gutsy” by the New York Times. Montana, the first book in the series, won the Pinckley Prize and a High Plains Book award for debut novel. Her standalone novel set in Afghanistan, SILENT HEARTS (Atria), came out in July of 2018. Florio lives in Montana.
To learn more about SILENT HEARTS click HERE:
Previously in “The Advocates:”
Elizabeth Heiter on Kristopher Zgorski (BOLO Books)
Art Taylor on Janet Rudolph and J. Kingston Pierce
