Navigating the multiverse of the market

A book buyer's advice to authors, part one

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of speaking to the 2025 cohort of fiction writers at Poets & Writers’ annual publicity incubator. Mentored by the brilliant Jennifer Huang, each of the authors was under contract for their first book.

What, you might ask, does an eccentric independent bookseller have to say that might benefit writers working today? Are local, brick-and-mortar perspectives still relevant for publishing in this climate and economy, or are they vestigial and outdated?

Below you will find an in-depth response to the first in a series of questions posed by Jennifer et al. Whether you are pursuing the publication of your own book or interested in the industry more broadly, I hope this gives you context. And courage. — Joe

M. K. Ciurlionis, Sonata I (Sonata of the Sun). Allegro, 1907 (source)

As someone who doesn't know much about the process of book buying, can you give us a behind the scenes look at the process? How do you find out about books? How do you determine what books to buy?

You know how Alice has to drink the “Drink Me” potion in order to fit through the little door and get into the beautiful garden? My response will involve a similar physics. We will start out big—systemic, technical—and become small—idiosyncratic, personal. Then we will (hopefully) be in a new place together.

The acquisition methodology of most independent bookstores today constitutes a blend of stable, industry-wide resources that is largely homogenized by expansive digital catalog systems (they refer to themselves as “solutions”).¹ The caliber of an independent bookstore is often—but not exclusively—a reflection of its ability to navigate the software and salesmanship of publishing conglomerates and distributors who have shaped these actively growing catalogs over time.

So, working as a buyer is contingent to a great degree on navigating technological inflection points in the market for new and used literature. The processes inside of these hulking digital catalogs are impressively broad and efficient—we buyers see pretty much every conceivable data point related to book objects, as well correspondences (trends, relationships) between them, and we see these things quickly. Then we make decisions.

Or do we?

Digital systems create their own logics. Without some degree of interference—without attenuating their efficiency and speed—their logics become recursive to the point of stasis: they distribute “choices” in reliable patterns, and a buyer simply abides. But obedience is anathema to literature, because any void of agency fills with oppression. Whereas a good bookseller is always in the business of liberation.

To put it in less philosophically urgent terms: While data and navigability are integral to purchasing decisions, they are not sufficient for a purchasing strategy. For bookstores that sell new books, a purchasing strategy is tantamount to the business model; it touches everything: ethos, budget, mission, vision, etc. A strategy is shaped by experience—not purchasing experience, but (what else?) reading experience: a reading life.

I should qualify reading, here. Reading is more than the accumulation of significant details—it is being shaped by these details. Reading is a linear perceptual act with nonlinear attentional consequences. Every word is the birth of a star.² There may be no greater mirror of existence as we perceive it than alphabetic language. (Though admittedly cinema’s sequencing of images has been making a strong case for the past century.)

Strategy, then, is about recognizing the nonlinear implications and applications of particular books. The buyer, curator, and collector are disciplines born of the recognition that feeds an acquisitive and distributive practice.

At this point you may suspect that I’m shadowboxing with theory to distract from the fact that I can’t actually justify my process. And it’s true—there is a certain calculus to book buying that cannot be explained; I do the math but cannot show my work. That being said, and allowing for the context above, my determinations tend to hinge on two questions:

1. Do I find such and such a book—its form, author, topic, cover, context, etc.—unimpeachably meaningful? I say meaningful and not interesting because meaning radiates energy that defies self-inflected reasoning, whereas interest tends to reflect the limits of personal experience. And:

2. Will somebody, in the context of this place in time, also find said book meaningful while the bookshop is still around?

I find out about books in every way possible. I read lots of criticism, and I order much of what is mentioned in essays that ring with relevance. I take blurbs seriously—I’m looking for evidence of nexus and genuine appreciation, not nepotism and back-patting. I read the acknowledgments in your book and buy the titles of your mentors and students.

I order books designed by particular artists and firms. (I think minimalism and maximalism are separated by the width of a metaphysical hair.) I read titles like I read poems—for what they are not saying, for how they sound, for their humor, for their grief. I read descriptions the way I read novels—for the life they are inviting us to live.

I don’t care how expensive your book is as long as it reflects an understanding of its own value and the value of those who carry it. I care about prizes and awards an order of magnitude less than I care about what my neighbor read as a child.

I can tell a confident book from an arrogant book, an artful book from a manipulative book. I can tell when the marketing is more considered than the message, when the press is more important than the person. I can tell when a book is a wall and when it is a door. I want to be welcomed, not coerced. I don’t want to know who I will be on the other side.

1. The accessibility of print-on-demand technology is simultaneously destabilizing and reinforcing this homogeneity. Something to explore another time.

2. from Latin considerare "to look at closely, observe," probably literally "to observe the stars," from assimilated form of com "with, together" + sidus (genitive sideris) "heavenly body, star, constellation"