Take Two Christopher Moores and Call Me in the Morning: the Art of Recommendation

I’m distressed by the number of people who have commented here that they’ve never (or rarely) received a book recommendation from their bookseller. Distressed, but not surprised. It’s hard to recommend titles and open up to a complete stranger about your reading choices because for every book snob bookseller out there, there’s a book snob customer. A well placed inflection in the phrase “I don’t read those books,” can strip your self-esteem in a nanosecond, especially when you don’t expect it.

Imagine, if you will, having one of those how-are-you/how’s-the-weather conversations with a customer (it’s going good, both of you are connecting, but no one is being pushy) and the topic of new releases comes up.

“Oh,” you (as the bookseller) say, “I just read [fill in author’s name here]’s new book, [fill in title here], and it’s great! Really engaging, compelling characters, yadda yadda yadda.”

You love this book. Have loved it ever since you thumb-wrestled a coworker for the ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) in the backroom after one too many Coca Cola Blaks, and you want everyone to love this book. But the customer?

Not so much with the loving.

In fact, it doesn’t matter what the yadda-yaddas stand for because before you’ve reached that point where the customer has stopped listening. If you’ve been making eye contact this is where they might look away or raise a brow or roll their eyes. There are people who prefer to purse their lips or smirk. There are even those who will physically take a step back leaving you to wonder if your deodorant suddenly gave out or you fluffed and hadn’t noticed. Suddenly where once there had been some pretty fluid customer/seller interaction going on there is a big, gaping nothingness because the customer has disengaged and you’ve been discounted as a reliable source to receive recommendations from.

If this happens the first couple of recommendations out then you’re burned for life. You start going with the sure bets, the people who’ve already picked up two or three books exactly like what you would recommend and just need another title to tip them over the edge to qualify for that sale. You only reveal your likes and dislikes after the customer has already made theirs known, so that you’re assured that this will be a meeting of like minds (only in this case it turns more into a fangirl/boyish agreement over “oh my gawd, didn’t you just love X” than any real recommending). You do not go out of your way to give your opinions to just anyone because you’ve been rejected and it hurts.

Can having a good recommendations experience reverse this? Maybe. There is nothing like having someone come back and telling you how much the loved the book you picked out for them, the one that they bought without even bothering to read the back because you were so enthusiastic. There is absolutely nothing better than hearing another person tell you about how much they loved something that you love, that their husband loved it (and their husband doesn’t read), or that their kids couldn’t put it down. Hell, there’s nothing like standing there in the aisle with a customer—after all the struggle it takes to condense and organize your thoughts on what makes this book a great read—and having them say, “You know, I’ll give this a try.”

I remember talking to a coworker once, after she’d made her first hand-sell, and she just glowed. “They listened to me,” she said over and over again. “They really listened.”

They understood how you can get so caught up in a story that you forget to eat or don’t realize you’re crying. They’ve been there where not even a power outage or a big test or a huge presentation can keep you from turning the next page. And they connected with you over your love for words and paper and binding and plot that you let all flow out in your recommendation.

One moment like that can make up for a day of dodging children, hauling heavy boxes and being ignored when you greet customers.

So next time you’re in a bookstore, any bookstore, and you’re looking for something new, ask the bookseller for a recommendation. Maybe they will be veterans in the field, and you’ll suddenly find yourself loaded down with books of every flavor as the words fly fast and furious. Maybe they’ll be new and unsure. They might stutter. They might look confused. You might be the first person to ever ask them. But hopefully they’ll come through, open a bit of their reading self up to you, and point out a title or two (bonus points if they actually put it in your hand).

And next time they’re shelving in their section and they see someone standing by the book they recommended to you (that maybe you bought, or maybe you just waited politely until they left to put back), maybe they’ll point it out to this new customer without waiting for their opinion to be solicited.

A great bookseller is created from great customers. Be one and someone might realize that there’s something cool about this book business after all.