Terry Fallis - Best Laid Plans

All of sudden, The High Road seems more real. The good folks at McClelland & Stewart have been busy. Both Chapters/Indigo and Amazon now feature preliminary listings for The High Road. It’s also listed on the M&S site. As soon as cover design and cover copy are completed, These listings will be filled out with graphics and more information. We’re getting there…

TBLP doesn’t generate a ton of reader reviews on Chapters-Indigo or Amazon but it’s sure nice to get them, particularly if they’re positive. I don’t know about you, but I always scan the reader reviews before I buy a book. they’re often more meaningul to me than the Globe and Mail or New York Times book reviews.  I read as a reader, not as a reviewer.

Authors write to have their work read. So hearing nice things from actual readers is just so gratifying. I happened to check last night and the seventh TBLP reader review has just appeared on Amazon.ca.

“The Best Laid Plans has to be one of the best books this year. The author has an insiders knowledge of the Canadian political system. Without boring us with the day to day minutae he is able to give us a clear picture of what is wrong with the system and lets us form our own opinions on how it might be changed. Mr. Fallis has a delightful sense of humour and has no difficulty letting us in on the joke. How wonderful life would be if only we really did have a few politicians such as are described in this book. I shall be seeking more books by this author.”

Burtine Kendall, Alberta

Makes it all worthwhile.

I’ve always been a fan of the various lists that can be created and offered by and through most online book retailers like Indigo and Amazon.  With so many books out there from which to choose, I can use any help I can get in sifting through them all to find the ones I’ll like.  I always check out the reader reviews and tend to rely more on them than on the formal reviews by mainstream media.  I’m a reader and not a book critic so the reader reviews are often more relevant to me.  As well, I usually check out the various lists available developed by readers, publishers, and the in-house editors of the major online book retailers.

I had a look this morning and TBLP actually appears on six different lists on the Indigo website (click on the link and scroll down to just above the readers reviews).

I’m particularly pleased to be on that last list, Award-Winning Literature recently posted by Indigo’s Fiction Editor.

(To save some space, this graphic self-servingly skips entries two through six, but they’re all great books too. )

This is the online equivalent of having TBLP placed on the “Award Winners” table at your local Indigo store.  It may seem like a small thing, and perhaps it is, but anything that figuratively or physically pulls your book off the shelf and puts it in front of readers is good news.  It’s also wonderful to be in such close proximity to such amazing writers as Junot Dias and Lawrence Hill.

I just discovered that Indigo online tracks their top-selling products on a daily basis.  TBLP ranked as the 17th top-selling product today, at least until the ever-shifting list is updated.  It’s possible that someone made a large one-time online order and that has perhaps thrust TBLP onto the list temporarily.  (Our commercial realtor for instance has ordered about 75 TBLP to give to his clients as gifts.  Perhaps this is what has put TBLP on the list.)  At any rate, it’s nice to be on the list (any list!) and to be so close to publishing juggernaut Stephanie Meyer!  Who knows where TBLP will be tomorrow…

Okay, this is a little strange.  Someone pointed me towards this on the Indigo website.  I can’t imagine why anyone would pay this kind of money for the original edition of TBLP.  It’s very strange.  I think it’s probably just a computer program that correlates the number of copies of the book printed and the number available on the open market and arbirtrarily sets an asking price.  I would hardly consider a self-published novel released in September 2007 to be anywhere near “rare” status!  Just another interesting day in the world of book selling.  (But I’m going to hold onto my few remaining original iUniverse editions just in case!)

For writers, it’s not always easy to know how well your book is selling.  Yes, you’ll eventually get sales reports from the publisher and ultimately a royalty cheque or two.  But in the interim, beyond tracking how many copies are sitting on the shelves in the many Chapters/Indigo stores across the country (which you can actually do if you have plenty of time on your hands), it’s difficult to get a handle on sales.  When I was in Ottawa, another author told me about BookManager.  As far as I can tell, it’s a website that tracks independent bookstores‘ demand for books.  It also ranks books based on orders from the Independents.  At any rate, I’m given to understand that if you get the red designation “High Demand,” all is well.  There are at least a few hundred thousands books captured in this system so coming in at number 952 nearly three months after publication seems like good news to me.  Just for comparison, Giller winner Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce sits at number 6 while Alice Munro’s new book, Alice Munro’s Best: Selected Short Stories, published in late October comes in at number 691.  What does it all mean?  I have no idea but I’m feeling good about cracking the top 1,000.

I snuck away from the Ottawa International Festival of Writers to do a book signing at the Chapters Rideau store just a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill.  The riot police were there in force to contain the crowd that spilled out onto Wellington Street.  Yeah right… in my dreams.  As I expected, it was a quiet morning as I sat at the table the staff had set up at the front of the store.  Dozens of shoppers milled about and several even looked my way from time to time.  I had no real expectations and with so many heavyweight authors in town for the festival, I was very pleased to sell a half dozen or so books and chat with some very nice book lovers.  My friend and colleague, and fellow writer I might add, John Delacourt and his wonderful other half, Andrea, stopped by to create some commotion around the signing table.  They then also came to my reading and panel discussion at the festival later in the afternoon.

In light of how much I love spending time in bookstores, my Chapters signing session was time well spent.  Many thanks to Tim Francoeur and his team at Chapters Rideau.

It’s lonely at the signing table… (Thanks to John MacDonald for the photo work.)

I was browsing on Indigo today when I noticed an “Online Bestseller” banner across the top of TBLP. I have no idea exactly what it indicates, beyond I suppose that sales lately have been strong. I’m curious to know what it really means and have e-mailed Indigo in the hopes of finding out. In the interim, I’ve certainly no complaints about being tagged as an “online bestseller.” I guess the Leacock Medal honeymoon continues…

I had one of those moments this evening. It felt kind of what I imagine it must feel like for an independent recording artist to be innocently driving to work and then suddenly hearing their own song on the car radio. I took my younger son Ben to a movie and then afterwards, browsed through the massive two story Indigo bookstore next door to the theatre at Yonge and Eglinton here in Toronto. It’s one of my favourite bookstores and I’m in there often. As I usually do, I gravitated towards the “F” section in Fiction. I don’t head there because I expect to find TBLP on the shelves. In fact, the only bookstores that carry my novel are the ones I’ve approached and supplied with copies. But I can’t resist taking a look anyway, often just to see which F authors would be flanking TBLP if it ever made it to their shelves.

Well, when I got to the F’s, my song started up on the car radio. There were ten copies of TBLP (front cover facing out!) right there on the eye-level shelf.

It’s one thing to pop into a bookstore you’ve already supplied with copies of your book and see it there on the shelves. You expect to see it. It’s no real surprise when you do see it, although it is cool. It’s quite another to be browsing in Canada’s major book retailer and with no warning, literally stumble upon your own book sharing the shelves with real F authors. For a moment, I thought I was having a stroke.

I snagged a friendly Indigo employee and asked him to check when these copies arrived, because I certainly had nothing to do with them being in the store. (This is not the same Indigo store location that will be featuring TBLP in February for eight weeks as part of the Publisher’s Choice award.) He checked the system and informed me that they had arrived on January 19th, about a week ago. Who knew! I didn’t.

The Indigo staffer then asked me if I were the author. When I told him I was, he went straight to the F shelf, pulled down all ten copies and headed to the nearest flat surface. He had me autograph them all and then placed “signed by the author” stickers on each one before displaying eight copies of TBLP on the “New in Trade Paperback” table near the front of the Fiction section. He placed the other two copies back in the F’s, still front cover facing out.

My stroke symptoms abated but I confess I was still tingling when Ben and I paid for the two books I was buying (Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt’s acclaimed Shakespeare biography, and Jonathan Tropper’s new novel How to Talk to a Widower), and floated out of the store. Well, I was floating, Ben was just walking, holding my hand to keep me grounded…

I noted in an earlier post that the great Chapters store (part of the Indigo empire in Canada) just off Parliament Hill in Ottawa is stocking TBLP. Well, I was in the nation’s capital yesterday for a client meeting and slipped over to the store to confirm that my humble novel is in fact available. It was quite a thrill to find 15 copies of TBLP not just available but on display in a prominent space under the banner “The World Needs More Canada.” Very, very cool.