Sometime I wonder if kindness still exists...

[reviews_and_ramblings]

I own an independent bookstore. It's little, it's beautiful and it's mine. Really from the bookstore I gain very little, my profit is from the connected restaurant-caffetteria, still I struggle to mantain my bookstore. I'm specialized in minor publishers and new authors. When I host an author I post the event on my site, I send for two weeks the newsletter (1000 email address!), I print posters to hang on my bookstore and I send the news to the local newspapers. And I ask nothing to the author or to the publisher: other bookstore ask money to host authors, specially new authors, but I want to give the opportunity to people and writers to meet by person. Most of the time the event has a medium average success, sometime a big success and sometime is a total flop. One week ago I hosted a new author, not very famous, but he has the lucky that his novel was published by a medium important italian publisher. But the event was a disaster: three people, and the author was very pissed. But what could I do? drag the people inside the bookstore? Other times when it happened authors were sorry but they didn't accuse me. Today I discover on the author's website that he has written that I'm an amateur bookseller, that other authors must not trust me, he says "fuck me" (I don't know is this is the exact translation, in italian is a very bad bad expression). I'm angry but I'm also sad: I don't understand why people are so brute and so negative.

Comments

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

everytime I organize an event I love to make it. Send the newsletter, hang up the poster, and every every time when the time is near and I see people enter the bookstore and sit on the chair in front of the authors my smile is like a cat who eat the mouse. And I'm always sad when nobody arrives. One time an author has had only one person, but he is a very gentle old man and so, to excuse myself, I offer to him and to that only people a good glass of wine and the two has spent on hour chatting on a table of my coffeshop.