Am I really such a Bad Person?

[anghara]

I've been having an argument over on rasfc about the merits and the morality of wandering into your lcoal bookstore and, if you find your book shelved spine-out, turning it face-out for a potential buyer to see. As I pointed out somewhere in the thread, in my specific case it was my books shelved spine out next to a veritable avalanche of "

Comments

[wild_patience]

I don't see any problem with you doing that. I've done it myself to books which I thought were really good, and I'm not a writer. It's not as if you're hiding the books, as you said. I try to stay out of bookstores because I have this problem have already having bought too many books (without sufficient time to read them), but I think that books with the cover facing out have much more of an impact on the shopper than those where you can only see the spine.

[jimhines]

When mine comes out, I not only intend to run around facing it out, I'm gonna ask friends and family to do the same. Last time I was in B&N, I moved a Terry Pratchett book so I could face Toby Buckell's out in its place. It's very common.

And yes, there's a slight chance that, in doing so, I cost Terry Pratchett a sale. But you know, somehow I haven't lost sleep over that.

[ramblin_phyl]

I turn my books face out any time I can get away with it. My friends do it for me too.

We are not horrible people for trying to make a living. And I don't think we are taking sales away from MR. BIG NAME MAKING MEGAZILLIONS. People know those names and often check out the stacks just to see if there is a new book by them. If they chance upon us mid-list people in process then we are opening them to experiences and broadening their horizons.

[j_cheney]

I would say that, as long as you aren't physically harming anything, it's reasonable to do that. As a reader, like your first commenter, I've done it for authors I like. If the bookstore has a problem with it, they'll just rearrange it.

Also, you might chum up to one of the workers and see if they'll put you in the employee recommendation section...

[cicadabug]

I had turned a certain rasfc pedant's book face-out when I was in B&N a few weeks ago; last night I put it back the way it was.

I felt bad doing neither of those things.

Had there been a copy of Jin-Shei there, I would have turned it instead, but alas there was not. Now that I've finally gotten around to reading it, I feel more comfortable using passive-anonymous recommendation methods (-: