Author Ann Patchett's bookstore

an author who pursues his or her craft by the book still won't enjoy success unless enough people buy the book a lesson Lesley Stahl of 60 minutes tells us one respected writer has taken to heart these are the Padgett books and it's funny we we sell a lot of these and Patchett doesn't just write books like her latest bestseller Commonwealth she sells them at Parnassus books in Nashville her very own bookstore it's very unseemly somehow the sort of Catholic girl in me is like oh I shouldn't be selling my own books but look we are we're selling my own books as you might expect from a novelist there's a good story behind Parnassus books and it's one that's bigger than just one bookstore you have been called the patron saint of independent bookstores because what I am well what does that mean well it's not just pronounced books in Nashville I promote I really promote independent bookstores six years ago at a time when bookstores were closing all over America and met Karen Hayes who had just taken early retirement from a publishing company and decided to partner up Karen had the experience but not much money so you find it this yeah of our deal our deal was I'll pay for everything you do all the work and we'll have a 50-50 partnership and it's really work you look around this store this is all Karen Ann isn't just the moneybags though I know all the authors and I have all the connections and I'm the person who can get yo-yo ma in the store or you know get John Grisham to come or whatever when yo-yo ma came he brought his cello and played for 25 minutes ladies and gentlemen David grant one of the things Indies do to bring people into their stores is have famous authors come and read from their latest book the public became transfixed with the osage as well like David gran and his best seller killers of the flower moon readings and signings help the authors and the Indies sell books and they've really woven themselves into the communities and become these wonderful cultural centers for authors to reach readers and readers to reach authors the store has doubled in size since they opened in 2011 even though in the beginning very few thought they could make it just didn't want us they said Oh books stores are dead you'll go out of business and they wouldn't they wouldn't rent to us ha are they crying now yeah a lot of folks thought independent bookstores were dead in fact that's quite totally untrue Laurent I sure is the head of the American Booksellers Association he gave us a little history there was the rise of the super stores than the mass merchandisers list and then of course there was the internet I'm each year there's been some wave that was going to swallow us but we're still here we went from over 3,000 indie bookstores to only 1650 but there's been a healthy comeback there are now 2300 stores yet Amazon still controls about half of all book sales Amazon gives huge discounts it's so easy you really don't have to get off the couch you can't discover books online you know when you browse the shelves of a book store you're gonna find out about books you didn't know about I think that what's happening is that people are missing the community we're creating an environment that is for a lot more than just selling books the people who are going to come to my events gonna be again I'm hearing a dog barking and because there's always a dog barking carrot Parnassus somebody is always barking the so-called shop dogs of Parnassus are a big part of the stores homey appeal it's part of the the draw it is it is you're not gonna get a dog on Amazon the dogs are a lure for children whose books amount to a quarter of sales in all bookstores an was told you must always locate the kids books in the back of the store so I would think well that's because you want the parents to walk through the store and and shop no it's because parents get involved with whatever they're looking at and kids make a break for it and you want to have as much distance between the children's section and the front door because you don't want them running out the front door you want to have enough area that you can catch them and it's really you've got to create a place that people want to come to lots of stores have restaurants they have bars associated with them absolutely booze and books absolutely absolutely no mixing drinks with Dostoyevsky at Parnassus and celebrity is the draw as is the case with other authors have opened their own bookstores like Judy Blume Garrison Keillor and Jeff Kinney and I see where you work sure truth is and doesn't spend that much time at the book store so this is my office she spends most of her time at home writing here in her second floor office she's produced ten books so far about friendship family and human nature you have admitted that you can't write villains oh that's true I am terrible and they end up being sweet at the end oh I see their point of view I feel for them I'm really a total failure but at bad people what she's great at what is showing how everyday people can make the bed of a bad situation all your books have the basically fundamentally yes yes the theme is two groups of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society or a family much like bel canto her most famous book it's the story of South American terrorists who hold diplomats and an opera singer hostage it's been staged as an opera and will soon be a movie starring Julianne Moore somehow and Patchett managed to turn even a book about terrorists into a love story we wondered if there was any way she could create a bad guy so if you were to write a book about independent bookstores up against some gigantic force from out there maybe maybe something called Barnes and Noble or something called Amazon you could probably create a villain I couldn't even make Amazon a villain because I think about people in rural Kansas in tiny towns in Mississippi where they don't necessarily have not only they don't have an independent bookstore they don't have a Barnes & Noble so my main thing is I want people to read so there is a place for all of us I'm sorry no villain

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 41,265

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, On The Road, bookstore, moneywatch, author, novelist

Id: yC4e3ngcX50

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2017