Recently we’ve given you a peek into a bookstore’s buying process with a look at our sales calls. Then, Josh Christie wrote about finding the right book for the right person.

Continuing in this vein, I’m reprinting a fantastic column that ran in The Quill, the newsletter of The Inkwell Bookstore in Falmouth, MA. I think this perfectly sums up the amazing resource that is the staff of your local bookstore. Check the staff recommends section; talk to the booksellers. You’ll walk away with a great book.

Notes from the Basement: Staff Picks by Kathleen Thut

“What’s good?” and “Any recommendations?” These are two of our favorite questions as bookstore owners and readers! Not mysteries, not the most recent self-help book, not even books that have been on TV outsell our staff picks table. And we are proud of it! To make it to the holy grail of bookselling tables each title has to successfully make it through each of the following arduous steps:

1. Arrive at our store…1,000,000+ books are printed each year, and booksellers comb through hundreds of publisher catalogs to carefully choose the best titles to order for their shelves;

2. Be seen and picked up by one of us. Not an easy task given the competition and the fact that not all covers beg to be noticed;

3. Interest one of us enough, either by jacket description or blurb on back, to make it into our tote bags;

4. Make it off the huge stack of unread books on our nightstands and bookshelves into our actual hands;

5. Hold our attention past the first 20 pages;

6. Hold our attention enough to the end;

7. Be better than any other book making it past the above 6 steps in the last 6 months;

8. Inspire us to write an intriguing and accurate review for our customers.

Thus, as Inkwell customers you can be sure that each title on our front table has been enjoyed, read and vetted by a most discriminating panel of judges. Thank you for trusting us, we promise to keep reading.

That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

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A “programming” note of sorts… I leave tomorrow for New York, where I will attend New York Comic Con. While there, I hope to post a few photo blog entries, like I did last fall while at the NEIBA trade show. I also plan to be live-tweeting on Twitter. So if you’re not following me on Twitter, now would be a good time to start! Of course, all of this is dependent on the phone signal I can get at the Javits Center. I don’t think I’ll be paying $30 for their reportedly spotty WiFi!
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