My dream one day would be to run my own indie
book store. With a coffee shop, bakery, small cinema, live stage, concert series, comedy troupe, and regular book events. Not so unreasonable, right? I’ve had the good fortune to visit one indie store in Columbus this past fall as a guest author. That was Cover to Cover Books in Clintonville. Saturday, Feb 18, I made another trip to the independent book seller. This one was the new Keystone Books and Gifts in Circleville, Ohio. This store is mostly used books, local crafts, pottery painting, some jewelry, and, now, a growing presence of Ohio writers. Though the visitation was small that day, it encourages me that small bookstores are trying to attract local writers. How else will they and we get our names out? I met a ghost writer, a romance writer, a children’s short story writer, just to name a few. Each represented a pocket of Ohio and all of us rely on events like this one at Keystone Books to make ourselves known in new communities.
I look forward to events like these where authors can join together to meet new readers and to share ideas on circulating our work. An independent author spends almost twice the time locating readers as she does writing books, so there is no understating the amount of time required for that portion of the writers’ job. If your favorite bookstore has an author series and is looking to recruit new authors, I hope you’ll drop me a line!
Mariella Mehr — Poet, Memoirist, Acivisit, Survivor Not many Roma divulge their experience of the Holocaust. Unlike the many Jewish organizations which provide documentary evidence, . . .