Blogger: Michelle Ule
Location: Home, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Whenever I travel, I make a point of stopping at the airport bookstores and examining their displays. Since airplanes seem to be one of the few places left where you can sit in tranquility (or in cramped misery) and quietly read, the books offered suggest what likely buyers would want to purchase. It makes for a good marketing expedition.
The Bucharest airport is an unlikely spot for much shopping–they don’t take their own Lei currency there, only Euros–but I did push through the paperback rack, curious about what would attract the literate Romanian. While I couldn’t read the titles, I could check out the authors, and the names didn’t surprise: John Steinbeck, Jodi Piccoult, Ken Follett and Rosamund Pilcher. It appears escape literature is just as popular behind the former Iron Curtain as here. Chick lit paperbacks also abounded.
I didn’t buy anything.
But the Venice airport bookstore, the one on the second floor, held a vast array of interesting books in both English and Italian. (I purchased a Richard Scarry Italian-language version of The Word Book for my adorable grandson). One whole section suggested English-readers frequent the place.
But what really caught my eye was a ten-foot-long display of books written about Venice–and most were in English. Some I had read, like Donna Jo Napoli’s Daughter of Venice, and some looked intriguing like Laurel Corona’s The Four Seasons, a novel about Vivaldi’s Venice. But what a splendid idea–providing this traveler with a way to prolong the visit with a good read on that wretched 12-hour flight home!
Some locations are better suited for prolonging the experience–I purchased Phil Doran’s The Reluctant Tuscan for my trip home and read Sarah Durant’s The Birth of Venus while in Florence. My husband and I shared a Kindle version of Dracula while I was in Transylvania, and I was happy when he Skyped me to put the book away, “too terrifying.” It was.
Paris, London, New York, New Orleans–some places are so imbued with mood that a novel only needs their names in the title to invoke a positive response. Our own Stephanie Grace Whitson accomplished the same thing with A Garden in Paris and A Hilltop in Tuscany.
What books are strongly linked in your mind with a location? How can a writer capitalize on a romantic spot to aid their own writing and selling of their work? And where in the world needs another novel?
I find many small rural towns appreciate books about the local attractions. Niche museums and local proprietors may offer these to enhance the tourists experience and give the “flavor” of the area. On a recent visit to a grist mill I saw a books about southern slang words,and area ghost stories. There were books about the history of the area or significant people and events in the town. There is a market for these. Many were self-pubbed and provided an excellent view of the history. pride, and humor of the destination.
I think you’re right, Melinda. I just finished reading Heather Lende’s If you Lived Here, I Would Know Your Name about life in Haines, Alaska–which is one of the towns visited by the Alaskan Ferry System. The book is now in its seventh printing, undoubtedly picked up by tourists who loved the area.
We get e-mails all the time from people asking what sells; you might look around your neighborhood and plant some stories in your natural element–using features that draw tourists to your town.
Of course, I live in wine country . . .
Place is so important to me that I keep track of the setting of books I read on my Shelfari list. If the setting could be anywhere, or worse, details show that the author doesn’t know the place intimately, forget it!
In my own writing, I strive to bring the setting alive with just the right details. It was the toothbrushes in the thatch in The Wooden Ox that made a missionary comment, “This author knows.” My hope for Glastonbury Tor, set in 16th century Somerset, England, was that it wouldn’t be obviously written by an American. I was thrilled when a British reader wrote, “I used to work as a docent in a 16th century house. How did you know?”
I’m in the middle of Innocents Abroad and while it’s not about one particular place, it is a compilation of Twain’s travel stories as he cruised transatlantic to Europe in the 1860s–on a side wheeler! He visited many of the places I’ve been and it’s interesting to read his description of them and the people he meets. Places have changed some. People not so much.