Comments on: CASTRATION CELEBRATION by Jake Wizner

By: castration celebration. « Hi Miss Julie!

castration celebration. « Hi Miss Julie! — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:49:39 +0000

[...] This guy likes it as a reader, is troubled as a bookseller, which is a valid point to make. It would be ideal to have that older YA distinction in bookstores more-so than libraries, I think. [...]

By: KFS

KFS — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:12:47 +0000

Wow. I don’t know what to say. I’ve been out of the children’s literature world for a good 6 years now, just barely keeping my toe in the water by rubbing elbows with friends in the industry…
But I used to work for an indie bookstore in No. Jersey (which is no longer in existence). We had a very strong children’s section and a number of employees who had a passion for kids’ books.
This one would have made one of our saleslady’s heads explode! (Okay, let me explain that VERY grammatically incorrect sentence: one saleslady, who only had one head to begin with, it would have exploded!)
Aside from the title, which might indeed put off a few parents, I can tell you without a shred of embarrassment, that even though I am as anti-book-banning as you can get, this one just wouldn’t have sold to one single customer in our store.
Not because the owner wouldn’t have bought it (our claim to fame was that we could sell anything to someone!), but because none of us would have sold it! We would have avoided selling it. We would probably have said to the parent, “If you want to read it, please show me some ID, but we’re not selling it to you for your tween-aged daughter!”
This is a hard age – too grown up for kids’ books, too young for adult content.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:15:27 +0000

You’ve asked a lot of great questions. I don’t know who we could handsell this to. We discussed this book a lot among our staff, and it was a classic case of ‘who is this book actually for?’ I think for us it came down to the question of shelf space: do I put a novel in our tightly packed YA section that I might be able to sell to one or two customers (maybe), or a book with slightly broader appeal? I’ll be interested to hear if others are having luck selling it.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:03:33 +0000

Oh yes you do! I’ll stick it in the box with Speak and the sequel to Airhead, you know, if I ever mail that box.

By: michele

michele — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:41:30 +0000

I can’t help you sell it. . . but I sure as hell want to read it!