Today I spent about an hour in Border's up in Bangor. The place was full of people, almost more than before Christmas, which kind of surprised me in a good kind of way. It was encouraging to see whole families in the store, moms with teenage sons looking at house decorating magazines, daughters with new fantasy novels clutched in their hands, dads with several half-off priced calendars stacked in their arms. It was comforting to know that some of the population of central Maine reads, and that they were willing to spend hard earned money on books and magazines. It gives me hope as a writer that there are still markets out there that I can tap into with the stories, essays, articles I am currently writing.
I used to go into a big bookstore like Borders or Bookland (back when it still existed) and get thoroughly depressed at the sheer volume of books that have already been published. I lamented at ever being able to come up with a somewhat original idea that would catch the eye of an editor long enough to make it into print. How could the world continue to sustain all these people and their ideas, I wondered?
Then, recently, this thought came to mind. There are voracious readers out there in the world, people like my mom who can read through several books a week. Now, if you figure the good writers can crank out a novel a year or at most two, then my mom can use up the yearly output of several authors in just one week. With fifty-two weeks in a year, she can run through two hundred authors or more. Which is good news for writers, because with people like Mom, or the family in Border's, there will be a constant need for new work.
It's invigorating to go into a place like Border's now, and wander around for an hour, looking at all the titles-- I come home ready to work again, with new ideas for new books, ones that have been sparked by titles I saw or ones sparked by titles I didn't see.
And yes, I bought a couple of things in Border's today, too, so I'm off to have a good read about the ancient Mayans.
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