Southern Bookseller

By Lindsey P. Brackett

There’s nothing quite like a small southern bookseller.

Often these cozy shops are tucked away in unexpected places. Like any good bookstore, you’ll find teetering stacks of trade-in paperbacks and the bookstore cat lounging atop the most recent display of bestsellers.

I’m convinced these creatures are waiting for the crawdads to sing so they can pounce.

As an author with a small publisher, I’ve learned the best way to get my book onto a shelf in a real bookstore is to simply ask, in person if possible. Homemade treats make the request even sweeter. These owners usually aren’t in the business for the money (are any of us?) and when an author comes to visit, they’re happy to hear all about your story.

Less the one you’ve written and more the one you’re living I’ve also found.

The local shop owner at Edisto Beach wants to know why I write about this barrier island where there are no high-rise hotels or putt-putt courses. These reasons and my family history are precisely why I write about Edisto. She tells her regular customers, the ones she knows never miss a Sunday in their pew, they’ll probably like my books because I go to church, too.  

She didn’t learn that from reading my books but from the conversation we had one late Friday afternoon as a book signing wound down and customers dwindled.

In my current hometown, our local bookstore is perfectly categorized by the sign out front. “Inside, books. Outside, bears (maybe). Why risk it?”

I’ve lived here for three years but haven’t yet made it over to this store. For some reason, I had more fear about walking into the Mt. Yonah Book Exchange then I did Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC. When I finally popped in the other week—after giving up that I would ever find the right time in which I would be dressed in something other than workout clothes—the owner laughed when I introduced myself. She knew how I was, told me people ask about my books all time. She’d have ordered them long ago if she knew where she could get them.

And I was left to wonder how many sales I’ve now lost because I didn’t place enough value on the might of this small bookseller.

My books are on her shelf now, and I’m inclined to believe they’ll be seen by more customers trickling through her bookstore than the ones clicking by on the Internet.

After all, in the bookstore, the only distraction is more books—and the cat who wants to know what you’ll be reading next.

Tips for working with booksellers:

·         Bring swag: bookmarks, postcards, sell sheets with information on your book including ISBN and where to order.

·         Make a purchase.

·         Offer an ARC or influencer copy.

·         Don’t forget the treats!

·         Use your southern charm. We all know you sell more books with honey.

Find my newest novel on the shelf at these southern booksellers: Mt. Yonah Book Exchange (Cleveland, GA), Books with A’Peal (Cornelia, GA), Fiction Addiction (Greenville, SC), and the Edisto Island Bookstore (Edisto Island, SC).

I’m always up for a bookstore visit! Email me: lindsbrac@gmail.com.

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Lindsey P. Brackett writes southern fiction infused with her rural Georgia upbringing and Lowcountry roots. Her debut novel, Still Waters, inspired by family summers at Edisto Beach, released in 2017. Called “a brilliant debut” with “exquisite writing,” Still Waters was named an INSPY finalist and the 2018 Selah Book of the Year. Her second novel, The Bridge Between, released July 31, 2019. Download Magnolia Mistletoe with newsletter signup at lindseypbrackett.com or on Instagram and Facebook: @lindseypbrackett.

How to Be Creatively Successful

By Lindsey Brackett

Success is an impossible word to define. Like political boundaries, its rhetoric keeps shifting with the times.

Success is doing what you love.

Success is making a lot of money.

Success is stewarding the money you do have.

Success is raising a family.

Success is a long career.

But I’ve come to learn, as I embrace my publishing journey, it doesn’t matter how I—or the world—defines success. What matters is how I define it for me.

I believe there’s really only one thing I need to be a successful creative. It’s not hoards of social media followers. It’s not an eye for graphic design. It’s not even a bank account padded by royalty checks. It’s not Amazon sales reviews or Goodreads shelvings or bookstore space.

It’s motivation.

The thing I need to be successful comes from me. I am motivated by what matters most to me.

Once you have motivation, you can establish focus. Start simply by asking yourself, “What about publishing matters to me? Sales? Connections? Storytelling?”

While these things are all interrelated, often with strong connections leading to strong sales, you cannot tackle everything at once. Your focus cannot be growing your social media platform while writing the next great American novel. Honestly, how often do you think Anthony Doerr updates his Facebook page? (Answer: Not often because he posted in September that he was busy writing another book.)

Focus will help you narrow your choices in this ever-changing industry. Once you’re focused, you can create a manageable, attainable goal. Remember, in publishing, we control next to nothing. (There’s a life lesson in that, and even indies will tell you, you can’t control sales.) But you do get to control the goals you set for yourself.

Right now, my goal is simple. I’m writing a new book and I want it finished and ready to pitch at a conference next spring. The end. That’s it. If I pick up some social media followers along the way, that’s great. But I can’t put my energy into crafting posts across platforms 1-3 times a day because all my creativity is laser focused on a new story.

For me, creative success is all about accepting the things I cannot change—and being motivated to change the things I can. I can’t make people like me. But I can make myself learn to write better, deeper, and stronger.

Tell me about your creative success in the comments!

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Lindsey P. Brackett writes southern fiction infused with her rural Georgia upbringing and Lowcountry roots. Her debut novel, Still Waters, inspired by family summers at Edisto Beach, released in 2017. Called “a brilliant debut” with “exquisite writing,” Still Waters received 4-stars from Romantic Times and was named 2018 Selah Book of the Year. Connect with Lindsey and get her free newsletter at lindseypbrackett.com or on Instagram and Facebook: @lindseypbrackett.

What a Writer Can Learn from Friday Night Lights

By Lindsey Brackett 

I’ll be the first to admit I know little about football. But the drama of Friday nights down South? Those stories are worth the ticket price.  After all, Friday Night Lights owed its television success to being a football show that wasn’t about football. Every time I watch Coach Taylor mold boys into men, I add a new play to my writer’s handbook.

1.     Raise the stakes. This show wasn’t just about high school football, but Texas high school football. Not only the best team in Texas, the Panthers are considered the best in the nation. Their stands are full of scouts. As if that’s not enough, it’s Coach Taylor's first year as head coach. Talk about pressure. When you’re at the top, you only have one place to go, right? So the high stakes story becomes all about how the characters handle the fall.

2.     Introduce the players. Whether script or a novel, whenever multiple characters pull equal weight in a story, you’ve got to introduce them quickly—and succinctly. FNL handles this wonderfully in the series premier by having the boys interviewed for a media outlet. With a few sentences, we learn which player is cocky, which one is terrified, and which one is full of grace.

3.     Make them honorable, vulnerable, and human. Once your cast is on the page, make them relatable. Every story needs a hero who demonstrates humility, but we also need those characters who exist in our real life. Unfortunately, real life isn’t edited, and when you deal with hard issues, you make your characters resonate more with your audience.

4.     Say less, show more. Movies and television shows don’t have it any easier with “show don’t tell.” It could be all too easy for them to get caught in the dialogue trap.  But on FNL, when the worst thing happens during the season opening game, the writers didn’t opt for actors recounting the situation. Instead, they gave us images—like the players linking hands when Matt gets called on to captain—and they gave us silence. When a football stadium gets quiet, you know it’s bad. Then those boys drop to their knees and lift their voices to plead for the wellbeing of their teammate, and I never fail to cry. It’s easy to have a character say—or think—how they feel. But readers react when the character faces an uncomfortable situation and proves who he’s going to be.

5.    

Offer a uniting goal. Everyone in Dillon, Texas believes football is the ticket. To a way out. For community pride. For a better life or situation for their family.  But all these very different people have one common goal—the success of their beloved football team. That unites them, and it could even destroy them.  But this one goal creates the tension a story needs to drive the reader to the next page, the next scene, the next book.

Your turn—is there a show that challenges you to raise the stakes and write better?

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Award-winning writer, Lindsey P. Brackett just writes life — blogs, columns, articles, and stories — in the midst of motherhood. As Web Content Editor for Splickety Publishing Group, she publishes pieces of flash fiction and writer wisdom for those who love a good story and have limited time. Her debut novel, Still Waters, a Lowcountry story about the power of family and forgiveness, releases in September. Connect with her at lindseypbrackett.com, on Facebook at Lindsey P. Brackett, on Twitter and Instagram, or email blog@splickety.com.