Laurie King, Robert Littell, Michael Connelly, Kinky Friedman, Sujata Massey, David Liss and John Billheimer have more in common than all having new mystery/thrillers out this spring. Over the course of four weeks in March and April, they all made the pilgrimage to M Is for Mystery, a 2,400-sq.-ft. bookstore 20 miles south of San Francisco in San Mateo, Calif.
According to owner/founder Ed Kaufman, more than 150 author events a year bring in customers and generate about half his yearly sales. Many of the events result in extra sales from people who can't come in person but place orders by phone or e-mail.
Despite attention focused on the war in Iraq and a local economy hit especially hard by the collapse of the dot-com boom, the store is doing better than ever. "Sales so far in 2003 are running about 20% higher than last year," said Kaufman, who launched the store seven years ago and has been managing it full-time since retiring from corporate law three years ago.
The loyal clientele of his store—both Bay Area buyers who show up in person and "virtual" customers from around the world—have made it a premiere venue for writers. Laurie King, the author of the Kate Martinelli mysteries, the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series and three other suspense novels, has done several events at M Is for Mystery and was at the store in late March to promote her new book, Keeping Watch. "Ed's events are remarkably well-organized and remarkably well-attended," she reported. "Ed gets a good mixture of real fans who know my work and new readers because he publicizes the events so well."
King also said that store appearances are a chance to meet booksellers, who can be passionate advocates for authors they admire. Kaufman's full-time staff of five, supplemented by eight part-timers, know their genre. "A lot of our customers want to ask someone, 'I've been reading Elmore Leonard for a long time, who else do you have that I would like?' " he said. "Our people can answer that question and answer it well."
Moreover, the staff can easily turn a recommendation into a sale, thanks to the store's extensive stock: M Is for Mystery carries about 4,000 new mysteries and thrillers, in hardcover and paper, a fairly extensive selection of used books, along with shelves devoted to British mystery imports, true-crime books and a substantial children's section. (About 20% of the store's sales come from children's books, which gave rise to the store's tagline, "from the cradle to the grave.") Once a collector, Ed caters to bibliophiles with a selection of about 2,000 vintage mystery and thriller firsts, many of them signed, using Abebooks.com to extend his store's reach. This kind of specialization helps M Is for Mystery thrive despite a Barnes & Noble superstore two and a half miles away.
At their appearances, Kaufman encourages writers to do something besides read from their work: "It's important to entertain the audience, to tell them who you are and why you write mysteries, what your next book is about," he said. "And some of these authors are real showmen. John Lescroart [The First Law, The Oath], for example, is a very talented guitarist, and every time he comes to our store, he gives a little concert."
Predictably, the crowds at the store vary, from 10 to 25 customers for a new or emerging author to as many as 100 or more for a big name. "We scheduled Elmore Leonard for the same day as the Super Bowl and still got 120 people in the store," Kaufman noted. Packing in those kind of numbers requires some space, and M Is for Murder's roll-away shelving in the center of the store allows Kaufman to host substantial crowds. The Independent Mystery Booksellers Association estimates there are about 75 mystery-focused stores in the U.S. and that M Is for Murder is one of the largest.
But generating crowds—and sales—also requires publicity, and Kaufman has embraced technology to get the word out cost-effectively: "We've built an e-mail list of about 3,000 names, and maintain a Web site [www.mformystery.com]."
The extensive schedule of author events is a key factor in increased sales, but Kaufman also points to an upswing of interest in—and literary respectability for—the mystery genre itself. "Mysteries have always been very popular, of course," he said, "but until fairly recently, there was a sense that genre fiction was somehow beneath literary fiction. That's less and less true because there are so many really good writers writing mysteries today." And that, he maintains, is attracting more readers and enabling him to book more authors at his store, including ones who can't be neatly categorized as genre writers. Michael Chabon, Martin Amis and Andre Dubus III, for example, have all read at M Is for Mystery. "If I really like an author, I'm going to have him come to the store," Kaufman said. "And I'm going to promote the hell out of him."
