Grisham asked friend and best-selling novelist Jodi Picoult to accompany him for his event at Northshire Bookstore. The two writers signed books and then engaged in a discussion of their craft, how they came to it and how they sustain success.
An overflow crowd attended the afternoon event, which store owners said could have filled a much larger venue but for Grisham’s tour provision that each stop take place inside a bookstore to emphasize in-person bookselling and reading.
“Over the years, when I would see an article in a magazine or newspaper about a great bookstore, a great indie, I would have a little twinge of guilt — you know, I should go there,” Grisham said. “An author should tour. We should go to the great bookstores in America, and say thanks and meet fans and sign books. … And I would have those thoughts, and they would soon go away and I would get lazy again. I finally said that this time I’m going to do it.”
A recording for a podcast also is being made of the tour, he said, and it will be available later in June.
In addition to inviting another writer to join him at each event on the tour, Grisham said he will hold a conversation with each store owner about their business — in this case, Chris Morrow, whose parents, Ed and Barbara Morrow, founded the store in 1976 in a nearby building.
“I want to talk to the booksellers about the stores, because we want to showcase the stores,” Grisham said.
“This is a gorgeous store, it’s a beautiful store, it’s a real bookstore,” Grisham told Morrow, adding that the people he talked to Thursday afternoon “love this store. And they adore your family and this bookstore you all built here and are very, very devoted to it. And I see why.”
Morrow said that when he was growing up his parents had a residence in the first Northshire Bookstore building. In 1985, he said, the current Main Street building — a former restaurant — was purchased, and it has since been expanded twice, now encompassing more than 10,000 square feet of space plus a café. The family-owned business now includes a second bookstore in Saratoga Springs, New York, opened four years ago.
For a town the size of Manchester, Grisham said, “to have a store this big is truly remarkable.”
Events involving authors have always been part of the business, Morrow said, and two or three per week are common, depending on the season.
“It isn’t easy, but we’re chugging along,” he said when asked by Grisham about the pressure from internet book sales and a general decline in retail business nationwide.
The book industry “dealt with that a decade ago,” Morrow said, referring to the recent rash of closures for large retail outlets around the country. With people now looking for a less homogenized experience when they shop in stores, independent bookstores are better positioned than when Amazon.com, e-books and bookstore mega-chains seemed poised to force them all out of business, he said.
“You know, we will always have print books, because we all love them,” Grisham said. “And we are always going to have bookstores, because a lot of people enjoy the experience of going to a bookstore. My kids grew up going to bookstores.”
Morrow said children’s books also have been a big part of the store’s business from the beginning, noting that the discussion with the authors was held in the kids section.
Grisham’s new novel, “Camino Island,” in fact has a principal character who is a bookseller, and who is something of a playboy, “who really likes women and they like him,” he said. The plot also involves stolen rare books.
The store “is kind of patterned around my favorite bookstore,” Grisham said.
He and Picoult concluded the event with a discussion of writing and their careers and experiences, then answered questions from the audience.
“It was an absolute delight to have John Grisham in conversation with Jodi Picoult,” Morrow said afterward. “They played off each other brilliantly. It was one of the best events we’ve ever had here.”
He added, “The fact that Mr. Grisham is visiting almost only independent bookstores and is making the event partly a conversation about bookselling highlights a growing realization among authors that for the book business to be healthy they need to help promote indies and what we do well. There are a lot of people who want physical books and want to live in a world beyond algorithms and base transactionalism. For us, it is a cultural battle as much as a business one.”
Picoult is the best-selling author of 23 novels, including “My Sister’s Keeper” and “Sing You Home.” She is also the author, with her daughter Samantha van Leer, of two young adult novels.
Her most recent novel is “Small Great Things,” expected to be made into a film starring Viola Davis and Julia Roberts. Five other novels have been adapted for film.
Picoult said she’s now researching and working on a novel about reproductive rights for women.
Grisham is the author of more than 30 novels, one work of nonfiction, a collection of stories and six novels for young readers. Nine novels have been made into films.
