Where's My Book?

Mom's Cancer is showing up in more places than I expected. Oh, I knew it'd be in bookstores, and indeed friends and readers have written to tell me they've seen it in Georgia, Texas, Minnesota, New York, and points elsewhere.

What I mean is that it seems to be showing up in a variety of locations within bookstores. I personally have found it on the "Graphic Novel" and "Biography" shelves. Others have seen it in "Health," "Disease," or "Memoir." In rare instances I appreciate enormously, a couple of independent bookstores have simply stacked it on the front counter.

On display just inside the front door of a bookstore in Santa
Monica, Calif. You'll have to take my word that Nurse Sis
is standing right beside the table but is cropped out because
she made me promise not to show the picture to anyone.

Where a bookstore decides to put your book can be very important. Good placement has made many a bestseller, while poor or thoughtless placement has buried many a deserving work. This can be a real problem for graphic novels, which more often than not end up on the same shelf as "Dilbert." There's nothing wrong with "Dilbert"; we just don't have that much in common.

Rob Wynne found Mom's Cancer in good company
at a Borders near Atlanta, Georgia and took this
photo with his camera-phone, which made my day.

That's frustrating. Comics are a medium, not a genre. Graphic novels can be biographies, mysteries, histories, romances, horror stories, science fiction stories, coming-of-age stories, or anything else prose books can be, but somehow--just because they all have drawings in them--they often end up on the same shelf.

I understand why that happens and, frankly, if you're a graphic novel fan and know what you're looking for, it makes them easy to locate. The readers who lose out are history buffs who'll never find Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, political or travel buffs who'll never find Guy Delisle's Pyongyang, or whoever my potential readers are who'll never find Mom's Cancer.

Which is why I'm happily surprised to see so much variety in my book's placement. It would be interesting to track which spots yield the best sales, but I don't suppose there's any way to do that. Pity; it sounds like a fun experiment.

Lynda found it at a Barnes & Noble shelved
with other cancer-themed books. She bought
the second one from the left. (Thank you!)