Anyone who has read my book, Monkey Love—or spent more than say, five minutes in my company—knows that I’m addicted to Starbucks. Six years ago, when I quit my full-time book editing job to become a freelancer, I started haunting the local Starbucks to get away from the many distractions of home.Anyone who has read my book, Monkey Love—or spent more than say, five minutes in my company—knows that I’m addicted to Starbucks. Six years ago, when I quit my full-time book editing job to become a freelancer, I started haunting the local Starbucks to get away from the many distractions of home. At the time, I didn’t even like coffee.
Because I did nearly all my writing in Starbucks, I incorporated the store into my novel, even making one of the characters a barista. The following is one of my favorite exchanges:

TOM: You like Starbucks, right?
HOLLY: Are you kidding? I’m going to name my firstborn Mocha Frappuccino.

While I’d never seriously consider naming my baby after a beverage, I do share Holly’s intense infatuation. I’ve committed the location and closing times of at least 50 different stores in Southern California (and a few in Nevada) to memory. And I’m not ashamed to admit that the aforementioned baby added “Starbucks” to his vocabulary well before he could say his own name. (Okay, well, maybe a teensy bit ashamed.)
So no one was more excited than I to learn that Starbucks was going to start carrying books in its stores. BOOKS + STARBUCKS = HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY! It was especially heartening to learn that they planned to focus on new, undiscovered authors. Not that I harbored any hopes that they’d pick my book. (Just because I drop an embarrassingly large chunk of my income at their stores doesn’t mean I expect anything in return aside from a steady stream of Iced Grande Non-Fat No Whip Mochas and an atmosphere conducive to writing). I just loved the idea of Starbucks putting their marketing muscle behind lesser-known voices—voices that don’t already dominate the front-of-store displays at every single bookstore in America.
Then came the announcement that Starbucks’ first book will be Mitch Albom’s forthcoming release, For One More Day. Mitch Albom, the author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
Mitch Albom, undiscovered? By whom? The Yanomamo tribe of the Amazonian rain forest? Even the Yanomamo have been infiltrated by modern culture, and I’m sure Albom’s books have found their way into more than one communal huts, probably left by a passing missionary or anthropologist.
I’m sure it makes great business sense to launch a book program with a surefire bestseller, but if any chain could afford to take a gamble on an unknown, it’s Starbucks. And they chose the safe route, guaranteeing even more exposure for one of the most overexposed authors in recent memory. And leaving scads of unknown authors in the shade.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 12:17 am and is filed under Addictions, Books and Authors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.