Matching Books to Readers: A view from the command center of “Paperback To The Future”

By Liberty Hardy

Frequently, I’d say at least twice a month, I will stumble into RiverRun Bookstore for my shift, drape myself dramatically across the counter, and say to my co-worker and bestie, Gwen, “Holy cats – you have got to read __________. It’s sooooooooo good!”

To which she always says: “No, I don’t. I don’t have to do anything.” (Smart cookie, my Gwen. She also says other wise things, like “Don’t worry about things that are beyond your control,” and “Stop picking that.”)

Not that her response stops me from doing it again a week or two later, when I read another amazing book that I think she absolutely needs to experience for herself. “OKAY, BUT SERIOUSLY,” I always reply. I need her to understand how good it is!

Paperback to the Future, my personalized book subscription service in affiliation with RiverRun Bookstore, is my way of sharing those “OKAY, BUT SERIOUSLY” books with the world. (Okay, with the United States, but only because shipping is so damn expensive.)

Here’s how the program works: People can sign up for one, six or twelve months ($22, $120, or $200, respectively).  When a person subscribes, I ask them a series of questions to get an idea of their taste in books. Then, using their answers, I choose a book I think they would love. Most likely one from a small press, to lessen the chances that they’ve already read it. Then I send it to them. Yes – actual mail. What’s better than getting actual mail? Getting a surprise book in the actual mail! I started Paperback to the Future in April of 2012, and I now have about two hundred subscribers. That’s a lot of books to pick out!

I started the program for selfish reasons: I love to talk about books. Which is good, because I work in a bookstore and work for a book site, so it’s more helpful than if I loved to talk about, say, tractors. I never get tired of talking about books. That’s why the internet has been such a wonderful invention for book lovers. Because reading is such a slow medium. You can go outside and throw a rock and probably hit someone who watched the latest episode of “Game of Thrones,” but could you find someone who read “Zazen?” Probably not. But you can find hundreds, if not thousands, of people online to talk to about “Zazen!

The other reason is because I love to recommend books to people. Not just books I love, but books I think they will love. Books that will resonate with them. Just because I loved “The Idiot’s Guide to Teaching Neurosurgery to Your Pet Raccoon,” it doesn’t mean everyone will. I want to give each person their own “OKAY, BUT SERIOUSLY.”

Here’s how the recommendation engine works (and by ‘recommendation engine’ I mean ‘my brain’): Say I ask someone what their three favorite books are, and they respond with “Salvage the Bones” by Jesmyn Ward, “The Light Between Oceans” by M. L. Stedman, and “The Language of Flowers” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh. (Fact: Hardly anyone ever responds with just three. Also, thank you to Nichole Bernier for the hypothetical titles.) First, I look for common denominators. Both “Salvage the Bones” and “The Language of Flowers” have young protagonists. And all three of these books were written by women. Sometimes I also notice what isn’t there, like the fact that none of these books are non-fiction, and none of them are thrillers.

Based on these facts, I search my mental book bank for a title. My choice would be the excellent “Getting Mother’s Body” by Suzan-Lori Parks, about a pregnant, unwed young girl in the 1960s, who is searching for jewels that were supposedly buried with her mother. It’s a fantastic book. If you haven’t read it, go, get it, read it right now. I’ll wait here.

A big help with running Paperback to the Future, and to my book-related jobs in general, is that I read 200 – 300 books a year. My friends call me the Velocireader, because I read so much. I read all different types of books, which is beneficial when it comes to making recommendations. It’s good to know what you’re serving. If a subscriber notes that they don’t like violence, I don’t want to send them a thriller I haven’t read, and have it turn out that everyone in the book gets chopped into pieces with a spork and fed to a dog. I want to be sure I’m sending them a cozy. (A cozy is a mystery with very little violence or sex.) I want people to be happy.

That’s the whole spirit of the program: to have people read books they love, so they’re happy. Because reading something that you love is an amazing feeling. Recently, a woman actually took the time to send me an email that said, “I just wanted to let you know that I will not be signing up for your service because my tastes are very eclectic and you probably couldn’t pick something I’d like.” And I wrote back, “You are absolutely correct.” Because this isn’t a game of Stump the Bookseller! I want to get books to people that they will love and share and fall on the floor and say “Holy cats – you have to read this.”

The program has had great success! The best part of Paperback to the Future is not just the emails I get from subscribers saying how much they love the book I sent, but how many of those people also mention that it was a book they would never have thought to pick up on their own. I’m like the Sorting Hat of booksellers – I match people up with the perfect fit. And I love it.

Liberty Hardy is The Demon Bookseller of Fleet Street at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, N. H. 

She is also a contributing editor for Book Riot, and the curator of Write Place, Write Time. 

She lives with her cats Millay and Steinbeck, and can’t hardly wait for the new Donna Tartt book to be released.