Wawok Creative Blog: Author opens one-book shop to sell his own work

Andrew Kessler sets up 'monobookist' outlet in New York to promote his study of Nasa's Mars probe, Martian Summer

New author? Don't want to compete with the bestselling might of Stephenie Meyer or Stieg Larsson? Then why not try Andrew Kessler's approach, and set up a bookshop that stocks only one title: your own.

Kessler, who calls his project "monobookism", opened his shop on Hudson Street in New York last month. It contains 3,000 copies of his book Martian Summer, displayed in "new and noteworthy" sections, under "new in non-fiction", under "science" ? and with a sign for the wary, "We have one book but we're NOT scientologists", sitting outside.

An "armchair astronaut's" account of the 2008 Nasa mission to Mars, Martian Summer was published by Pegasus in April. It sees Kessler, a writer and creative director at an advertising agency, charting the day-to-day dramas of the Phoenix mission that explored the planet's north pole, after he won "the nerd lottery" to spend three months in mission control with 130 scientists.

Kessler said he decided to set the shop up because, given publishing's current difficulties and his own position as "a new, non-famous, scandal-free author", he was "a little worried about how anyone would ever see my book".

"I felt I was just going to send it out in the world, close my eyes and hope for the best (with my two inches of shelf space at the local bookshop). I couldn't do that. I promised Nasa that I was going to tell the world a new kind of space story ? for better or worse," he said. "One day after a meatball dinner at a store on the Lower East Side that only sells meatballs, The Meatball Shop. I stumbled outside, looked up and saw a church. And then I realised I could try to sell my book like a meatball. Monobookism was born."

He called in favours, dipped into his savings account and pulled the project together "on a shoestring budget". "You have to take some risk if you're going to dream big," he said. "I do have a solid appreciation for all the commenters who've written me off as a 'stupid hipster trust-fund kid'. But in the end it was the generous support of friends and fans of Martian Summer that really made it happen."

With the shop's run set to come to an end on 16 May, Kessler is gearing up to take an inventory of how many copies he's sold. Reactions to the store, he says, have been varied. "Some people come in and hug whomever happens to be working in the store because they love it. And some people demand to know ? aggressively ? how we could be so foolish. That makes for a pretty unique work environment."

Alison Flood

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