Book buff

I think we can all agree that Tucson, Ariz., brings to mind one image first and foremost, and that image is one of buff old women.

Where would we be without these ripped ladies of Tucson? I’ll tell you: we would be still unloading boxes at the Tucson Festival of Books, and we would be doing so on principle at this point, because the festival was five weeks ago.

My little sister and I rolled into town with the tailpipe dragging on my soul. Also on my Kia Soul, because books are heavy, and we brought a lot of ’em. But 

my soul-soul had the weight of earning back my vendor fee, and also of questioning every choice that led me to becoming – and remaining – a book publisher.

This is my day job, book publishing. It is also, let’s be real, my night job. And my weekend job. I had the genius idea several years ago to jump into an industry widely perceived to be contracting if not outright decomposing, and to carve a niche as a Southwestern publisher. The Southwest region is many things; among them is not “populous.” Not with people, in any case, and thus not with readers of books.

At least not readers with long remainders on their life expectancy. I hear a lot that kids don’t read anymore, as if it’s their fault and not an entire systemic problem.

So, to recap: I scraped into Tucson with a bunch of unsold books to set up at a vendor tent at the University of Arizona, where the students can’t read anyway, hoping to sell them all (the books, not the students) to my target demographic who tend to retire in Phoenix, not Tucson, but it doesn’t matter because in a decade my industry, my audience and heck, probably my planet, will be dead anyway.

In this chipper state, tailpipe grinding, my sister and I drove to the U of A mall to load in. Not many people were around, just a couple security guards and someone directing traffic, which was only us at this early hour when the sky was light but the sun was not yet up. Every other book-slinger, by the look of it, had loaded in the day before.

We eased along the mall, the long grassy quad that wasn’t a mile but let’s say it was. Past tents, and tents, and more tents, labeled with the names of presses whose books I read, whose publishers I follow. And there, at the far end, there it was:

My tent.

I’m man enough, and humanities major enough, to acknowledge that I cried.

I cried because, after years of copy editing and being audited by the state, this press – my press – had made it. I cried because we belonged here, me and my authors and my little sister in her press-branded T-shirt. I cried because our tent was not adjacent to the roadway, and we had to schlep all these boxes with all these books from here to there.

But remember: this is Tucson.

We hadn’t even emerged from the Soul, my sister and I, when a pack of orange-shirted volunteers swarmed us. These women could have schooled the Last of Us zombies on technique. Not a one of them could have been under 80. They insisted on loading us in.

“I am not making you carry my books!” I said, looking around to see if anyone but my sister was around to judge. (My sister would not balk at making the elderly carry books.)

One of the women looked me dead in the eye. She flexed her biceps at me. Yes, at me. I didn’t know biceps could be so directional.

“We got this,” she said.

The Festival of Books didn’t get any better than this moment – of belonging among my peers, of Making It, of being outgunned by the mutual aid society. But it wasn’t downhill from there, either. Not at all. In fact, we sold a lot of T-shirts. The books, at this point, are loss leaders for my booming T-shirt business. 

We also had some meaningful encounters with people without purchasing power. Like this one 8-foot-tall college student who lingered by the poetry table. He asked me, with a welcome lack of awareness of my ability to talk at length about things I care about, “So, what do you like about poetry?”

He went on to say he was “just living life today,” had heard about this book festival thing, thought he’d check it out. “I’m not really a reader,” he said. “I just have Steinbeck by my bed, and I read it before going to sleep, because what else am I going to do?”

He regretted not bringing his wallet because he’d just gone to the gym and didn’t understand what he was about to walk through. I sent him home with something anyway. But it was the free bookmark that really lit him up.

The kids are going to be alright. 

Frankly, so are the old people. Lifting books – maybe even reading some of them – looks like it’ll keep my demographic around for decades yet. Doing an annual Tucson Festival of Books workout might keep me capable and spry, too. That’s why, at the end, I loaded out all the unsold books my own damn self.

My soul was lifted, my biceps jacked. And my sister, cooked.

– Zach Hively