Who Here Remembers Waldenbooks?

Or, how I got my start in the book biz

I was a high school bookseller.

I don’t mean to date myself right out of the gate, but I’m here in Substack so writers and authors can get to know me as a developmental editor and book coach. When I stop to think about when the journey to becoming an editor began, it all starts at Waldenbooks.

Well, to be fair, of course it all starts with loving stories and loving to read as a kid. For those of us in the book biz—whether you’re an author, bookseller, agent, editor, or publisher—that’s usually at the heart of it. We love stories. And we love a good book we can hold in our hands (well, if you’re my age . . . for the younger set an e-reader does suffice). But for me it was also watching my mom devour Stephen King novels and my dad reading American Scholar in the evenings before bed. The Berenstain Bears’ B Book and Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree are among some of my earliest memories.

But let’s fast forward to Waldenbooks. The year was 1994 and it was one of my first jobs as a high school student. I relished shelving books, curating my recommended titles, tidying end-cap displays, and taking advantage of the employee discount. I still have my copy of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species that I bought during my time there because, well, who doesn’t need a copy of that? And I always start the clock at 1994 when I count for my resume how many years I’ve been in customer service.

Ah, customer service. It might sometimes feel like a dying art. But what I prided myself most on while at Waldenbooks, was walking the customer directly to the shelf where their desired title was. Picking up a copy and placing it in their hands. And then recommending a few additional titles they might be interested in; or, if I got the sense they didn’t want to be bothered with an up-sell, I just gave them the space they needed to explore and discover on their own.

I think the takeaway for me was to meet them where they were at. Everyone got a friendly smile, but I liked to suss out what they personally needed before going hard for the sale.

But I digress. Other things I enjoyed about working as a bookseller was hiding out among the stacks to discover new stories for myself or being in the back during a lunch break to find a copy of the latest Harry Potter to catch up on. The Sorcerer’s Stone came out in 1997 and by then I was in college and at a slightly larger Waldenbooks location in my college town, sneaking snippets of the latest bestselling craze one half-hour lunch break at a time.

<Insert nostalgic sigh>

So why am I sharing all this? To start, I’d like to get to know fellow story-lovers and have you get to know me. As a developmental editor and book coach now, almost thirty years after being a bookseller at Waldenbooks, I thought this would be the best way to tell my story. Along the way, I hope we find some things in common and I hope that you can learn to trust that I might be a good resource if you’re telling your own stories and would like any help along the way.

My plan is to start by posting short articles once a week, explore the Substacks for like-minded storytelling folks, and help point authors to resources and tools to use when they’ve run into obstacles in their own writing. So . . . say hi in the comments! Tell me if you remember Waldenbooks or if that was before your time. If not a bookstore in the mall, where do you get most of your reading materials these days?

Photo by Arnold Antoo on Unsplash

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