Bookseller Pens Her Adventures in The King's English

The King's English Bookshop is a fixture in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Betsy Burton is a local and national fixture as its proprietor. Her 27-year odyssey as a bookseller in the Mormon hub, and as a community activist, writer, and mother of a child with multiple disabilities, is chronicled in The King's English: Adventures of an Independent Bookseller, to be published in May by Gibbs Smith.

Burton, who serves on the American Booksellers Association Advisory Council (BAC) and was awarded Bookseller of the Year by the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association in 2001, also does weekly radio reviews on Utah's local public radio station, KUER and co-authors and co-edits the nationally-known publication, the Inkslinger. She spoke to BTW while working from her home in Salt Lake City.

The book is a lively history of a small but successful bookstore, complete with photographs, reading lists accompanying every chapter, insights into partnerships (both professional and personal), and candid portrayals of the sometimes calamitous experiences of hosting authors, running a store, and advocating freedom of expression in a state whose laws forbid any talk of sex by teachers in sex education classes.

Burton said that she has always wanted to be a writer. Although never published before, she had some works of fiction in her file cabinets. "I love writing nonfiction," she laughed, "because you don't have to make anything up."

Over the years, Burton said, she had entertained her good friend, children's author, and newspaper columnist Ann Edwards Cannon, with her tales of visiting authors gone wild, toxic partnerships, and love and theft among the stacks. Burton dedicated the book in part to Cannon, "who first suggested that The King's English Bookshop had stories to tell besides the ones on its shelves." She also included her past and present partners in the business, and "to independent bookstores all over the country, everyone with tales to tell."

In her self-deprecating style, Burton told BTW, "Any owner of an independent bookstore could write this book -- we all have had the same authors come, the same foul ups, the same hazards. But to our customers -- readers -- the way bookstores work is fascinating. Now, while independents are threatened, someone has to talk about competition from the chains and the special value of our stores to the communities. I want to convey that message and hope that people will try to save that community."

Burton is quick to credit all those who help booksellers. She devotes a section of the book to the work of the ABA and the Book Sense Program. She told BTW that "Book Sense has been instrumental in saving bookselling. Through it, we have regained a presence that we were losing. Chains come in with so much money -- people think [their claims of better prices, better selection] are the truth. With Book Sense, we have a much larger voice then we ever could have had individually, and there is a huge advantage to that joint voice."

In the book, she illustrates how the New York Times Bestseller List differs from the Book Sense Bestseller List -- how many books, considered NYT "bestsellers," have never actually been sold to readers -- she terms this process "duping" the public: "Book Sense is an anodyne to this duping process -- a list of books that are bestsellers because people in stores all across the country actually bought the books and took them home to read." Further she writes, "Book Sense also created the unique 'Book Sense Picks' -- a testament to just how much booksellers love to read and recommend new titles.... Collectively, we have great taste in books, and we put quality before the bottom line."

Since the advent of Book Sense Picks, Burton told BTW, "People now know that we were the ones who found the less known, non-commercial books that go on to become bestsellers. Chains can't take credit for them any more."

Burton mentioned her 'extra-curricular' work with the Salt Lake Vest Pocket Business Coalition, a group of locally-owned independent businesses, "I was one of its founding members. It's a tremendous amount of work but more than worth it. Having an independent business coalition in the community is probably the single best thing you can do for your bookstore."

In a city where merely offering coffee to bookstore customers is tantamount to erecting a "Stop" or at least a "Proceed with Caution" sign for members of the Mormon Church (whose religion prohibits the consumption of caffeine), Burton's rejection of religion could have been a major roadblock. It hasn't been. Burton and her staff work to make everyone feel welcome at The King's English, though they may eschew the coffee. Burton finds her spiritual connection through bookselling, "I don't have a religion, but when I hand a book that I love to someone, I'm giving them something of vital importance, something I know will now fit into someone else's life --it's like the Holy Grail or the most beautiful ritual in church. Also, we're the keepers of the back stock, wonderful books no longer on the shelves of the chain bookstores. We're entrusted with keeping these books alive in the world. That's part of bookselling." -- Nomi Schwartz