Recession Tactics by Christine Duncan

This recession has been dragging on a l-o-n-g time. But then I'm not one of those folks that put the beginning of it at Dec 2008. If you ask me, and many of the folks that I know, the recession had its roots in the ground a whole lot longer ago than that.

I don't know about you, but I've given up a lot of things during this recession. My family no longer goes out to eat very often, although it used to be a Friday night tradition. We have given up some luxury items that used to be considered fairly standard. My husband and I no longer take wine with dinner for granted, for instance. We use Redbox instead of Blockbuster and we search Craigslist and garage sales for used items before we think of buying new.

And yet, there are some luxuries we have figured out how to keep in the budget. Chocolate is a necessity. And books and reading for instance are not negotiable. Like many, we get more books from the library and although we have a harder time finding a nearby used bookstore than we used to, we also are part of a trend of folks buying used books when we can.

I know, I know. Authors should support their own industry. We of all folks should be out there buying new books, encouraging new writers. None of us get any money off of Amazon's used books or when someone checks our stuff out of the library. I know the arguments.

But you know--if you want to request that the library buys a book--the author would get some money from that. And for me, right now, that's gotta do.

Christine Duncan is the author of the Kaye Berreano mystery series. Book two, Safe House is available now.

Buying books?

I had a discussion with my daughter at Christmas time. One of her friends was very, very into the Twilight series but was not buying the latest book until after payday. My daughter, a single, twenty-something, with a good job, was worried about her friend. Could she really be this poor? I worried that I hadn't presented the basics of the economy and budgets, but my daughter actually works in the accounting department of a rather large company. She must be going to hear about this stuff soon.
On the other hand, maybe not. There seems to be a disconnect with so many people about this recession. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that retail sales in April declined for the second month in a row. The Dow took a tumble on the news. Frankly, Wall Street may have been surprised by the figures, but I wasn't. I knew I hadn't been shopping in April, nor were a lot of my acquaintance. We were hiding out at home, trying to figure out how to pay our taxes.
Be that as it may, sales at bookstores rose last month even if only by .3%. I'm pretty sure that resale of books--at garage sales, Craig's list and e-bay is probably pretty good too. Too bad the stock market doesn't take note of those outlets.
I hear Star Trek did pretty well last weekend at the box office too. So although other news reports are blaring about vacations canceled and a travel industry in trouble, we all need to have someplace to escape to.
So here's the question: Are you buying books? Waiting for payday? Going to the library?
And while you're at it--what makes you buy a book? Reviews? Ads in your favorite magazine? Tell all!

Christine Duncan is the author of the Kaye Berreano mystery series.