The first thing I did after I checked into my hotel room in Los Angeles last week was drive to Dutton’s Brentwood Books to do shome shopping. I’d also arranged to meet Kristen Buckley, a screenwriter (How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days) who’s just published her first memoir, Tramps Like Us—one of the first offerings from the new American outpost of British publisher Cyan. (Although she did pretty well with her debut novel, The Parker Grey Show, at one of the big houses, Buckley chose Cyan in part because of a longstanding friendship with editorial director Stephanie Stall that goes back to her own early adventures as a publishing apparatchik.) The original subtitle, as you might’ve guessed from the Springsteen reference, was “A New Jersey Tale,” but after visiting the London Book Fair, Buckley said she’d learned a valuable lesson in universalizing the book’s appeal for non-American markets—especially in the UK, where the book will be pitched to YA audiences—and is switching its description to “A Suburban Confession.”
Hanging out at Dutton’s, and the conversational revelation that my wife is also from Jersey, reminded Buckley of her many childhood visits to Womrath’s, and she talked about how she wanted to bring her own children out shopping more often. “They need to have a relationship with a bookstore,” she mused. “It shouldn’t just be pushing a button on a computer.” (For more about Buckley, check out her recent Gothamist interview.)