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Maybe I'll call my book "How Greed Hurt Wall Street." No, it won't be about the fat cats and CEOs. Those books are being written. It will be about the American people.
It may not sell well, because people don't like to hear that they may be partly to blame for the some of the current crisis. I thought about this after doing a story yesterday about how certain books about the economy are flying off the shelves.
Sam Weller's and King's English bookstores told me that "Bad Money," by Kevin Phillips, "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets" by George Soros and "Hot, Flat and Crowded" by Thomas Friedman are selling like hotcakes. "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism" by Andrew Bacevich and "The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy" by David M. Smick have a lot of interest. "Snowball" about Warren Buffet is also selling very well.
By the way an apology to Kat at Sam Weller's. In our phone conversation she said "Snowball" sales were great, and I blurted out, "Oh yeah! My husband just bought that at Costco." Silence from Kat. It's probably better not to mention a huge chain when talking to a local bookseller. A wonderful local bookseller by the way.
Anyway the Barnes and Noble people wouldn't tell me how sales are going for finance/economy books. They said it's against corporate policy. But the locally-owned bookstores told me that the bottom seems to have dropped out of the sales of books about day trading, flipping houses, making it rich through real estate, etc. Basic investing how-tos are doing OK. Sales of current affairs books are slowing, they say probably more because people are not spending as much money these days.
By the way in another recent story I did Andrew Shaw at the Salt Lake City Library told me their ciruclation is way up from last year at this time. People are checking out books and DVDs instead of buying them. What's better than free?
