Salt Lake City News

The Queen's English

Ten Questions with Bookseller Betsy Burton

By Tracy Medley, 10-26-06

Betsy Burton loves books. She’s been reading them for most of her life, selling them at her Salt Lake City bookshop, The King’s English since 1977 and now she’s written one of her own; The King’s English, Adventures of an Independent Bookseller. Burton has received nothing but praise for her frank, funny and often brilliant take on life as an independent bookseller in America.

But, Burton is more than just another American bookseller and author; she and her bookstore are local treasures that have been providing cherished dissidence and much needed comfort to Salt Lake City for nearly 30 years.

Burton, who will be participating in this year’s Great Salt Lake Book Festival as a panelist, took the time to answer some of our questions and her answers were so great, we decided to share them in full.

New West What do you consider the role of the independent bookseller in our community to be? What about our community specifically keeps you committed to the success of your store?

Betsy Burton Independent businesses are the backbone of any community, but bookstores in particular are important, providing, as they do, a meeting place where people can come together over ideas. Right after 9/11, crowds flocked to TKE—not to buy books but to meet with like-minded people to discuss what had happened. There is comfort in community, in the connection community provides—I like to think bookstores are at the heart of that connection. There is an ongoing dialogue between booksellers and customers regarding not just current events, but personal events as well every day at our store. And the books we recommend can make crucial differences in people’s lives, which is why we take such pains to match the right book to the right person, taking his or her tastes and needs into account.

Bookstores are out in the community on an ongoing basis, too, selling books at book fairs in schools, at all sorts of educational events on and off campus, and bringing authors to town continually. We give talks about books at schools, libraries, social and educational groups and book clubs of all kinds, and we serve on just about every literary board imaginable. There is such a web of connection in all of this that we feel necessary to the community. Books are necessary, and the active role we take in providing them seems important.

NW What are some unique qualities about Utah and/or Salt Lake that have inspired you?

BB This community in particular has troublesome divisions, as we all know, and our bookstore provides a place for people of all religions and political persuasions to meet in comfort. We began as a haven for non-Mormons, a place where one’s religion wasn’t a foregone conclusion. At the time this seemed necessary, but now providing a place where people can mingle comfortably, whatever their beliefs, seems more necessary, more important. Our customer base runs the gamut, and the store has become a place where people meet and enjoy one another without making assumptions, and where we can find the right book for anyone, regardless of his or her belief. This is particularly true in the children’s room, although I like to think it’s true for all parts of the store.

The other unique quality here is the landscape—there is nowhere like Utah and I feel connected to the land here in a visceral way.

NW You talk in your book about the boom of the dot.com book industry; how has that affected the way you and other local booksellers do business?

BB The dot.com industry hasn’t changed the way we buy books or the way we sell them at TKE. We still pick what we think our customers will like, and we still hand sell books based on customers’ proclivities. What we do differently is to communicate with our customers and with the public-at-large concerning the consequences to the world of books and to their community if the dot.coms and big-box retailers were to take over. In the book world, if a handful of buyers from a couple of chains and a dot.com retailer were buying all the books in the country, choice would be drastically limited—not a good thing. In the world of business in general, if we all bought from nationally owned firms, whether online or bricks and mortar, our communities would be drained of capital, since all profits and all support business (the local ad agencies and accountants and attorneys and suppliers that locally owned businesses use for support) monies would go directly out of state. Every time any of us spends a dollar we are shaping our community; we need to think about all the costs before we spend those dollars.

NW How did you get involved with Booksense?

BB Nearly all independent booksellers in America are involved in Book Sense. Collectively, our voices are much louder than any are alone, and our program (we pick books each month and produce a list of highly recommended titles which we all display in stores around the country, and we publish a weekly best seller list) has become an effective way of letting people know what all booksellers recommend.

NW Have you faced any challenges as a female business owner?

BB Ironically, the only real tussle I ever got in over gender was with a fellow feminist who was incensed that I hadn’t called the store The Queen’s English.

One of the great pleasures of the book business is that discrimination is literally non-existent. And one of the great pleasures of running one’s own business is that one creates whatever environment one wishes— what we try to create here is an environment that doesn’t discriminate in any way.

NW When/ Why did you decide to write your book?

BB Ann Cannon, a dear friend and a wonderful writer, was laughing at one of my horror stories about yet another crisis in the store and said, “You really ought to write a book.” So I tried a chapter and it was fun. And easy. I didn’t have to make anything up the way one does in fiction—it seemed to flow out, one disaster after another (well, there were some successes too, thank God). It was probably good therapy. And it was a way of crystallizing my ideas on locally owned independent businesses and their importance to community, a topic which is increasingly important. And, of course, it was an excuse to write about the authors and books I most love.

NW What advice do you have for any aspiring Salt Lake City writers?

BB That old saw, write what you know, is the most important piece of advice that young writers ignore and older ones finally come to, in my opinion. Also, something that Tobias Wolfe said when he was at TKE has stuck in my mind. When asked how he worked he said on the first draft, he threw in everything but the kitchen sink, on the second he was a merciless critic, on the third he again gave himself total creative license, on the fourth he was hypercritical....and so on. It’s a useful system.

NW Talk a little about your past experience with the Great Salt Lake Book Festival.

BB I’ve always participated on the bookselling rather than the author side until this year, so that’s the angle I can speak from. Jean Cheney really made the festival what it is those first years. Getting booksellers to cooperate and choose authors peacefully is just one of the things she did with grace (she ought to write a funny book about that experience!). The whole enterprise is unbelievably complicated from finding the authors and persuading them to come, to picking a theme, to producing publicity, to getting the books, to finding a venue... And the fact that she managed to do it all so well, and that Rebecca Batt has continued to do so these past two years is impressive, to say the least. The end result is fantastic for the community because we, children and adults alike, have a chance to listen to all these writers and to have such a rich cultural and intellectual experience in the process—it’s wonderful for all of us.

NW Who are you most looking forward to seeing at this year’s festival?

BB I’m most looking forward to Ivan Doig. I’ve met him many times but he remains one of my idols, a quiet man of great genius, one of the best writers of our time. I’m also looking forward to my own panel since I’ve never done anything quite like this before. Looking at memoir from a number of angles, seeing the possibilities in any form of writing sounds intriguing and I’m eager to hear what the other panelists will have to say.

NW What are you reading right now? Any recommendations?

BB Everybody needs to read Stacy Mitchell’s The Big Box Swindle. It lays out the chains vs independents problem brilliantly and is fascinating—and important in a world-changing way. I just finished Richard Powers’ new novel, The Echo Maker, and I loved it. He combines science and the personal in his fiction in ways that are so unique and he is such a brilliant writer...I also loved Mark Haddon’s [the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time] A Spot of Bother. I laughed until I cried, reading it. He’s another author I love. And One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson is terrific. As far as mysteries and thrillers go, I loved John Le Carre’s latest, Missionary Song, which got panned everywhere. It’s darkly funny and terrifyingly true. And I also loved William Boyd’s thriller Restless. And Minette Walter’s latest. And Man and Camel, Mark’s Strand’s latest book of poetry is his best yet—so readable and yet so mysterious—brilliant. Oh, and one final book, Jim Harrison’s latest which won’t be out until January (one perk of this business is getting early reader’s copies) is called Returning to Earth. It’s his best, too. I couldn’t put it down and now can’t stop thinking about it. So many good books. What a way to make a living!

See Betsy Burton at the Great Salt Lake Book Festival 2006 where she will be participating in “The Fertile Field of Memories: A Panel on Writing the Memoir” this Saturday, October 28 at 12:30 pm, in the 4th floor conference room of Salt Lake City’s Main Library.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.