> DS> McCrumb.  She seems to be making the series more mainstream
 > rather
 > DS> than "mystery/murder" although each one does have a
 > mystery of
 > DS> sorts.
 
[stuff deleted]
 > I don't demand a mystery, though it probably shouldn't be
 > shelved with
 > them if it drifts away from the genre. Not that that makes
 > a difference
 > to the publishers. ;)
 
Well, here's the bookseller's dilemma.
 
We started out as a specialty shop with mostly science fiction, though we did 
carry some mysteries if they were written by authors who also did science 
fiction (e.g. Asimov's mysteries, Boucher's _Rocket to the Morgue_, Dick 
Lupoff's mystery series, Ted Sturgeon and Jack Vance's Ellery Queen titles, 
and so on).  So we also had _Bimbos of the Death Sun_ and _Zombies of the 
Gene Pool_.
 
Then we started carrying more mysteries if they had some sort of "twist" that 
would make them interesting to readers of science fiction.  Mostly this 
started out as historical mysteries like M K Wren's (another crossover 
author) and Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfaels and so on.
 
Then we said, well, heck, they've reprinted Dorothy Sayers and how can we NOT 
stock these since we're carrying mysteries too.  And so on.
 
Then we had a bunch of customers stop in who were really interested in the 
mysteries only, so to save them the trouble of pawing through the umptey-bump 
cases of SF to dig out the handful of mysteries, we gave the mysteries their 
own (albeit small) shelf in the store.
 
Now what do we do with the books by McCrumb which are neither mystery or SF?
 
We face a similar problem with the romances -- we started out as a lark by 
carrying a series of romances with a ghost in them, on the grounds that it 
was fantasy because it was a ghost story.  They sold like hotcakes.  Now we 
are seeing more and more publishers sending us fantasy or science 
fiction-related romances, mostly time travel stories, or vampire ones.  And 
we've always had a smattering of romances anyhow, again, stuff written by 
science fiction and fantasy writers which we've had for their associational 
value, since some readers want to read EVERYTHING their favorite writer does 
no matter what category this is.
 
Ideally, we'd like the fans of writer X to be able to find these books and 
buy them if they tickle their fancy.  If they don't know that writer X has 
written in other categories, they won't go looking in the other section.  If 
we put up signs (shelf-talkers, as they are called in the trade) directing 
readers to the other sections, we will have so many shelf-talkers, they'll 
just become a big blur and customers won't read them.
 
So what's a bookseller to do?
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