Relax and enjoy while Alex Mattingly, author of The Big Nap, serves us up lessons on the profundity of wax bottle candy, the disappointment of raisins, and the mystery of The Sultan’s Virgin Brie.

1. You manage a not-for-profit bookstore called Indy Reads Books. So many businesses in the book industry are for profit but not making any. How is Indy Reads Books different from that?

Still working that out! The truth is, though, bookstores that specialize in used books seem to be doing considerably better than their New-Book-Carrying counterparts, in no small part due to the fact that business models like those of Amazon have done a fair job conditioning people to avoid paying full price for anything. So right there we’ve got a bit of an edge – though we carry a few new books, most of our inventory is donated to us and sells for very low prices.

And that’s the other part that keeps us a little more nimble – the bookstore’s primary purpose is to help raise funds for the adult literacy programs of Indy Reads, our parent organization. Having that as our purpose encourages book donations, which keeps us able to provide a fresh supply of interesting and hard-to-find books without having much overhead on our stock. It’s a neat business model, and a fantastic way for a nonprofit to have a community presence that also serves as a way of raising money for a greater mission.

But I’d hesitate to look at what our bookstore does and apply those lessons to the book industry as a whole – it makes me nervous that people are getting used to paying at least 40% less than the cover price of a book. As a used bookseller, it’s great, but as a writer, it probably means coming up with radically different models for convincing people that things such as books (and music, and movies, etc.) are worth the money they cost.

2. Have you thought about turning The Big Nap into a series? How would that play out? Do you think the main character and Emily will ever get together?

There actually is a prequel, published previously by Punchnel’s, titled ‘Marbles.’ There’s an oblique reference to it in ‘The Big Nap,’ though I wanted both pieces to be able to stand alone. At this point I think there would have to be a third act, though I don’t think it’s going to end well for the narrator. I don’t think I’ve left him any room to get out of Part Three in one piece, as he keeps bringing down more trouble by trying to be left alone.

As for Emily, I think she’d have a very different opinion of their relationship. I think if the narrator called her ‘his girl’ to her face it would probably get him stabbed in the neck with a compass.
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