That Was Surreal….

Not far from our house is one of my favorite destinations–a Half Price Books store. One never knows what one will find there, and sometimes, you can get some really excellent buys there. I’ve seen a few of my books there in the past, typically when they’ve been remaindered by my publishers. That never excites me, but I understand the business of bookselling, and I understand that publishers will remainder my books whether I want them to or not.

Today, though, was a first for me.

I wandered over by where they keep the valuable books–often rare, or antique books, that they keep under lock and key–and was stunned to find one of my books in that case, locked up, and with a $60 price tag on it. I actually didn’t even notice it at first–Susan did. I was trying to understand why an H.E. Howard book on the Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain right next to it had a $250 price tag on it.

Susan noticed that they had a signed first edition copy of the hardcover version of Glory Enough for All: Sheridan’s Second Raid and the Battle of Trevilian Station. The book isn’t even ten years old, although the hardcover edition definitely is out of print, so I was genuinely surprised to see that sort of price on it; it’s really not all that rare or hard to find even though the hardcover edition has been out of print for several years.

Susan asked the fellow at the checkout desk–who clearly was not accustomed to the idea of an author seeing one of his own books in the store–to unlock the cabinet, which he did. She took the photo that appears with this post, and then handed the book to me, as I was curious to see for whom I had signed it; it was entirely possible that it was one of the 2200 copies that had been purchased by CWPT as a fundraiser for the Trevilian Station battlefield. I opened the book and was flabbergasted to see that it was a copy that I signed and then gave as a gift to some of Susan’s cousins, who obviously thought so much of my gift that they sold it to Half Price Books. I have to admit that I was offended by that, and I have told Susan that I will never give those relatives another one of my books again.

The whole thing was just a very strange and surreal experience. It still weirds me out a little to find myself on the shelves of book stores, but this one was by far the strangest incident where I have found myself on the bookshelves of a book store. Weird. Very weird.