Melville House Books

Amongst booksellers in America, not a few are refusing to sell the new memoir by the ol’ book-banner herself, Sarah Palin (see the survey at Shelf Awareness). Amongst others, such as the folks at Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California, the attitude is “We know some customers have to buy it because it’s on some uncle’s wish list,” as owner Casey Coonerty-Protti puts it in this report from the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “But it’s not a big seller for the Santa Cruz market. We haven’t had a lot of interest in selling the book anyway.”

Nonetheless they stock it — on the counter, next to a bowl of walnuts, which you get for free if you do buy the Palin book. The nuts are called “Sarah Palin’s Just Plain Nutz” (“So nutty, it’s scary.”)

“Anyone who claims they can monitor national security by looking out their window towards Russia is a little off base,” explains Coonerty-Protti. “The nuts are a perfect statement for the politics of Sarah Palin.”

This is not the first time Bookshop Santa Cruz has let its merch department make a statement. Says the Sentinel report,

The Coonertys have used their business in the past to take shots at other conservative figures, including radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and President George W. Bush.

When Limbaugh’s book “See I Told You So” came out in 1993, the book shop weighed the book and sold it for the price of baloney. Gingrich’s 1995 book “Contract With America” came with a barf bag.

One of the store’s best sellers was a keychain with a clock and photo of Bush that counted down his second term in office. Coonerty-Protti said more than 65,000 countdown clocks were sold.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.