Surprise: Many San Francisco booksellers refusing to carry Palin’s book; Update: Palin apologizes to those whose books weren’t signed

Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s not that the retailers are closed-minded. It’s their customers who are closed-minded.

Well, okay. Some of the retailers are closed-minded too.

“Our customers are thinking people,” said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. “They’re not into reading drivel.”

There’s not a single copy on the shelf. Embretson said no one has asked for it except for one guy, who was kidding.

“He said he wanted to look at it but he also said he didn’t really want to read it,” Embretson said. “Anyway, he certainly didn’t want to buy it. I think he regarded looking at it as a kind of punishment.”…

Had she ordered 50 copies of the book, Cotleur said, she would probably wind up shipping 50 copies of the book back to the publisher in a couple of weeks.

“I would expect to take a bath on it,” she said. “The job of a book buyer is to be something of a psychic. You have to know your community. I don’t want to waste a lot of money and shelf space on a book nobody wants.’

Really? No one in the community’s interested in … a presidential campaign tell-all? I’m no fan of The One but I’ll bet David Plouffe’s book is a pretty gripping read. Your quote of the day from one of the lords of tolerance:

“Anything like that we wouldn’t carry,” said clerk Emily Stackhouse. “We’re a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross.”

If I recall correctly, the “that’s gross” exception to free speech was articulated in the landmark case of Ohmigod v. Ewww. If you’re wondering what kind of books are carried in these shops, evidently because they don’t run afoul of the gross-out exception, Pajamas Media has got you covered.

While we’re on the subject of unhappiness about Palin’s book, here’s a clip shot outside the Indiana book signing after the event ended promptly at 9 p.m. — even though, allegedly, another 150 people were in line to have their copies autographed. Dave Weigel notes that you can hear people heckling her about “quitting on the job.” It may be that she and the HarperCollins people decided they simply had to get out of there promptly at nine to make the next stop on time; interestingly, Politico’s story about the signing makes no mention of any displeasure among the crowd, and Politico’s not known for spinning in Palin’s favor. Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye? One last footnote: Someone on Twitter told me that 500 books were signed in Columbus today versus 1,000 that were slotted for the Indiana event. Could be they’re scaling back to a more manageable number in order to stay on schedule.

Update: A new Facebook note from Palin promises to make amends to the crowd in the vid:

I’ve been told that yesterday there were supporters in Noblesville who stood in long lines for hours in the cold and rain, and the book signing event ended without a chance to say hello to everyone who showed up. I am so sorry. We are working on a solution for those who were left behind.

I apologize.

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