A long, long time ago, children, before everyone was self-publishing books on Amazon, before millions of people were writing fan fiction on their smart phones and publishing it to Wattpad, the bookstore chain Barnes & Noble represented (to certain lefty NPR-listening types, anyway) everything that was wrong with the publishing industry. Barnes & Noble stores were proliferating across the strip malls of America like massive commercial toadstools, and many people saw the local Barnes & Noble as a kind of Wal-Mart of books: a destroyer of independent bookstores and hometown loveliness. (If what I’m describing sounds like a plot point from the old 1998 rom-com You’ve Got Mail, that’s because the bookstore mega-chain in the movie was a not-so-subtle portrait of the real Barnes & Noble of the time.)

Fast forward 25 years, and Barnes & Noble seems more like the underdog now, trying to reinvent itself amidst the moribund shells of America’s hollowed-out malls, hustling to stay alive beneath the crushing shadow of Amazon. I was no lover of Barnes & Noble back in the You’ve Got Mail days, and I still try to buy all of my books at the many fine independent bookstores of Portland, but I have to admit that I have a soft spot for Barnes & Noble as it holds on for dear life.

So, it felt weird seeing my name on the Barnes & Noble website offering Exit Black for presale. I have to admit that I feel proud that a book I wrote will be sitting on a shelf in an actual, physical bookstore next to the Starbucks.

I hope I’ll be seeing Exit Black at a whole lot of Portland spots–can I interest you, Broadway Books? How about you, Annie Bloom? But there is an unexpected thrill to seeing my name come up on the website of that once-maligned mall standby, good old Barnes & Noble. If I get a chance to do a reading or a signing at one, I’m going.