Rethinking the Box: The Multiple Paradoxes of Coffee Table Books.
first and foremost: there is no such thing as a “Coffee Table Book” — sure, I know what you mean and like art (or porn) we all know it when we see it, but I’ll be damned if any publisher cites these as a category or format. It’s a descriptor like Sedan or Compact or ‘family car’ — it can mean a lot of things depending on who is using the term.
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Rethinking the Box is a collection of ruminations on retail: a unique combination of sober (and sobering) business analysis mixed with drunken, inflammatory personal invective.
Previously:
Study your History. Recognise your Motives. Location, Location, Location. Know your Customer Base, and your Staff. Find your Niche. Consider your Product Lines, Stock Your Shelves, take a second look at What the Customers Want, and then stare again in dismay at the Profit Margins. Try calculating your upper-limit affordable rent and the revenue from inventory (with a side of coffee) and compare your numbers to average industry per-storefront sales.
[yes, the intro gets longer with each post; but the one time I omitted the context all hell broke loose.]
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In the last column I outlined a strategy for stocking graphic novels. (an expensive strategy but one that corrects for errors and accomodates certain customer behaviours such that at least one copy of a book is always available *and* where it should be on the shelf, so we can sell it. Buy 3 to sell 1, heh, everything old is new again…)
My “Illustrated Empire” is to be more than just a comic shop, though; in the August inventory post I outlined quite a few categories [Art Surveys and Collections, Art Technique, Architecture, Graphic Design, Fashion, Photo Essay, & ‘Coffee Table’ Travel] that are broadly related to each other in as much as each category is primarily made up of large format, full-colour, expensive hardcover books. These things are heavy, printed on glossy clay paper, tend to run into the hundreds of pages in Quarto or Folio editions, or larger, or odd custom trim sizes, and all in all they’re a pain in the ass.
You’ll need custom shelving for these (or at least, not standard book shelves) as a 4-foot run of art books can weigh 300+ pounds and they tend to overhang standard 6-8” deep shelving by at least a third. For those of you who haven’t moved outside of the graphic-novel corner of your local Big Box Books for more than a cup of coffee, let me put it in perspective: those slipcased, over-sized Absolute Editions DC is so proud of? Imagine 150 linear feet of shelving on a wall 30 ft. long in bookcases 7 ft. high, full of nothing but Absolute DC.
It’s heavy. It’s impressive.
It’s the Architecture section at my branch of Big Box Books — and I know my store is atypical; most stores would be lucky to have one or two bookcases while I have ten, and this is just architecture. I’ve a similar run of Art books, and Interior Design, and smaller runs of things like Photography and Graphic Design.
It’s an odd confluence of being within easy driving distance of both Ga. Tech (with their fine College of Architecture) and the Atlanta campus of SCAD, while also located just down the street from a neighborhood full of Coke-stock-beneficiaries who have little to do but redecorate their mansions once a year.
…between them, and the students, and the homeless, on top of the usual slate of both the casual shopping public and die-hard bookstore junkies, it’s an unusual place to work. —but it might also explain some of my odd perceptions of the business & our customer base [posted previously].
Anyway, when I say you can stock 4,000 large-format, high-price-point “coffee table books” and you can make money doing it, I know whereof I speak.
The books themselves are the draw. Some of you may have been wiping drool off your chins already, after reading my description of a ton and a half of Art books alongside a ton and a half of Architecture titles. The problem, of course, is that casual browsing completely destroys the value of the book [even though the book itself is fine, and intact] and the physical weight of the books themselves will wreak havoc on flimsy dust jackets, or even occasionally the binding.
If it’s an $80 art book, and you have a choice between the fresh-out-of-the-box shrink-wrapped copy, and the one that has been knocking around my store for 2 years, the choice is obvious. The problem I run into, as a retailer, is that often this is the same copy: I have one copy. It’s still shrink-wrapped. Customer A wants it, but wants to look at it first. One time in twenty, they find a bookseller and ask, politely, if it’d be OK to unwrap the one copy in the store because, well, it’s an $80 book, right? Only fair to see what $80 buys. (The other 95% of the time a customer tears into the book anyway, and hides the plastic or cellophane behind other books — which means it’s not an unthinking act, as one went to lengths to hide the evidence)
Customer A unwraps the book, flips through it, decides no, not really, and puts the book back on the shelf.
Customer B, finding said “spoiled” copy, then brings it up to the desk and asks, “Hey, this is your last copy but it’s damaged, no really… can I get a discount?”
Customer A was functioning by their own logic, and Customer B certainly thinks their request is only reasonable, given the condition of the book [as noted above, even though the book itself is fine, and intact, and people attempt to return books for full credit that are in worse shape at least once a day] and this type of exchange is one of the reasons I drink heavily.
Since I don’t want to be an alcoholic [from stress; I’m perfectly fine being an alcoholic who drinks to celebrate the pure joy of being alive] obviously I would need to find a new way to merchandise these books.
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Case 1: Open Shelves.
This is the situation described above. And books sell; it’s not the worse thing in the world. And, while not admitting anything about the performance of my store or revealing proprietary sales data my employer would rather I not post to a blog (sorry, had to say it) if you’ve the right kind of books and the right kind of market, then even with $50+ price points you can manage a turn ratio of 1: one book sold each year per book stocked. At $50 per, that ain’t bad at all.
Open shelving has the benefit of density (three tons of books, noted above) though you’re going to have to take some losses (or the publisher will, if they accept the damaged books back) and you’ll also have to invest quite a bit of payroll into maintenance: These sections are heavily browsed and almost universally, no one puts the book back where they found it. In those rare cases when a customer does reshelve a book it’s always wrong and more often we find a 70lb. stack on a table or bench at least 20 yards away from the section. Now we have to truck 70lb. up to the desk, to figure out where they go, and schlep the same 70lb. back to the section to reshelve them appropriately.
And we do this for each and every ‘coffee table book’ customer. Multiple times. Some customers really suck, you know?
Case 2: Buy 3 to Sell 1
…same logic as my Graphic Novel stocking strategy: one copy is mis-shelved, one’s been opened, but you should still be able to find a sealed copy to sell. You know, until someone unwraps that one too, “Oh, here’s one unwrapped already, but how will I know if the contents inside are the same unless I despoil this copy as well? I mean, that’s only logical.”
Case 3: Curated collections
Instead of stocking everything you can think to order, focus instead on 20, or 50, or 100 really great books. The trick here is picking what your customers will want, so you’ll need an expert on staff (if you’re not an expert yourself) but the main benefit is a much higher turn rate:
You’ve one ‘display’ copy, but 20 or even 50 copies still in the box. Your needy, grasp-y, greasy-fingered customer base can grope and paw the display copy all they want, and if they like it, you hand them the still-pristine copy from the top of the stack. For customers giving books as gifts, this is ideal. Repeat 5 times, and you’ve already done much better than the single copy alone would have done lost in a bookcase with other similar titles.
You don’t even need bookshelves for this — stock ‘em Crate & Barrel style: A fine easel or podium or table-top display, backed by cases of books to be sold.
A curated collection would need to be changed out frequently, so you’ll need to be on good terms with at least one publisher (Taschen and Phaidon spring immediately to mind, though there are others) as you’ll need a willing partner to accept the unsold stacks as returns, and as much advance information as possible to select books that might have sold 20-30 copies to begin with.
Case 4: Behind the Counter
Again, you’ll be looking at just 50-100 titles, but instead of out in the stacks where any hard-up homeless guy can flip through the Photography books because they happen to have nudes in them, you stock your expensive merch behind the registers (or behind some other counter) so they can only be browsed on request. This might save the books from some of the more, intensive, browsers but again limits your available selection from thousands to scant tens — maybe a hundred or so.
And unlike a curated collection, you don’t have duplicates to sell, just one of each.
“Behind the Counter” is the default for most stores, in fact. As a stocking ‘strategy’ it lacks quite a bit of sales potential; this is really more of a just-in-case purchase on the part of the bookstore or comic shop owner. “Oh, I need Absolute Watchmen and Marvel Premiere hardcovers and some Absolute Batman… just in case“
You can write the investment off as ‘decoration’ — yes, these are expensive but some deluxe editions and figures and poly-bagged collectibles and maybe even some DVDs “behind the counter” lend the shop that “Android’s Dungeon” air: we’re serious about this, so serious we stock stuff we know won’t sell. Ever.
OK, let me dial that back a bit: There is nothing wrong with stocking specialty and high-price-point items. It’s commendable. In fact, I plan to do the exact same thing, but in a much higher volume store where, as a percentage of overall sales, not only does it make sense but might even be considered a requirement. (So, in an attempt to forstall comments that I know are coming: yes, your shop does quite well by these, but what of the strip-mall storefront comic shops that are just breaking even on periodical sales: do they need to invest in hardcover Hulk & Batman?)
Case 5: Closed-door Collections
Say you’ve a 20×60 room, bookcases on every wall, a few tables and comfy armchairs set up in the middle. Stack those bookcases with your Art and Artsy titles, and then put a lock on the door. Keys to be held by managers only.
This has the benefits of the Open Shelves model, above, in that you can really pack the books in. 4000 or 5000 different titles, depending on how tall your bookshelves are. You also have a degree of control over access, similar to a behind-the-counter model (though if you let one college student in, there will be 20 there before you can blink). And while this won’t stop the gradual degredation of your stock, by limiting access you might get another year or two out of the books — and even some sales of off-the-shelf, unwrapped copies, as they are still ‘like new’ as opposed to being ragged-looking shadows of their former selves.
And, since customers must ask for access and be granted such by an authority figure (inasmuch as a bookstore manager can invoke that authority) they will be more careful with the books. If a book is just sitting on a shelf that’s one thing; if someone has looked you in the eye and made note of your face before unlocking a door, that’s a completely different interaction.
[long aside:]
Given my past experience, I’m most immediately inspired by the Georgia Tech Architecture Library — it’s a small annex to the main library located in the CoA building, and if you didn’t know it was there, you’d never feel the lack. But for those who know to ask, it’s an invaluable resource, and for those-who-know keeping the library intact and in excellent shape is almost a calling. Books, particularly the over-sized and heavily illustrated volumes, are treated with care. Someone after you will need to look at these same pages, and it is our responsibility to make sure the volume survives for them.
I’d love to capture that same spirit, only, you know, with the add-on that I’d like to sell you that book if you happen to have $100.
Bookstores aren’t libraries. The general public hasn’t caught onto this yet (more the pity for libraries) but eventually the differences will become pronounced enough that the public has to take notice, or they won’t care, or e-books and the related dog-and-pony-circus will make make the point moot, or obscure the issue so that the role of libraries is either forgotten or discounted. And we’ll all be poorer for it.
Don’t mistake me: I’m a bookseller, and more than happy to take your money, and less happy but willing to take on some of the roles of a librarian if it means I can take even more of your money — but I know the function and role of libraries in society, and even if my customers don’t know and feel the loss, I do.
I think we can all see that retailers are not a cultural institution and, at least in Amazon’s case, can actively work against the public interest. (Though who is to say whose interest is served when two major corporations get into a spat over how the dollars are divvied.)
At any rate, I feel the need for an independent, academic repository of books — both informative and entertaining — that has nothing to do with profit motives or sales. We need libraries, or else the soul of our culture is dead.
[and note: Google isn’t going to be that “independent, academic repository” no matter how they try to spin it — but I don’t know what the solution actually is, or is going to be. Just commenting from the sidelines.]
[/long aside]
For my eventual bookstore, I’m leaning more and more toward these closed-door collections, and may have not one but four or five of these reading rooms, differentiated by subject.
