Rocket Bomber - article - retail - commentary - Rethinking the Box: Selling Books in the Post-Book Era ['Love' doesn't have an algorithm yet]

Bah. I’m getting tired of talking about e-books. I think we all know which side of that debate I’m coming down on — even if you haven’t been reading my blog for years and only picked it up last week.

So, let’s assume for a moment that Jobs and Bezos sign a non-aggresion pact, divy up book retail, distribution, and publishing like so many polands, and as a bookseller I’m shipped off to a “retirement farm” or re-education camp [with a free iKindle, a pacifier to keep me quiet] — or if I decline, forced to fight on as a guerilla bookseller, part of a small, scrappy resistance facing insurmountable odds and a quixotic fight against not just big corporations but also my former customers (who no longer have need for a ‘bookstore’ in the 20th-century-sense. That’s so… last millennium.)

But so long as hot blood and cold beer still run through my veins, I will be a bookseller, and I can harness creative self-delusion, technical prowess, and years of experience to aid me.
“Vive la Résistance! ¡Por Cuba Libre! Free Tibet!”

…actually, I could go for a Cuba Libre right now… I wonder if we have any rum…

[image credit, Iliad Bookshop, North Hollywood, by Zach Schrock http://balcony-smoker.tumblr.com/post/59996549/zach-schrock]

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Rethinking the Box is a collection of ruminations on retail & bookselling, with an eye towards comics (as one goal of the exercise is to guage the viability of a graphic novel superstore).

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, Set your main-aisle displays, consider Alternative display strategies, take a second look at What the Customers Want and Why Even Annoying Customers are Important. Answer for yourself whether raw dollars or customer service is more important to your store, and its future. Stare again in dismay at the Profit Margins. Try calculating your upper-limit affordable rent and affordable salaries along with revenue from inventory (with a side of coffee) and compare your numbers to average industry per-storefront sales.

Chronologically: 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 – 13 – 14 – 15 – 16 – 17 – 18 – 19 – 20 – 21 – 22 – 23 – 24

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So, while not part of the Rethinking the Box column proper, I’ve written quite a bit about the book-as-form, book-as-object, publishing history, and with glancing blows at piracy and some random thoughts on how it might affect retail:

17 Nov ’09: Form, Content, Copies, Rights, and Plato
22 Nov ’09: Same story, different perspective — which links to this post by Clay Shirky [see also]
15 Dec ’09: The Other Shoe: Borders partners with Indigo’s Shortcovers for E-Books
4 Apr ’10: The iPad is merely incidental to the rest of the ongoing discussion
4 Jun ’10: Publishing Buggywhips
and most recently, 7 Jun ’10, E-books, retail, publishing: One More Time

It was the ‘buggywhips’ thought-piece where I half-promised, half-threatened to write a post explaining why “[in a thread I’ll pick up on in the next rethinking the box column] there is still a place for bookstores: there is still expertise, and enthusiasm, and atmosphere, and experiences to be had, even in a world without ‘books’”.

In a post-Amazon, post-Kindle, post-iPad, post-Nook world (yes, even my employer has abandoned me) what use is there for a bookstore, or a bookseller? What the heck does a bookseller really do, anyway?

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As a practical matter, day-to-day, we spend quite a bit of time cleaning, straightening, re-organizing. From coffee cups to soda cans, discarded food containers, chicken bones, used tissues, abandoned clothing — and occassionally, human waste (the way you people treat public restrooms is appalling, really beyond the pale) — there are also the stacks of magazines and half-read books left in piles all over the store.

Dude. It’s not enough you destroy the product while you ‘browse’ it; it’s not the way customers unpack and totally camp out, stealing electricity and clogging up tables that might have been used (ever so briefly) by a paying customer with a legitimate need to look through a stack of [$60 and up, large-format art] books — it’s not the folks stretching out in the aisles, taking their shoes off and literally laying down while they read a book — a book they have no intention of buying, more often than not…

I’ve been a bookseller for a decade. I have seen and mostly understand all of this. But:

It’s the damn sense of entitlement, of ownership over the bookstore, most especially from those who spend absolutely no money that might lend even a thin veneer of truth to either assumption. Good Gods Damn, People — what do you think a bookstore is? A public reading room with a public bathroom and free wi-fi? Even a library gets more respect.

Here’s the short course: At a book store, we sell books — shocking, I know — and we also sell the magazines you love to read for free, and newspapers, and the bibles you love to steal [book retail trivia: #3 most-stolen items? Bibles. Yep, ‘struth. Think about it…] and the computer books that no one buys because they’re cheaper online but that everyone expects us to have, in stock, today no matter how obscure the topic and that get stolen anyway. [book retail trivia: #2 most-stolen items? Computer Books. Even though everyone says our selection is crappy, somebody is still stealing ‘em.]

Apparently, if I were to really listen to my ‘customers’, the bookstore would be a library that stocks everything but where you don’t have to bother to check anything out, just walk home with it, where we supply both device recharging though multiple outlets placed every two feet on every available wall (and some just randomly in the middle of the floor) & free wifi that is faster than your broadband or cable connection at home, and where we don’t hassle anyone about how much all this costs or try to guilt anyone into actually buying anything unless they really need a copy or just happened to be feeling charitable.

In the face of all this… an uncaring, downright abusive public who positively delight in telling me daily how much cheaper Amazon is while completely discounting the things we do that Amazon can’t (and taking advantage of all of it either unknowingly, apathetically, or callously) and with a casual disregard for both the expertise of veteran booksellers, or even the basic respect due a fellow human being —

[it’s not always that bad, all the time… Decembers are brutal, tho]

Despite all this I still love books, and I still love bookstores, and it may be hard to believe but I Love My Job. After 40+ hours a week, I still think obsessively about my employment and employer, and blog about how we can do it better — what more can I say?

Dear Customers: even though your demands are unreasonable and unprofitable [for me, as a bookseller] I’m still willing to work with you, compromise, meet you half-way on some points, and totally capitulate others. You win. Take full advantage.

The only thing I ask (and what will keep the store open, in a post-book era) is that you recognise what a bookstore is and what it does. A little respect, some props. Least you can do while you put me out of business.

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Yeah, the web is great. Cheap. Fast. All of that.

If you know what you want then you can order it on the web within minutes of thinking of it. You don’t even have to call my store to bug me about it. Just order it online already. Sure, if you want to come in and see if we have it, that’s great too. Buy a cup of coffee, ask us about it, maybe browse the store, maybe buy something. But the phone calls? Just a waste of my time. [I’ve noted previously, this is a good problem to have but to go through all the work just to have someone say, 9 times out of 10, “nah, I’ll just order it online” — dude: you could have done that before you wasted my booksellers’ time.]

If you kinda-sorta know what you want, sure, come on into the store: we’ll try to help. If you can’t find it in an internet search, well, we’ll try, but Google is pretty damn good and while I’m better than the average bear at gaming an internet search, I’m only as good as my inputs. I can’t spin half remembered compost-fodder into gold no matter how much faith you have in me. But we’ll try, and please, come on into the store: this kind of thing is so much easier face-to-face, where I can turn the screen around to show you the search results; maybe you see something that prompts further recollection, & together we refine the results, in steps, down to what you’re looking for. Once again, this is hard to do over the phone no matter how earnestly you’d like to think I can read your mind over 19th-century-era copper wire.

If you have only the vaguest memory and just one applicable clue (“the cover is red”) I really wish you’d just forget about the whole thing and move on. Still, as a business, and in the business of customer service, I have to pretend I can help and must feign surprise when searches of ‘the red book’ only pull up $150 dream journals by Carl Jung

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The internet is great and grand. Everything and anything, so long as you know what to look for.

but: what if you could find something you didn’t even know you wanted yet?

What if there was a website where books were presented with expert reviews and recommendations, and available for immediate purchase? Hell, what if most of those books were in stock at a nearby physical storefront, to take home today?

Maybe, between expertise and depth of selection, we’ve discovered one thing a bookstore could do better than a website. Or: I’ve identified a role for a unified blog-and-bookstore where the booksellers are paid to post reviews and previews to the web. An Amazon where product reviews aren’t written by sarcastic/ironic/sardonic hipsters, or the clueless but earnest, or the haters who couldn’t even finish the book — but instead were all written by booksellers.

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- Let’s say I win the lottery, not only enough to pay my debts and start up a scrappy new manga publisher, but with enough left over to buy a building, $5 Million in inventory and set up my dreamland, destination bookstore (with a pub in it, alongside the coffee shop). Who do I hire to staff it?

Fans.

I’ll pay them to work the bookfloor 4 hours a day, I’ll pay them to read at work for at least an hour a day and I’ll buy them a laptop but I expect them to blog (for me) for an hour each day. [35 hour work week for my full-timers; I’m progressive like that — and we can work out a 4-day or 5-day work-week from these basic expectations]

So, my ideal bookseller is also a blogger, posting reviews or business analysis or thought pieces, or WTF else – I don’t care. So long as it’s on-topic and on-schedule it helps. I’m not just starting a bookstore, I need a search-engine-ready social-media-footprint & continuous online presence. “oh ho!” you say, “The brave bookstore advocate is finally admitting he is beat, and wants to hedge his bets, starting a web site just like Amazon [*knowing smirk*]” – Of course I’m beat. The web in general has me beat on price, to the tune of at least 10% and often 40-50% (my entire profit margin on a book) and sometimes even deeper, if we consider used offerings. But my group blog would not be a sales site. In fact, hell, we could sign the whole thing up as an Amazon affiliate, let them worry about procurement & shipping & margin, and just take our cut from the internet sale. I don’t need a warehouse and fulfillment protocols for millions of titles if I can get Amazon to do that for me — I’ll take the booksellers, thanks, the ones who know and love the product, and we’ll do just fine.

So why bother with a bookstore at all, if I have this shiny new books blog with it’s own business model, marketable moniker, much lower overhead, and humongous potential employee pool?

The largest part of that is going to the “bookstore” part. No matter how much you think you know or how closely you follow the publishers’ web sites, the Times’ book review & The New York Review of Books (or Otaku USA, depending on your preferences), and no matter how ‘plugged-in’ to the market you feel, nothing beats the awe and wonder of taking something out of the box on the day it comes out, or finding a hidden gem tucked away on a bookshelf. We need a physical bookstore for that.

We need the ‘hook’. Beautiful photos of books on shelves, Author signings, book clubs, writing workshops and in-store events — we need a bookstore. It may just be a 7 million dollar prop, but 75% of that is inventory ($5 mil would be ~350,000 books on shelves: I dream big and this is already a “what if I won the lottery” piece) and there is nothing in the world quite like a bookstore.

We need the workplace. Online communities are great, but bloggers write better when they can meet face to face, and are more productive when they go to an office. “The office” in this case is a bookstore and coffee shop — but that makes it that much better.

And we need customers, and customer interaction. Nothing has taught me more about books (or life, or anything) than working in a bookstore. Every day, people ask me questions and I discover titles I would never have thought of or even thought to look for. A job in a bookstore is an education in itself. Yes, customers are frustrating — but that’s because they are people (& needy people at that).

Who do you trust?

The averred conclusions of an algorithm that “customers who bought this also liked…” or the opinion of an Actual Human Being who can point you to books & series that are similar but only tangentially related to your current favs? Do you buy based on categories and tags, or on the recommendation of someone who’s actually read the damn thing? Bookselllers have an expertise not found at Amazon or other on-line sales sites: we love and read books. “Love” doesn’t have an algorithm yet.

Can I beat Amazon at it’s own game? No. That battle is lost.

Can I game Amazon and make money at what I do best? – Oh, hell yes. (If I weren’t hung up on the ‘bookstore’ thing I could probably launch that review site in two weeks.)

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So.

Post-book era.

Everything is E-

Nothing is print.

How does a bookstore work?

—

Here’s what the bookstore can do:

• We can sell books, in the exchanging-money-for-goods meaning of the word ‘sell’
• we can sell books, in the telling-you-what-is-fantastic-about-this-book meaning of the word ‘sell’ — and honestly, that’s what we do best, and it’s something Amazon can’t do yet.
• we can use the internet for you. No, honestly: for the most obscure title requests, or the searches based on incomplete information this is exactly what I do 10 times an hour (when I don’t just happen to know the answer off the top of my head, which only happens once a day or so but you should see the look on the customer’s face when it does).
• we can order, ship, receive, and hold for pick-up any title in our database. It’s not fancy, but it’s what we do everyday. For some, the convenience of pick-up (as opposed to UPS or Fed-Ex just leaving packages on the doorstep) is a service worth paying a little more for.
• we stock thousands (~100,000+ at my branch, other stores have more) on shelves for purchase today. It’s not much, actually, given the embarrassment of riches available, but we try to guess what’s going to be popular, and stock bestsellers in fiction & biography, at a minimum, and in as many other categories as we can manage.
• we try to hire book-lovers with years of experience, decades of personal reading history, and steel-trap memories that allow them to recall, with the fewest actual facts, the books they’ve read (or browsed, or read reviews or even just the jacket-copy on) and we try to keep them at the information desk for as many hours a day as possible, given that most of the work in the bookstore is, as previously cited, cleaning up after your lazy ass and the sisyphean task of keeping the stacks in any sort of proper order.
• past that: we can keep the doors open — for you to hang out, arrange meetings with friends, kill time, read books, nap, log onto and browse the internet, blog, write, research, collaborate, network, tutor, learn, connect, launch a business or idea, and recoup after a long day of doing all of the above with a slice of cheesecake and a latte.

[If I have my druthers, you’d also be able to do all this with a pint of Guinness or a glass of port, as I’d love to run a bookstore with a pub on the bottom floor. I am a visionary. I dream Big.]

Say people stop buying ‘paper’ books entirely:

What is my raison d‘être?

Experience, expertise, product knowledge, and internet savvy. And a love of books.

No matter what the format, I am a bookseller. E-books complicates the whole mess but doesn’t change my goals:

I Am A Bookseller. And I have a backup plan: I’ll blog about and sell you e-Books, if that is my last option, though I hold a special place in my heart for the physical books printed on dead trees. But I plan to keep the doors open as long as I can, for all those non-book uses for a bookstore that everyone loves but nobody pays for.