Rocket Bomber - article - retail - snark - First of Two Rants on the New Realities of Bookselling

edit, 26 June: some portions of this essay, as originally posted, have been removed to comply generally with my employer’s media policy, and more specifically with our code of business conduct & ethics

Also, please note: all opinions expressed are my own and both should not and can not be interpreted as an official statement or position of my employer.

##

Two bookstores run by my competitor closed last month. This would normally be cause for rejoicing, right?

Except the closure of any bookstore leaves my community poorer, and (generally speaking) the current trend for my beloved employer is to open bookstores out in the suburbs—anchor tenant at the mall, particularly—not in-town locations.

Atlanta is a metropolitan area of five million or so, and a regional hub besides – but we’re hardly a beacon of culture, or a “Global City” (despite the presence of CNN, Georgia Tech, Emory, and the Centers for Disease Control). Many smaller cities, among them Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Nashville — even San Diego, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Baltimore, Portland, and Austin — are more vital to our culture, and nicer places to live besides. I don’t have time to do a bookstores-per-capita ranking at the moment, but I can guarantee Atlanta isn’t high up on that list.

We’re the city you have to fly through. The old joke is that if someone tells you to go to hell, you’ll have to take the connecting flight through Atlanta.

##

Here’s my new reality: inside of Atlanta City Limits, my store is now one of just three major bookstores. [There are a couple of college bookstores, and two rather nice—but very small—indies, but that’s it.]

In fact, for about a quarter million people

Suddenly, we’re the only game in town. For roughly twice that number (the half million that live in zip codes 30033, 30305, 30306, 30309, 30318, 30319, 30324, 30326, 30327, 30329, 30341, 30342, 30345, and 30363) we’re either their primary bookstore or one that is about as far to drive to as anything else — including other branches in my chain.

And right now, it seems like each and every one of the 173,553 households within 5 miles of my bookstore has at least one kid looking for summer reading books. This is a headache of the first order — not only to order in the books (for 2 large districts, 3 major private schools, and altogether about 60 schools in total) but because 90% of you people can’t remember to bring the list to the bookstore

Yes, [*sigh*], we do have your school reading lists.

I had to assign a bookseller to go on the internet, look up each school’s website, print the list — for each grade — and then assemble our reading list binder — the same thing we’ve done for the past 7 years and we’re happy to help but damn, people, when in the hell did this become the *bookstores'* responsibility? It’s your damn kid. We are in no way affiliated with any school, public or private, and we only go through this kabuki dance because we’re in it for the money.

Is THIS the lesson you want to teach your kid? That you can depend on corporations to cover the slack and to take up your responsibilities as students, citizens, adults, and thinking individuals because we can make a dollar off of your ignorant ass?

[It takes two days — one bookseller for 2 entire 8 hour shifts — to find, print, and collate all the damn reading lists for all the schools in our area. If one were a student at one of these fine institutions, and, oh, I don’t know – you were assigned these books, up to and including being handed a list of them at school it would take you all of five minutes, if that.]

[Yes, dammit, I’m bitter: This Is Not My Job. And I feel that I’m contributing to the stupification* of society by enabling you. *I Do Not Work In A Bookstore To Make Society Stupid* — actually, my motives are almost exactly the opposite. I want to scream at you people.]

##

Anyway,

Suddenly, I’m the only bookstore in town, and just as students book-up for summer reading besides.

Yes, this means sales are up.

No, even though the two closest bookstores closed and now I’m the only bookstore for miles around, my sales did not actually triple.

I can’t divulge actual sales numbers, as that is proprietary information and My Beloved Corporate Overlords frown on that sort of thing, but I can tell you that our sales are up by a fraction.

…

I will say, it’s nice to hit the arbitrary sales targets set by corporate. Even more cheering is beating last years’ numbers. What hurts [personally, physically] is doing these increased sales on fully half the payroll we were using 3 years ago.

Yes. There are only half as many booksellers today, as existed in 2008. *Not* including the store closings, but in the stores still open: half.

…

You know, I can only think that 15 or 20 years from now, a lot of folks in creative and inventive occupations will be able to reminisce about their time spent as a bookseller, a job that just doesn’t exist anymore. It’s not that the need for booksellers went away, it’s that some goober at corporate forgot which business he was in, and could no longer ‘justify’ the ‘expense’ of staff.

Someone help me.

##

I did not bring anger & contempt with me, when I took the job 10 years ago. It was not part of our corporate culture — and is not part of our corporate culture, to be fair. And while I occasionally am very tired at work, and can’t always scrounge up a smile, I am always professional and polite, and as helpful as you, the customer, will allow me to be.

I only talk about you behind your back — in the breakroom, or on this blog.

And my frustrations with customers are only partly your fault, though of course there are some customers (not you) (but you know exactly the type, I’m sure) who can ruin one’s whole day:

I’ve been yelled at.
I’ve been summoned to help with a snap of the fingers.
I’ve been accused of hiding the books.

I’ve seen people sit down and eat fried chicken, and beans right from the can, while sitting down in the middle of the floor between the bookcases.

I’ve had customers bring in dogs [pets, not service animals], and have had to clean the carpet afterward.

And the way some customers abuse the restroom facilities is apalling. You wouldn’t believe it, even if I told you.

But over the past three years, as the economy slowly drifted into a recession, our corporate culture has changed:

Once, I used to work a service job – the thought was, if we take care of the customer, then the sales would naturally follow — maybe not today, but eventualy. It was about building the relationship, investing in community goodwill, and making sure our stores were open, inviting, bright, and full of books.

As the bookselling industry changed, I got hit from both directions:

My customers still loved coming into the store but would also quite happily kick me in the balls and spit in my face to save a couple of bucks on a book. Few thought of it in those terms, as the most common expression of the sentiment was, “Oh, I’ll just order that from Amazon” – but it has the same impact. The fact that so many did it unthinkingly is just salt in the wound.

From the other side, corporate slowly squeezed the stores – first to make up for slower sales, then to find money to launch a digital business, and finally because nothing else seemed to be working. Only lip-service was paid to the old customer-service commitment, as my corporate overlords still kept a few of the mottos and slogans but gutted my ability to follow through, primarily by cutting staff. And suddenly everything had a reported percentage and a goal, most often a target I wasn’t reaching, “and what are you doing to meet these targets, hmm?” – I don’t know, maybe I could sell books? Please let me sell books?

The sorts of things that would have helped — that in fact have helped — had nothing to do with stores, and could not be addressed on an individual store level no matter what corporate expectations were. Sales didn’t see any sort of improvement until we had a solid digital product to offer (not true until November of last year, and even then it would have been better to launch with all the features, not just six months later with a software update) and the company finally remembered national advertising — how any retail chain expects to succeed without advertising is beyond me — and benefits from both of these could have been further enhanced with increased staffing in the stores.

Think back, to the Barnes & Noble or Borders you shopped at in 2005 — two years before Kindle, when both chains were still expanding, and helping customers find books was still our primary focus. Back before every table and chair was filled with a laptop owner mooching wifi, back before any available outlet found (no matter how out of the way, or what might be blocking it) invariably has someone sitting on the floor next to it, charging a phone or awkwardly balancing a netbook. Back when the store was twice as busy — but you could still find a place to sit.

Imagine the bookstore-of-2005 with the new devices, and accessories, and help from tech-saavy staff — plus the usual staff at an information desk, to help with the books.

And in addition that all of that: imagine a beaming, happy falstaffian figure, filled with genuine good cheer and seemingly always on the verge of chuckling, a man who obviously loves good stories, who is topped to the very brim with book facts and trivia in all sorts of topics, a veritable walking encyclopedia who is ready to step in and help any of his booksellers with the really tough questions, or to immediately come up with the title based on the very few details you have (without ever looking at a computer) — someone who seems to know and care for each book like a beloved child, and who obviously loves the fact that he works in a bookstore.

Instead, when you come in to the bookstore these days, what you get is a slightly out-of-breath, harried man who, while polite, still manages to convey a sense of bland irritation at your interruption. Of course he knows the book you’re looking for, but he has little time to do more than hand it to you before he hurries off to… something. It seems like he is everywhere: kids, music, running a register, explaining to yet another laptop owner how to connect to the wifi, troubleshooting an ereader, or patiently explaining what an ‘ebook’ is to a customer who doesn’t quite get it. He’s even answering questions and giving directions to three other customers in the few seconds it takes you follow him to the bookshelf where he finds your book.

He has dark circles under his eyes. Was that a barely audible sigh, right before he asked how he could help? And… is he running the whole store by himself? This place is huge, that can’t be right…

##

I did not bring anger & contempt with me, when I took the job 10 years ago.

But it has found me. It slowly crept up, and 2 years ago overtook me, and lodged itself next to the place where I keep my love of books. I can contain it, but the odd snarky comment leaks out once a week or so – typically on the blog. My sense of humor was once dry and witty, but is now darkly cynical.

I thought it would get better when the economy improved, that rising sales would save me and the bookstore. I’m starting to doubt that. And as the corporate focus has definitely shifted from Service to Sales, I have to wonder if I’ll ever get back to the job I used to do, and used to love.