Rocket Bomber - article - retail - Rethinking the Box: The Craziest Idea Yet.

Rethinking the Box is my series of essays on new ideas in bookselling.

Previously:

Study your History. Recognise your Motives. Location, Location, Location. Know your Customer Base, and your Staff. Hire folks who love books. 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.

Unique Bookstore Experiences: Zero – Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

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 – 25 – 26 – 27 – 28 – 29 – 30 – 31 – 32

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Buy a smaller cruise ship, used — c’mon, they’re building massive ships these days, i.e. The Allure of the Seas et al. — these new ones are huge — but we don’t need all that. Tear out the pool, the casino, the putting green, half the buffets, half the cabins, and all the other crap — and install book shelves.

Oh, keep a few restaurants. And a coffee shop. And at least one bar/pub. But otherwise?

Go wild — can we have a 150,000 sq.ft. bookstore, four times the size of even the flagship New York bookstores? — along with just enough cabins for booklovers who want to book reserve a cruise on the worlds only floating bookstore?

Can we go even bigger? I don’t know; just how big is a cruise ship anyway?

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Ports of call:

Dublin, every Bloomsday.
London
Barcelona
Rome
Athens
Alexandria
Jiddah, the Red Sea port closest to Mecca
Abu Dhabi/Dubai/Qatar
Mumbai
Tuticorin
Singapore
Sydney
Wellington
Fiji
Hong Kong
Shanghai
Teipei
Osaka
Tokyo
Hawaii
San Diego [in time for Comic Con? Who knows…]
San Lucas
Acapulco
Costa Rica
Panama
…and however long it takes one to get out of the Caribbean ;)
Miami
Charleston
Anapolis
New York
Boston
and back across the Atlantic, to make port in Dublin on 16 June.

We pick up books wherever we can — though we take long draughts in London and the US ports-of-call.

We only charge passengers for the books they take home; any reading they do on the ship is free.

Especially in late winter and spring, when we’re frequenting American shores (North, Central, and Caribbean) invite authors aboard for workshops, and fan meet-and-greets, and perhaps even a symposia of my own invention: “I have the ship, we’re cruising sunny seas, c’mon down” (my marketing department will be able to dress that up)

So long as I’m supposing future bookstore models, something I’d never be able to open without major financial support — this is at least as realistic as at least half the bookstore ideas I’ve had to date.