Rocket Bomber

[blockquote]
“The first ‘Star Wars’ movie is very hard to watch because it isn’t very good. The scenes go on too long. R2D2 and C3PO are in the desert forever. After the Millennium Falcon lands on the Death Star and before it escapes, the movie becomes a series of contrived situations from which our heroes must extricate themselves. The trash compactor scene is just Luke yelling ‘3PO!’ over and over.

…

“The second ‘Star Wars’ is by far the best. The miracle of the ‘Star Wars’ movies is how much better the second one is than the first. One big reason is that the production value is much higher. This makes sense. They got to spend 50% more making it. There are still some props that look like re-purposed trash cans, but hello, imperial walkers.

“In many ways, ‘Empire Strikes Back’ is the movie that invents the ‘Star Wars’ universe. It was the film that got to decide which pieces of the first movie should be emphasized going forward. Winners: The relationship between Han and Leia. The human side of Darth Vader. Losers: Luke’s buddies from Tatooine.”[/blockquote]

Blows it, Yoda does : http://www.businessinsider.com/blows-it-yoda-does-i-watched-the-star-wars-movies-for-the-first-time-in-10-years-and-heres-what-i-learned-2013-10

Sometimes a tweet is just the right length for what needs to be said.

A quick quip, or a instant reaction to someone else, or a nod of the head over there so you can check out a website or a funny picture I just found. It doesn’t need to be permanent. A tweet doesn’t need commentary; and of course the 118 characters (140 minus the 22 Twitter exacts for a automatically shortened link) is also a limiting factor.

Rules are good, though. In poetry, especially, I find I usually can’t even bother unless there is a rigid meter and rhyming structure. Limits are also good. Many a run-on sentence could use a break (or five) to clarify points, and often the 3rd or 4th dependent clause would do just as well (and have more punch) if forced to live on its own, outside of the comma-bridged habitat.

There is of course Tumblr, which is also a microblogging service — well actually, there is nothing to stop you from posting essays or huge galleries on tumblr except for the unwritten rules and ‘societal norms’ that predominate there. I have a tumblog already, which exists (at the moment) only to reblog the witty and funny stuff of others. Tumblr is a rich vein. [It is also a tad wild; despite the more recent Yahoo ownership it is very easy to find Tumblr’s not-safe-for-work side.]

I don’t see why I should post to Tumblr, though, as no matter how devoted a following I might find there, my words would belong to someone else. The platform is fine, and the tools convenient, but the whole construct of Tumblr is one-major-media-story away from Being Exposed To The Public with the inevitable backlash and corporate over-reaction and user exodus. David built something amazing over there, though; as he is still involved in the day-to-day, maybe Tumblr will avoid becoming just another Geocities- or MySpace-like internet footnote.

…And of course, most of my objections apply to Twitter as well: I don’t own that space, and while I can download an archive, without the twitter-owned platform those snippets-of-wit are close to useless.

It’s not the words—the tweets—that matter, but rather the connections. For that small group, the 80 or so people I “follow” who happen to “follow” me back, Twitter is an ongoing conversation, and the value we derive from Twitter is directly related to those connections. Sure, we could do the same thing on IRC or in a Forum somewhere (or even Usenet, or a BBS) — but Twitter has the advantage of already being on your smart phone and also enjoys a right-place-right-time advantage that is notoriously difficult to duplicate.

[every tech startup wants to be “The Next” — the next Facebook, the next Twitter, the next Angry Birds, whatever — but the difficult part is being original, and implementing well, and building. Twitter outsourced a bit of this, with their once lenient API, and also let the users define the service and the experience — not that they had that intention but Twitter adopted retweets, hash tags, and even the “@” after the fact.]

ANYWAY…

I have to ask myself why I give all this great content to others? Why not post it here? I own the domain, I can mess with the CMS and CSS style sheets to my heart’s content, from the backend I can queue posts as easily as I could schedule an afternoon of tweets…

[Actually, I could do a lot more with the CMS… I should look at updating the software, at minimum.]

Quite a few of the blogs I read most often are “link blogs” or other curators and aggregators — Not news sites but the creative-funky-weird-and-wonderful-stuff that we all love about the internet. On a good day (once or twice a year) I might even be able to shamelessly copy the formula match their output.

I won’t know until I try.

On Twitter, I have ~500 followers, and as mentioned the 80 or so folks who aren’t lurkers or spam accounts, but there is also the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend effect, so my reach is closer to 1000, or maybe 2500? Who knows?

For RocketBomber the only stat I can be sure of is the 30 or so people using the RSS feed. The catch-22, though, is that my subscriptions are low because the post frequency is correspondingly low: If I don’t write how can you read it?

…And there is nothing to say I can’t also use other media. [!]

While I’m at loose ends for a bit, at the very least I should give this a try.

As I personally experience epic changes, the blog will of course reflect that.

For the past five years and more, I’ve been focused (more or less) on bookstores, and bookselling, and books.

I love books. Books are my personal friends. That will not change, and will not ever change.

My passion for books—and bookstores—will not change no matter what my employment.

My willingness to provide free advice to corporate booksellers: things they might be doing, or trying, or changing? Well, that ends today. No More Freebies. However, as I explore the expanded issues of urban renewal, repurposing old spaces for new uses, gentrification, building both walkable retail districts and walkable multi-use neighborhoods, making cities Work:

Well,

I think that’s a rich vein of blog topics for me to mine.

Even if I am no longer directly employed as a bookseller I don’t see much else changing here at RocketBomber.

[*sniff*] “so I got that goin’ for me, which is nice”

There have been just 4 transitions in ‘publication’ in recorded history:

Oral to written word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing#The_beginning_of_writing

Note here: the invention and widespread adoption of writing in general is why we have a recorded history to begin with. So from 200,000 BCE or thereabouts until 3000 BCE – The ancient Atlanteans could have met and defeated both the Giants from Space and the Lizard People from the Center of the Earth, but since they didn’t write anything down, we just don’t know. Could an advanced society exist without literacy? I don’t know; the internet seems to do OK [*rimshot*]

— a strong master/apprentice system would work, and if one can get hands-on with any mechanical technology while an expert simultaneously explains it to you, then you can likely get by; European medieval tech reached some pretty awesome heights (clockworks, windmills, agriculture, architecture, small-shop manufacturing) while being 99.9% illiterate.

Aside: Atlantean High School Shop Class was probably awesome

Hand-written copies to movable-type/printing press: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press

Movable type is great stuff, but the addition of the “press” made such an impression [heh.] that “press” is still a short-hand for much of the publication industry.

Note here: the basic tech behind Gutenberg (woodcarving unto blocks, or casting metal to make type; a vertically operated press to apply uniformly distributed force unto a flat plane) existed as early as the Roman Empire, 1st Century CE: the term “press” derives from the operationally-identical wine presses that had been in use for over 1000 years by the time Gutenberg sets up shop (records are sparse, understandably, but Wikipedia cites 1436.)

It might be best to compare Gutenberg to Henry Ford – neither was the sole inventor or innovator of the technologies they combined, but each engendered a revolution after that combination of several ideas birthed a single new production method that could be adopted and adapted by others.

I just handed someone a graduate thesis. [again.]

Vertical to Rotary:

Most of you were following along just fine right up to this point.

{sigh.} I’m striving to do this without puns (without additional puns) but I can’t: Rotary Printing was revolutionary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_printing_press

There are a number of ways to translate linear motion into rotary motion (the internal combustion engine springs to mind) but on an industrial scale, whether we consider wind- and waterwheels, steam turbines, or electrical motors — the ‘native’ form of many (if not most) power options is rotary. If one were looking to build an industrial-scale ‘press’, eventually you have to abandon the ‘press’ part, technologically if not linguistically.

The advantage of rotary is speed. The progress continues despite any obstacle (so long as we can still talk to each other) but the acceleration of knowledge is an integral function dependent on speed.

From an artistic standpoint, quality physical 4-color offset printing is amazing. Not an ultimate evolved form, but certainly an Optimal Expression, like marble and bronze from the Classical eras, or oil painting of the 1700s, or progressive rock from the 1970s.

I just handed someone a graduate thesis. [again.]

Rotary printing technology fueled the publishing boom from 1904 until 1992: faster was better, cheaper cost structures meant expansion into riskier (that is to say: more interesting) genres, empires of print were built and prospered until they got bought out by conglomerates, and it was all fun and games and profits until Internet.

Physical to Digital:

Until 1904, change took centuries. — oh, I suppose change has always been ‘rapid’, but scales of both time and geography were much more of an obstacle to Gutenberg in the 1450s than they are to the author-publisher or blogger of today.

In 1904, a major technological change was all-but-handed-to established publishing houses (and newspapers) who could use the innovations on the ‘back end’, unseen production to rapidly accelerate their other, primary function: namely, sales of the printed word to the public. The technology was quickly adopted before it could become disruptive. In fact, it’d be another 6 decades or so before an ‘indy’ press could evolve, though the pulps of the 40s and 50s were certainly a precursor.

[and the indy press of the 1960s counter-culture relied not on industrial scale but now-inexpensive ‘antique’ hand-operated printing tech — one more graduate thesis, you’re welcome.]

Digital is not just an innovation in the back-end production, though. Distribution and customer demand are also directly impacted; our modern internet is much more like the free-for-all book market of 17th century Europe combined with the proto-newspapers of the late 18th century.

[Graduate theses, two of ‘em in fact: pick distribution or demand. No more freebies, though — from here you’re on your own.]

##

Given that the ‘digital’ book revolution is only 42 years old at this point [Sorry, Amazon – you didn’t invent this market; you’re 36 years late to the party] I’d say, from a historical perspective—if not a business one—it is still way too early to call.

What we can expect from the new technology is that nothing is going to be the same again —

while also: there are certain aspects of writing that have been true since 1021 CE and the industry that has arisen since is just one more tool we, as authors, can use to be known — to get published.

From Atlantis to Homer to Horace to Gutenberg to Random Penguin.

• From the origin of speech until 3000 BCE: hundreds of thousands of years.
• From cuneiform to papyrus, from papyrus to vellum, from vellum to paper; millennia of technological progress: but the transition that matters is from scribes to print, 3000 BCE to 1450 CE.
• Print fosters scientific discussion, and engineering, and math; and eventually patents, and corporations, and corporate competition. In 1904, industry returns the favor with industrial scale printing technologies.
• And then, suddenly, digital and internet.

Hundreds of thousands of years, To thousands of years, To a single century, To a handful of decades, To Now.

Unless the whole of technology and civilization suddenly slows down: having everything change ‘overnight’ (once a year or so) is going to be expected. The hard part now is that technology is advancing faster than humans can accept and adopt it. The natural pace of change, on a human scale, is a single human lifetime.

How many changes can you accept in your lifetime? You and I will likely be more adaptable than some (who can’t program a VCR and don’t “do” computers) but even so: Our grandkids will come up with solutions to these technological ‘problems’ that seem alien to us.

#newblogtopicidea

For the past year, I’ve had a single ‘go to’ non-fiction recommendation for customers at the store: The Black Count. It’s an excellent pick, as it combines aspects of military history and biography with some of the more obvious tie-ins to the works of Alexandre Dumas, the writer (Alexandre Dumas père, as the general’s grandson, Alexandre Dumas fils was also a writer).

The life story of General Dumas — of the times he lived through, of his unique place in them — is very compelling reading.

Like I said, I’ve been handselling this book for a year already. When The Black Count won the Pulitzer back in April I wasn’t surprised, and it made the sales pitch even easier. The paperback was released in May, and once again: this only made the job of selling this book that much easier. (Yes, I was pushing this book even as a $27 hardcover). I’ve been doing this for a full year now — it’s been featured on the BBC and NPR and my customers still haven’t heard of it. It’s obvious to me but I seem like a genius bookseller whenever I pull this pick out of my ‘back pocket’.

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
by Tom Reiss
ISBN 9780307382474, Broadway Books (Random House)
From the publisher: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/140278/the-black-count-by-tom-reiss
see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Count:_Glory,_Revolution,_Betrayal,_and_the_Real_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
see also: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/books/review/the-black-count-by-tom-reiss.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Jacket copy:
“SLAVE. SOLDIER. LIBERATOR. HERO. General Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar — because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. But, hidden behind General Dumas’s swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave — who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution—until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat. TIME magazine called The Black Count ‘one of those quintessentially human stories of strength and courage that sheds light on the historical moment that made it possible.’ It is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.”

The Package Tour is a new feature* for the blog, a way for me to review books (and other media) in the way most comfortable for me. Sometimes, writing a review seems much too much like writing a book report, and it’s been a looong time since I was in university, let along grade school. And I’ll be more honest: a book review is *not* how we sell books. Folks come in, and they ask for a ‘cold’ recommendation (see The Black Count op cit.) or after some back-and-forth and conversation, and figuring out customer preferences and predilections, we warm up to a topic and I get to riff. I’m good at that part – I read a little bit of everything, I’m a freakin’ trivia machine, and I’m awfully hard to stump; I don’t know if this is real job skill or not, but it makes me one hell of a bookseller.

Today, for this tour, we’re taking The Black Count as our point of departure.

Additional Background:

The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution
by Alexis de Tocqueville
ISBN 9780141441641 (paperback), Penguin Classics
From the Publisher: http://www.us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141441641,00.html?Ancien_Regime_and_the_French_Revolution_Alexis_de_Tocqueville
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Regime_and_the_Revolution

Jacket copy:
“A powerful new translation of de Tocqueville’s influential look at the origins of modern France. In this penetrating study, Alexis de Tocqueville considers the French Revolution in the context of France’s history. De Tocqueville worried that although the revolutionary spirit was still alive and well, liberty was no longer its primary objective. Just as the first Republic had fallen to Napoleon and the second had succumbed to his nephew Napoleon III, he feared that all future revolutions might experience the same fate, forever imperiling the development of democracy in France.”

From the Penguin Classics website:
“The Ancien Régime and the Revolution is a comparison of revolutionary France and the despotic rule it toppled. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) is an objective observer of both periods – providing a merciless critique of the ancien régime, with its venality, oppression and inequality, yet acknowledging the reforms introduced under Louis XVI, and claiming that the post-Revolution state was in many ways as tyrannical as that of the King; its once lofty and egalitarian ideals corrupted and forgotten.
“Writing in the 1850s, Tocqueville wished to expose the return to despotism he witnessed in his own time under Napoleon III, by illuminating the grand, but ultimately doomed, call to liberty made by the French people in 1789. His eloquent and instructive study raises questions about liberty, nationalism and justice that remain urgent today”

As noted by wikipedia, the title is also translated as The Old Regime and the Revolution, and as de Tocqueville is in the public domain: many different versions are available. (good luck finding a decent e-book version — but on the other hand, plenty of the crap versions are Free, so download away) (Project Gutenberg didn’t have an edition of this title at time of posting).

Yes, your memory of high school history class is correct, de Tocqueville is also the ‘Democracy in America’ guy — de Tocqueville wrote his history of the revolution in the 1850s, well after events and their fall-out, and he was not a wide-eyed citizen-patriot and kool-aid drinking romantic. His take on the events that followed the revolution is remarkably cynical and modern. His language (even in translation) is not particularly modern; if you have trouble with ‘the classics’ (Dickens, Austen, Brontës et al.) you might seek out different sources.

Vive la Revolution: A Stand-up History of the French Revolution
by Mark Steel
ISBN 9781931859370, Haymarket Books (distr. by Consortium)
From the publisher: http://www.consortiumacademic.com/book.php?isbn=9781931859370

Jacket copy:
“Vive la Revolution is an uproariously serious work of history. Brilliantly funny and insightful, it puts individual people back at the center of the story of the French Revolution, telling this remarkable story as it has never been told before. For the Haymarket edition, Steel has added a new preface for North American readers and revised the book to address parallel themes in US history.”

Mark Steel on wikipedia:
“A stand-up comedian known for his left-wing beliefs (he was a long-standing member of the Socialist Workers Party before he resigned in 2007), he has made many appearances on radio and television shows as a guest panellist, and has written regular columns in printed media.”

The French Revolution was not a laugh-a-minute occurrence; however, if your only knowledge of the event comes from Mel Brooks’ History of the World you should definitely supplement that with Steel’s ‘stand-up’ history.

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
by Caroline Weber
ISBN 9780312427344, Picador (Macmillan)
From the publisher: http://us.macmillan.com/queenoffashion/CarolineWeber

Jacket copy:
“When her carriage first crossed over from her native Austria into France, fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette was taken out, stripped naked before an entourage, and dressed in French attire to please the court of her new king. For a short while, the young girl played the part.
“But by the time she took the throne, everything had changed. In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber tells of the radical restyling that transformed the young queen into an icon and shaped the future of the nation. With her riding gear, her white furs, her pouf hairstyles, and her intricate ballroom disguises, Marie Antoinette came to embody—gloriously and tragically—all the extravagance of the monarchy.”

Especially for Rose of Versailles [oops, getting ahead of myself; see below] it would be good to brush up on at least one biography of Marie Antoinette — and there certainly are plenty to choose from — but over the other bios and even the novels based on her life, I think Queen of Fashion does the best job. The major historical ‘plot points’ get hit, and on top of that you get quite a bit of insight into the social scene and how the court of Louis XVI worked. Also in that light:

Versailles: A Biography of a Palace
by Tony Spawforth
ISBN 9780312603465, St. Martin’s Griffin (Macmillan)
From the publisher: http://us.macmillan.com/versailles/TonySpawforth

Jacket copy:
“The story of Versailles is one of high historical drama mixed with the high camp and glamour of the European courts, all in an iconic home for the French arts. The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid.
“Using the latest historical research, Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. He probes the conventional picture of this ‘perpetual house party’ and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging palace but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats, as well as the changing place of Versailles in France’s national identity since 1789.
“Many books have told the stories of the royals and artists living in Versailles, but this is the first to turn its focus on the palace itself—from architecture to politics to scandal to restoration.”

Especially for some of the pre-Revolutionary stories – a study of Versailles grounds one; this is a case where the events of the day really are married to the space-and-relative-dimensions-in-time**.

The only modern equivalent I can think of is Washington, DC, “inside the beltway” — where architecture and geography seem to define—or at least shape—policy and politics. If nothing else, in the 1770s they were dressed better.

##

The most obvious pieces of fiction to tie into The Black Count are classics: The Count of Monte Cristo, natch, and Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities; for Monte Cristo there are a number of well thought-of film adaptations, though it seems that there isn’t a decent version of Two Cities — well, there is a 1935 film and a 1989 made-for-tv version, but nothing to stack against a good BBC Austen Romp or a Branagh Shakespearean Excess.

Less well known is Dumas’s novel Georges, a “riviting novel” of “swashbuckling adventure”, “a slave rebellion, duels, and battles at sea”, at least according to the jacket copy; I readily admit I haven’t read it myself. The main character, though, is a mixed-race French colonial who is well received in Parisian social circles, but who eventually runs afoul of the white establishment. After you read Reiss’s biography of the General Alex Dumas, the parallels are painfully obvious. Literary scholars, at least according to Wikipedia, note the book as a precursor to the more successful Count of Monte Cristo, which reused several of the ideas and plot devices. (kudos to Alexandre for responsible recycling.)

I’d also remind readers about The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy [one ISBN 9780451527622, many versions to choose from; see also wikipedia, Project Gutenberg] — The Pimp. is basically French Revolution Batman (which is nowhere near as awesome as it could be) and is a delightful enough diversion if one is in the mood for duels and daring-do.

Personally, when it comes to the Napoleonic Wars, I find my own reading dominated by the ships: Patrick O’Brian, of course [The Aubrey/Maturin series, book one is Master and Commander (ISBN 9780393307054), set in 1800] and C.S. Forester’s Hornblower [I’d start with Beat to Quarters (ISBN 9780316289320), and then go back and begin chronologically with Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (ISBN 9780316289122), set in 1794; check this guide and wikipedia for additional detail]

Lesser known are Dudley Pope, who wrote the Lord Ramage series, which starts with Ramage in 1796 [ISBN 9780935526769, wikipedia] and Alexander Kent with his Richard Bolitho series, initially set in 1772 [start with The Complete Midshipman Bolitho, ISBN 9781590131275; see also wikipedia].

If you quickly sour on the nautical, I do have one more pick in reserve: Bernard Cornwell is an all-around great historical action/adventure writer, and his best known character is Sharpe; Sean Bean played Richard Sharpe for TV — a great place to start, highly recommended, not currently easy to purchase but it can be done with work/searches/ebay, and just to watch: also via DVD rental through the kind offices of Netflix. If after all that you (like me) still want to read the books I’d start with Sharpe’s Tiger [ISBN 9780060932305], set in 1799, and read them in chronological order [check the about.com guide or wikipedia for addition info; the US editions usually have the setting date on the spine as they were written out of chronological order]

That’s a lot of British history though — odd, that books written in English would focus so hard on the British…

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
by Sandra Gulland
ISBN 9780684856063, Touchstone (Simon & Schuster)
From the publisher: https://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=1326&isbn=9780684856063

Jacket Copy:
“In this first of three books inspired by the life of Josephine Bonaparte, Sandra Gulland has created a novel of immense and magical proportions. We meet Josephine in the exotic and lush Martinico, where an old island woman predicts that one day she will be queen. The journey from the remote village of her birth to the height of European elegance is long, but Josephine’s fortune proves to be true. By way of fictionalized diary entries, we traverse her early years as she marries her one true love, bears his children, and is left betrayed, widowed, and penniless. It is Josephine’s extraordinary charm, cunning, and will to survive that catapults her to the heart of society, where she meets Napoleon, whose destiny will prove to be irrevocably intertwined with hers.”

Gulland’s trilogy is, as a pick (shall I say), pretty damn obvious. Let me pick a series you haven’t read yet:

Napoleon’s Pyramids (Ethan Gage Series #1)
by William Dietrich
ISBN 9780062191489, HarperCollins
From the publisher: http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Napoleons-Pyramids-William-Dietrich/?isbn=9780062191489
see also: http://williamdietrich.com/ethan-gage-series/

Jacket copy:
“The world changes for Ethan Gage — onetime assistant to the renowned Ben Franklin — on a night in post-revolutionary Paris when he wins a mysterious medallion in a card game. Framed soon after for the murder of a prostitute and facing the grim prospect of either prison or death, the young expatriate American barely escapes France with his life — choosing instead to accompany the new emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, on his gamble to conquer Egypt. With Lord Nelson’s fleet following close behind, Gage is entangled with generals, archaeologists, and mystics. And in a land of ancient wonder and mystery, with the help of a beautiful Macedonian slave, he will come to realize that the cursed prize he won at the gaming table may be the key to solving one of history’s greatest and most perilous riddles: Who built the Great Pyramids … and why?“

Finally, an American we can root for. [*snicker*]

Looking beyond the rarefied realm of classic lit is, obviously, more fun. After a grounding in history, the various fictional side-lines make more sense, and honestly: I find these books even more enjoyable in context.

Now: If we are now well-and-truly-grounded in the time and place and books — Let’s riff:

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo
Rightstuf has the complete DVD set on sale right now for the ridiculous price of $17.99 [obviously time dependent, article posted 22 Sep 2013]

Nothing says ‘adaptation’ quite like taking Dumas’s titular hero and turning him into a blue elf from beyond the Moon. —I’m only half kidding. Maybe less than half. That said, this is a visually arresting anime, decently plotted, and true-enough to the source material; I enjoyed it.

Cover blurb:
“Albert is a young man of privilege in Paris, but the trappings of his aristocratic birth leave him bored and unsatisfied. Seeking adventure, Albert’s restless spirit leads him to a festival on the moon – and to the Count of Monte Cristo.
“An enigmatic man of charm and wealth, the Count of Monte Cristo’s charisma and sophistication captivate Albert. The fascinated youth invites the nobleman to mingle within the upper echelons of Parisian society, and the Count is soon courting the favor of France’s most powerful families. Little does Albert know, as his new friend walks the ornate halls of the highest class, the Count of Monte Cristo wants only to bring them crashing down through vengeance.”

Volumes of the Gankutsuou manga are available, but stick to the anime on this one.

Le Chevalier D’eon
http://www.rightstuf.com/1-800-338-6827/catalogmgr/iORJY6nWMu8TaH26M=/browse/item/85163/4/0/0
“Paris, 1742. A coffin floats in the shimmering Seine. On the lid, a word written in blood: ‘Psalms.’ Inside, the body of a beautiful woman: Lia de Beaumont. Now her brother, D’Eon, seeks the reason for her mysterious murder and uncovers an evil that casts shadows in both the palaces of kings and the dark alleys of Europe. A power wielded by spell-casting poets and manipulated by royalty. A force so powerful it brings Lia’s soul back from beyond to seize the only weapon she can possess to avenge her death – her own brother.”

There was a real Chevalier D’eon, whose life story would make a decent manga (espionage, intrigue, blackmail) but the life of the real Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d‘Éon de Beaumont has little to do with the manga/anime adaptation that currently bears the name D’Eon.

On to the crown jewel, as it were:

Rose of Versailles
part 1: http://www.rightstuf.com/1-800-338-6827/catalogmgr/iORJY6nWMu8TaH26M=/browse/item/97140/4/0/0
part 2: http://www.rightstuf.com/1-800-338-6827/catalogmgr/iORJY6nWMu8TaH26M=/browse/item/97141/4/0/0

Cover blurb:
“General Jarjayes, desperate for a son to preserve the family name and noble standing, names his newborn daughter ‘Oscar’ and chooses to raise her as a boy. Fourteen years later, Oscar is a masterful duelist, marksman, and the newly appointed Commander of the French Royal Guards. Her first task: to protect Marie Antoinette, who is engaged to the French prince and future king, Louis-Auguste.
Even though the planned marriage should provide both countries with some much needed peace and prosperity, the French court is a dangerous place. Marie’s youthful naivete makes her an easy target for those who wish to see the monarchy overthrown. Oscar soon finds herself both defending Marie’s reputation from those who seek to discredit her and protecting her life from those who wish to kill her.”

Reading about the back story of Rose of Versailles is almost as satisfying as the original: Ikeda wanted to write a manga story about Marie Antoinette, but Oscar quickly became the break-out fan favorite character

Sharps
By K. J. Parker
ISBN 9780316177757, Orbit (Hachette)
From the publisher: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kj-parker/sharps/9780316177757/
see also: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/07/a-conversation-in-steel-a-review-of-sharps-by-kj-parker, http://www.orbitbooks.net/author-spotlight-k-j-parker/

Jacket copy:
“K.J. Parker’s new novel is a perfectly executed tale of intrigue and deception.
“For the first time in nearly forty years, an uneasy truce has been called between two neighbouring kingdoms. The war has been long and brutal, fought over the usual things: resources, land, money…
“Now, there is a chance for peace. Diplomatic talks have begun and with them, the games. Two teams of fencers represent their nations at this pivotal moment.
“When the future of the world lies balanced on the point of a rapier, one misstep could mean ruin for all. Human nature being what it is, does peace really have a chance?”

Check the Orbit overview for more; Parker has written a number of historically-glossed fantasy novels featuring “duels and daring-do” — If you love the court intrigue and bare-bladed action of things like the Three Musketeers, but wanted something written with more modern language and more modern character motivations, you should start here.

Promise of Blood (Powder Mage Trilogy #1)
by Brian McClellan
ISBN 9780316219037, Orbit (Hachette) – Paperback coming 7 January 2014, ISBN 9780316219044
From the publisher: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-mcclellan/promise-of-blood/9780316219037/
see also: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/gunpowder-and-grit-a-review-of-promise-of-blood-by-brian-mcclellan

Jacket copy:

The Age of Kings is dead… and I have killed it.

It’s a bloody business overthrowing a king…
Field Marshal Tamas’ coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas’s supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces.

It’s up to a few…
Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail.

But when gods are involved…
Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing. But they should…

Even more than Game of Thrones (which I have kind-of-given-up-on, as Martin writes like glaciers advance) The Powder Mage Trilogy is the series I’m anticipating and following for the next couple of years.

##

[*note: this will be a new weekly column if this experiment works.]
[**yes, that was intentional. I almost didn’t use it, as it is a-bit-too-clever-by-half, smug and both self- and fan-aware. Neat turn of phrase though, if I do say so myself]

Thanks for reading through the whole article; I hope a few of my recommendations appealed to you.

If you’d like to recommend another “point of departure” for the next Package Tour, drop a suggestion in the comments or contact me via email/twitter.

“You see, if I believed that humans shopped for no other reason than to acquire goods, I might be more aligned with Andreessen’s view but in fact, we don’t shop just to get stuff – any more than we go to restaurants purely for nutrition. In fact, we often shop to fulfill other deeper needs as well – the need to disconnect, to socialize and to commune – and at times to simply be out in public. Why else would celebrities brave the hoards of paparazzi to shop for things they could undoubtedly have delivered to them on a silver platter? The physical, human experience of shopping is in some ways of far greater value than the goods that come along for the ride.”

The Future of The Retail Store : Doug Stephens, 24 July 2013

##

In the face of (what everyone tells me is) overwhelming competition from Amazon, or the internet generally, there’s no point in physical bookstores anymore.

The Bookstore has become a huge target, and one uniquely vulnerable, because everyone knows the bookstores are doomed — everyone agrees that either ebook downloads or internet retail (or the combination of the two) is qualitatively and quantitatively better than physically stocking books on shelves for eventual sale. Customer engagement, available titles, delivery logistics, price: on all these metrics the physical book — and that quaint anachronism, the ‘bookseller’ — have both been measured and found wanting.

In the new digital age, the dead-tree book is… superfluous? wasteful? The 21st century analogue of the 20th century buggy whip?

I don’t agree.

A lot of the discussion-slash-debate is about content and containers. Is a book the dead-tree object, or the words themselves? — or perhaps the ‘book’ is an aggregation of the ideas that are expressed by the words within. If the book is a collection of words in whatever format — whether that means a digital file stored on my hard drive, or my personal memory of a book stored in my head (and so: after I’ve read something, does that mean I’ve ‘pirated’ a copy of the book, a ‘good enough’ copy such that I don’t need to buy a physical OR digital version of the book?) — At this point, hell, what does it mean to “sell” a “book”. I’m confused.

Most Books (at least in 2013) are physical objects that exist in physical space. (Yes, most books are physical objects because no matter how much one loves digital or how easy it is to write vampire fiction, or to make digital copies of vampire fiction: that’s 5 years of digitization and sales history stacked against five centuries of mechanical printing backed by five millennia of publishing history.) Plus, for every e-cheerleader advocating digital, there is a ten year old clutching his physical copy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. (Not a senior citizen who hates computers and doesn’t cotton to your “new-fangled e-reeder” – a kid with a book. And in the United States, four million kids turn ten every year.) I feel there is plenty of life left in dead-tree-books.

Bookstores are physical spaces that, while originally designed to sell the damn books, have since been hijacked into being ersatz libraries and the default gathering space. I used to call this the “burden” of bookselling, especially of the corporate big-box-chain: we get used and abused by our customers daily. Folks camping out all day, reading magazines or browsing the $80 art books, buying nothing except maybe a coffee, generally making life difficult for other customers, and treating the place like home.

Social Nexus. Local Landmark. Meeting Point. Civic Centre. Third Place.

(Amusement Park?)

Here, watch this lovely time-capsule of a video from 1980:

William H. Whyte: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces – The Street Corner from MASNYC [The Municipal Art Society of New York] on Vimeo.

The video is not a parody, it’s the real deal. It’s also an hour long — If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, skip ahead to 38:40 for some hints on why bookstores sell coffee, or to 50:00 to see SandwichBoardVader, followed by the book stalls of Central Park — and the final 8 minutes of the vid (as Whyte wraps up his points) will give you a few conclusions, as well as the flavour of the whole.

edit 27 February 2014: Since Vimeo, at the request of whomever still owned the copyrights, saw fit to remove Whyte’s excellent educational short — irksome, but that’s the law — let me instead substitute a pair of YouTube videos on the same topic:

George C. Stoney’s How to Live in a City, “architectural critic Eugene Ruskin guides us through unique locales which illustrate the fine line between organic and sterile urban spaces. It all depends on a place’s ability to attract and sustain, even if only momentarily, a sense of community.”

George Morris, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Market Square

[/edit]

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces was also (or perhaps I should say, was primarily) a book in 1980, ISBN 9780970632418, available used these days; though now also available in a new edition from PPS, The Project for Public Spaces.

The reason I linked to and embedded the Whole Damn Video is that while this 1980 flashback isn’t just the first-ever study on how people use social space: it is also exactly how people treat bookstores today. Not enough seats? Any windowsill or stack of books will do. Chairs? Mere props, to be moved at will and to satisfy whims. Quiet, secluded corners? Hell, the bookstore is full of them and our guests and customers will freely move both tables and chairs to whichever corner best suits them — or camp out there on the floor.

You need a place to meet your friends before the movie; you need a neutral, safe location for the first/blind date; you need an easily-described, easily-found landmark as the venue for job interviews; you’re a tutor but for multiple reasons you can’t meet your students in your own home; you’re a student, it’s the end of the semester, and you know all the lounges, meeting rooms, hell even the hallways on campus are going to be packed: where do you and your classmates go to finish the next group project?

If your local bookstore is still open, and selling coffee besides: Duh, the bookstore is exactly the social space you need. The Library closes too early, restaurants and bars expect you to order, and pay for something, and oddly the outdoor parks and other public spaces are unfit for this use.

The only “public” space available is actually a corporate, private space that is also attempting to engage in retail. (Wouldn’t Ikea be better? They have more tables and chairs…)

Why is this a unique burden of bookstores? To maintain a social lounge even to the detriment of our primary business? For whatever reason, it seems that only the bookstore will do. For many, many customer expectations and interactions, the ‘bookstore’ has nothing to do with books.

##

Last essay, I quoted an Inc. Magazine piece [Paul J. H. Schoemaker, 21 Nov 2012] on re-thinking your products. Let me quote it again:

“For example, consider the widely used product life-cycle concept in marketing. This biological metaphor suggests that products naturally arise, grow, mature and die, just as individuals do. So if managers wedded to this view see a product’s sales decline for several quarters in a row, they would naturally think that the product is in decline. And once the product strategy is adjusted to reflect this presumed stage of decline, resources may be withdrawn and decline will quickly follow (as a self-fulfilling hypothesis)…

“Procter and Gamble as well as many other companies, however, reject the product life-cycle metaphor as unduly self-limiting. Rather than viewing the product as a single organism proceeding through its life stages, they view the product as the species itself. So, the product must be adapted to changing circumstances to remain viable.”

— And so, the first big question for booksellers, even before we get around to what needs to change: What the hell is our product?

Is our main product what we think it is?

“Bookselling” isn’t the sale of books. “Bookselling” is the agreed-upon social construct: In exchange for retail sales (and coffee/cafe sales) sufficient to support the whole, the Bookstore agreed to be an open reading room, meeting place, learning resource, occasional event space, and yes: the only retailer where you can sit down in the middle of the floor, take off your shoes, and hang out. That was the deal. Booksellers didn’t change the deal: our customers did. You did.

It is not that “bookselling” was no longer sustainable, but rather that readers wanted all of the services, advantages, and atmosphere traditionally enjoyed at a bookstore, but not enough folks were willing to pay their freight. And when the deal collapsed, once again this was spun as a failure of bookstores:

In 2007, technological change was compounded by the the worst recesssion in 80 years. Borders, already weakened, collapsed so fast many were willing to write off the whole industry. Every tech blogger and business writer ignored both the services bookstores were already providing to communities [urban, suburban, exurban] and discounted entirely the crap we booksellers were willing to put up with from our “customers”, and boiled it down to price: if it’s cheaper online obviously it’s better online and so, bookstores suck. Many were (and are) already writing us off as fossils — as they sit in our cafe, drinking our coffee while flipping through magazines they weren’t going to buy. Some don’t even pretend to shop — they just park it in a chair with a laptop, hogging a whole table, and use our free wifi to go online to denigrate bookstores generally on whichever platform: “It’s way too crowded, I had to wait 10 minutes for a seat to free up, and there aren’t nearly enough power outlets. I don’t know how this bookstore plans to stay in business.”

That said:

If bookstores are getting more than their fair share (hell, their share plus Everyone Else’s share) of freeloading in-store foot traffic, the obvious follow-up question is:

How do we monetize that traffic? (that sounds familiar for some reason…)

[image source, flickr, Robert Scoble, tagged ‘Shenzhen China book store’]

Here’s one take:
(spoiler: I strongly disagree)

“What would I do if I were running B&N today? Good question. I probably would take a close look at what Indigo, the B&N of Canada, is trying to do. It is attempting to become a lifestyle shopping destination in categories in which books play a consequential part but extending far past books. Categories like house and home, cooking, kids, babies, paper and self-help are tied to big book categories. Indigo can have a legitimate hope of creating a shopping experience across the category that integrates books-and-beyond in a compelling enough way to get enough traction with customers to fill up the store.”
Should Barnes & Noble Turn into a Mini-Mall? : Roger Martin, guest post on the Harvard Business Review blog network [blogs.hbr.org], 15 July 2013

If we can’t sell the books, how do we sell that other crap?

The primary “product” the bookstore is selling is atmosphere. A place to be, and to meet. To spend time with family and friends on a Saturday afternoon.

What product lines, what categories do you add to that? Jigsaw puzzles, stuffed animals, stationary? Really?

How about a couple of nice, sit-down restaurants, a decent pub, and a movie theater instead. We can get people into the bookstores — and then after an hour or four they go home, maybe with a book. It seems to me that selling books is a decent start (and an undeniable draw) but the customer experience and the shopping trip itself is our actual product. How about we offer our customers a decent lunch to go with that, or dinner-and-a-movie, or the book group that meets in the bookshop pub every Tuesday?

Bookstores are a destination. Bookstores are entertainment. [Why in the hell am I open until 11pm on a Friday for folks to hang out in else? Corporate has figured out only the very smallest part of this…] Don’t dilute the book store experience by turning it into Target (or worse, Walmart): The way out is not to add more retail lines, but to embrace the social and pleasurable aspects of hanging out in bookstores. Build the Bookstore version of an amusement park.

You know what everyone misses these days? Record Stores. An actual, sizable record store that had inventory, not just a couple of aisles, or a rack or bin of discount CDs by the register. “I used to be able to spend hours in a record store” – you don’t become a “lifestyle shopping destination” with more retail crap, what you should be selling is the browsing experience.

Call this the “critical mass of inventory” — and right now, no one is stocking CDs anywhere near critical mass. Yes, I know: it means a couple of million spent in sunk inventory costs. Write that check. Think of your whole sales floor as a factory: Spend 3 or 5 or 10 million dollars in “sales equipment” and watch as that machinery sucks in customers and churns out sales.

This idea of the sales-floor-as-factory is also why I strongly advocate for Even Bigger Bookstores. 25,000 square feet is not the ideal size for a bookstore, just the footprint that was widely available in the early 1990s. 25,000 square feet is either 4 times too big, or ten times too small. In order to reach a critical mass of books, large enough to compete with Amazon, we need more. Build out to 300,000 or even 500,000 square feet — too big, you say? Well, we’re going to need room for that movie theater, and the pub, and the fine dining, and enough tables and chairs for everyone (the comfy ones, like we used to have) and hell, maybe we can set aside 25,000 square feet for a decent record store.

Those CD sales are incidental, though. Like the massive stacks of books, they’re just The Draw. The idea is to get someone into the bookstore and have them stay all day.

The average cost of a roller coaster is $8 to $10 Million. […a single roller coaster; most parks have a half dozen marquee coasters and twice as many smaller rides.] The cost of inventory for one big box bookstore is just $2 Million — for the cost of a single roller coaster, I could buy 5 times the inventory, half a million individual books or more. Let’s splurge, let’s spend $20 Million on inventory, get things up to a Million Books Under One Roof. My advertising is practically writing itself at this point.

This isn’t about a lack of demand, or a lack of money either: An average-to-large size metropolitan area of about 3-4 Million already has 10 chain bookstores in it. Draw together these fragments into single, massive, Landmark locations. Each landmark is also a local order fulfillment center, either for internet orders or to pick up at (much smaller) satellite locations. Next day or even same day pick-up might be possible — the cost of a mini-van, a driver, and the insurance has got to be cheaper then 10 sets of duplicate inventory in duplicate big boxes.

What would *I* do if I were running B&N today? — I’d be closing stores, sure. The “right number” of stores might be 100 or so. The Big Box is not a natural fit for bookstores anyway, it was just the cheapest, easiest option at the time. Instead of leasing boxes and opening stores, a smart bookseller would be building their own malls. Instead of relying on vague efforts and projections and promises that complementary businesses will move into the shopping center or neighborhood, do it, become the developer. If being next to a movie theater is good for your bookstore — and they tell me it does make a big difference — then open and run the damn theater yourself.

In inflation adjusted dollars, Disney spent $144 Million to build the original Disneyland. For half that I could build an amazing bookstore, one that would be the envy of the world.

[blockquote]
“The great benefit of metaphors is that they simplify… The downside, however, is that a strong metaphor can create a false sense of understanding.

“Metaphors and analogies in general often distort our thinking in hidden ways, by drawing attention disproportionately to what fits and obscuring what doesn’t get highlighted in the analogy. As Einstein noted, ‘we should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler.’ The question is whether some of your favorite metaphors for thinking about complex subjects, such as the economy, leadership, joint ventures, team work, or competition actually offer you flawed or simplistic analogies.

“For example, consider the widely used product life-cycle concept in marketing. This biological metaphor suggests that products naturally arise, grow, mature and die, just as individuals do. So if managers wedded to this view see a product’s sales decline for several quarters in a row, they would naturally think that the product is in decline. And once the product strategy is adjusted to reflect this presumed stage of decline, resources may be withdrawn and decline will quickly follow (as a self-fulfilling hypothesis)…

“Procter and Gamble as well as many other companies, however, reject the product life-cycle metaphor as unduly self-limiting. Rather than viewing the product as a single organism proceeding through its life stages, they view the product as the species itself. So, the product must be adapted to changing circumstances to remain viable.”
[/blockquote]

How Metaphors & Analogies Influence Your Thinking : Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Inc. Magazine [www.inc.com], 21 November 2012

Key point: The Product must be adapted to changing circumstances to remain viable.

##

I’m a bookseller, and I’ve been writing about bookstores and bookselling for more than 5 years now — so you know this is going to circle back around to that topic eventually. But first, the long diversion…

##

The story, almost surely apocryphal (or at the very least, embellished and embroidered over the years) is that the original idea for Disneyland came to Walt on a park bench:

“As Walt Disney sat at a bench, at an amusement park, watching his daughters play, he noticed how ragged and filthy the small amusement park was. He also observed people’s reactions to different rides, and noticed how children’s parents had nothing to do. They would be anxious to go home, while their children were still having fun, and playing.

“This is where Walt was conjuring, and planning a new type of amusement park; one that would be clean, and would have attractions for parents and children together. This was Walt Disney’s idea, which eventually turned to be Disneyland.”

Walt Disney’s Disneyland : undated, unattributed article at JustDisney.com

“Disneyland was Walt’s dream. For years he dreamed and hoped of building a ‘little family park’ where parents could take their children for a day of fun — for both kids and adults. The amusement parks of the 1920’s and 30’s were tawdry, dirty, sleazy places. The short-lived turn-of-the-century family ambiance of Coney Island had turned into a hard-boiled rough and tumble atmosphere. Other parks across the country were no better. By the early 1950’s, Cedarpoint, in Ohio, had begun to pass it’s apex and began a steady decline as did Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Kennywood Park (both of which have experienced tremendous improvements in the 1980’s and ’90’s). Still, Walt felt that it was possible to build a different kind of park…a ‘themed’ park that had fun attractions and a beautiful atmosphere.”

A Brief History of the Disney Parks : undated article by Brian Bennett at MousePlanet.com

“Roy took the detailed drawing with him to ABC and managed to turn the tide. ABC agreed to loan Disney $500,000 and guarantee $4.5 million in loans in return for a one-third ownership in Disneyland and a promise of a weekly Disney television show for the network.

…

“After one full year of rigorous construction demands and a total investment of $17 million, the gates of Disneyland would be opened for its first guests on Sunday, July 17, 1955.”

The Construction of Disneyland : undated, unattributed article at DesigningDisney.com

[The video embedded above is just the first ten minutes, the full broadcast is a little over an hour.]

That $17M in 1954, adjusted for inflation, would be about $144 Million today. Cheap at the price?

For those with an interest, here are a few more links (in addition to the sites cited above) for your perusal:

http://www.justdisney.com/disneyland/history.html
http://micechat.com/224-walt-disney-disneyland/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland

10 years later, Walt would open Disney World

##

The Amusement Park was decades old, and a relic of a time before the advances in electronics flooded the market (and the airwaves, and our brains) with entertainment options — some of which (even in the 1930s) didn’t even require one to leave the home. In the 1950s, radio sets were being rapidly supplanted by the new medium of television — and yet, not only did Disney not abandon his idea, he leveraged his existing product, and tapped the new television industry to help fund his dream.

With The Wonderful World of Disney appearing weekly on TV sets, and with an already successful movie studio, Walt didn’t need an amusement park.

Or did he?

C’mon — Mickey Mouse kind of sucks, compared to wisecracking Bugs Bunny. (And both Mickey and Bugs are playing second fiddle these days to a certain Italian/Japanese plumber.) The enduring popularity of Mickey Mouse has quite a bit to do with the magic of the Magic Kingdom. The “theme park” — which was Disney’s innovation — is a step above just a simple amusement park, or the meagre offerings of the state and county fairs. Disney is a destination, and folks plan and save for years to make a trip. Even if the parks didn’t make any money (which they do) I might argue that if Disney hadn’t opened Disneyland in 1955, the company that bears his name would have been little more than a film library being passed around in mergers and sales, like MGM’s in the 1980s and 90s. Instead, Disney became of the major media players, one of only eight or nine globally.

[someone needs to update the Merchants of Cool chart, but it’s still a great resource to link to]

##

People tell me books are dead. Or at least, that bookstores are dead, or dying, or obsolete, or at a very minimum: that bookstores are threatened on multiple fronts and there is no way that the Bookstore is going to survive the onslaught.

There are too many other entertainment options — DVDs, video games, and the internet included — so there is no reason to buy a book, and if one must have books, well, it’s easier (and cheaper) to order them online, or to download a digital version.

And that is fine. It even seems inevitable.

I’d also call it a failure of imagination.

The bookstore is the only retailer that people go to for fun, or to ‘kill time’ — and certainly the only retail store parents regularly bring their kids to. A bookstore is not a seller of staple goods (like groceries or gasoline) but neither is it a luxury, specialty shop: some books can be plenty expensive, but for less than $20 you can pick up a novel that will take you hours to finish. Sometimes you can get one for less than $10. Unlike Target or Walmart, customers can waste hours in our bookstores — in fact, instead of casting about desperately for enough foot traffic, the main problem we have as booksellers is that the stores are too full. Most afternoons every seat is taken, the customers are even lounging on the floor, and booksellers spend most of their day reshelving books and just cleaning up after all these folks.

We need to figure out how to monetize this traffic, but getting people to ‘like’ the bookstore is not the problem here.

In the 1930s, Walt Disney looked around at one of the entertainment options of his day and saw a lack. A need. A special opportunity. Others no doubt looked at the same park and came to the conclusion that the amusement park was a dead-end niche, barely popular, and soon to be a historic footnote. Even armed with the idea, though, it took Walt some time to rustle up the money, and to find the requisite space. Disneyland was not an upgrade to an existing park — Walt had the whole thing custom built, and even then it was too small. When it came time for the East Coast version, he bought 30,000 acres. Walt’s park, his dream, was HUGE and while some of the component pieces are the same as other parks, it became something altogether new.

Now go back and re-read my post about buying a shopping mall and converting the entire thing into a bookstore.

From first idea to opening day, Walt Disney took twenty years to finally open up the park he always knew would be a success. He did some other things before, and of course, kept doing those other things after, but the park immediately became the centerpiece of his corporate empire. Look at the Disney logo: the park, not Mickey Mouse, is the public face of the company.

I’m not Walt Disney; I’m just a bookseller. But I can see the opportunity here and I know that there will be a bookstore in the future — A great big bookstore, bigger than anyone has ever seen, and doing some things no one else ever thought a bookstore would do.

I just hope it doesn’t take me 20 years to get there.

I’d previously linked to the 1912 Sears Roebuck & Company General Catalog — currently available for viewing and download from Archive.org — 1200 or so pages of pure retro consumerism.

It’s a beautiful artifact. They should make it assigned reading for some university-level U.S. History courses — and if they don’t have an applicable course yet I could probably have a syllabus whipped up by next Tuesday.

Before, I only linked to the catalog to make a casual comparison between Amazon.com and mail order. Now, I’d like you to actually look into the thing.

I found it easiest to download the PDF, though the book is available to be viewed in browser as well. Whatever method you employ — go right now to page 942:

Let’s look at what you could get from SR&Co in the way of books way back when.

“The Best, Newest, and Most Popular Books at Ridiculously Low Prices.” — The sales pitch is the same, anyway.

Just 45¢! Why, that’s 70% off the cover price! How can they afford to do that? They’re going to put me out of business.

I want every last book on both these pages:

I wonder if I fill out the form and send it, will Sears ship me the advertised Book & Stationary Catalog?

“As you all know, the suject of service is a serious one in department stores. You know that department stores are not munificent in their salaries, so we can’t expect to have all expert saleswomen in the stores. But I have found that when my young ladies assemble in the morning if I draw their attention to the Publishers’ Weekly and papers of that kind, they are pretty well posted as to what is on the market. And certainly without a general book information they could not get on so conspicuously well.

“In moving our bookshop to the third floor we decided to remove all the ugly characteristics of bookshops and see if we could have a good-looking bookshop instead of planning one of those shops where we see great dreary piles of books going to the ceiling or books on the same subjects in different places.

“We took our books on the same subject and had little posters made. I think that is the most important feature of the table display. We make a great deal of having our posters plainly printed, and they are the center of attraction, and from each poster you can see exactly what the table contains.

…

“The room is equipped with seats with narrow cushions, and customers come in there and sit and read or look books over. No one disturbs the customer, and he has a feeling of freedom. If we cannot find the book he or she wants we get it for him, or we look it up in the catalog for him. And I want to say right at this point, that I think no one appreciates the freedom of being let alone any more than the customer of a bookshop.

…

“We have seemed to meet some success in this plan of treatment of our customers. The room is equipped to be comfortable. You should never try to sell your customer unless he is comfortable. Our experience is that if we find out what the customer is looking for, and he asks for a book on a given subject, don’t just show him that one book, but show him ten on the same subject if you can, and instead of buying one book he will buy three or four if he can look them over by himself in a comfortable manner.

“There are tables between the wall spaces of shelving, and the customer my sit near the subject he wants to investigate. The shelves are so arranged and labeled that we make a great savings in time and so does the customer, and that is the great davantage of the use of the posters if you use them on your shelves too.

“People come in and sit and discuss the book, always being very comfortable, and we have our people watching and ready to make a sale just as soon as that customer indicates that he has looked the book through as much as desired.

…

“Just one other feature of the bookshop I must tell you of before I close, our Junior Department. We have, just a few feet south of the entrance to our shop, a very beautiful Junior Department. In there there is a big couch and small chairs and the children come in there and take down any book they want and read it. My only requirement is, ‘Hats Off’ and ‘Hands Clean.’ And they come back day after day.”

— the testimonial of Mrs. I. J. Watson, bookseller, from the 1 June 1920 issue of The Bookseller, Newsdealer, and Stationer. This is the description of a department store bookshop (the corporate big box of its day) — not some quaint indy.

original source embedded below: