Rocket Bomber - business

I’m not sure how to title this one.

I think I may default to “Illustrated Empire” – though that isn’t a search-engine-optimised term, or even one that describes the subject: it’s what I would call my [theoretical] book publishing company, but doesn’t actually describe the content of what I hope will be a new series of posts.

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Say circumstances handed me a chunk of cash and the mandate, “Start a new comics publisher. Licensed manga, manhwa, Euro-comics, English originals, et al. and thank you. Here’s a wad of cash; tell me how you’ll use it.”

So.

Kodansha launched their US comics imprint with a scant 2 Million Dollars [see also] — granted, Kodansha doesn’t have to negotiate licenses [as a major publisher in Japan, they already own them] and also, Kodansha doesn’t have to establish a Tokyo office, fly executives and editors across the Pacific, spend money smoozing the gatekeepers and content-rights holders, convincing the most conservative businesspeople [& as in many industries, mostly conservative business men] on the planet to take a chance on a no-name small firm with no publishing history, few alliances, sketchy prospects, and this guy

as founder, chairman, CEO, Geek-at-large, Beer Disposal Unit, and Otaku-in-Chief. [none of those are selling points]

All that said, Stu managed it. And if someone handed me $16 Million Dollars [I’ll need more than the token $2Mil. Kodansha fronted] then I’d make one hell of a run at it.

I have a name: Illustrated Empire. I have ideas for three imprints under the Illustrated Empire banner [Avalon, Albion, and Amaterasu] and know enough about the US bookstore business to avoid obvious mistakes (I’m sure I’ll find all the non-obvious ones soon enough) and you know: folks lend Trump billions despite his track record, so maybe I have a chance at this too.

[I buy a $1 lottery ticket every week, just in case.]

So, how would I run the Illustrated Empire? What makes this comics company different?

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Allow me to start with a digression: I spent seven [plus] years at university, and while some stereotypes are correct [rampant alcoholism, parties every weekend, and hanging out in bars for the other 5 nights each week] I might be an exception in that I was spending my days in class, and once I gave up on earning any one specific degree, I was emancipated – & ending up taking a little bit of everything.

Among the [many] courses of study pursued at Georgia Tech, I took classes on contract law and urban development. I spent a semester with construction contracting. I own a hard hat; I’ve followed projects from brush clearing to first pour to topping out.

My experience on construction sites is beside the point — but contract law, that was fun (in its own way), and there are some excellent concepts that should be transferred to publishing.

1. The Surety Bond

Those of you who invest, or merely follow investments, think you know what a bond is. And you’re likely right, for whatever context you’re familiar with: Treasury Bills, corporate bonds, bail bonds…

The bail bondsman is the closest analogue here: A Surety Bond is a form of insurance. Let’s walk through an example: Say you want a 20 story building. You own the land, you’ve hired the architect, you’ve a sheaf of plans and tenants lined up and a schedule you have to keep to. So when you go to hire a contractor, even if you find a reputable firm with impeccable history and more than sufficient assets — it’s not his ass on the line if the building fails to go up. You’re the one left holding your balls the basket if this all falls through.

So no matter how much money you have or how much money the contractor has: you ask for a Surety to be sure the project is seen through to completion. Like any contract, the terms can vary to cover whatever the needs of the owner are, or whatever risks might be anticipated

two very typical versions are

2. The Performance Bond

an assurance that certain minimum standards are met — or that the contract specifications (no matter how unreasonable) are met — and

3. The Completion Bond

…if I’ve plans for a 20 story building, and tenants already lined up for a 20 story building, even if the contractor I’ve hired to build this thing goes out of business after only 12 stories are built — I still need that 20 story building. A Completion Bond will pay for someone to finish the job even if the original contractor can’t.

Firms that specialize in this field are often referred to as “Assurance” companies, though this is just a very specialized insurance field. In fact, you might have already seen this, if you are a homeowner dealing with plumbers, electricians, or other contractors: if a firm advertises themselves as “bonded”, “bonded and licensed”, or “bonded and insured” then they likely have a small but quite tidy sum invested in Surety Bonds, and you’re fairly safe dealing with them for your normal-home-repair-type-crap.

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So, what does this have to do with publishing, generally, and licensing manga, particularly?

Nothing.

so sad, in fact: a basic concept like finishing up on a contractual obligation means nothing to most licensees.

But let’s say I’m on good terms with an assurance provider and I can offer blanket performance-and-completion bonds for English rights to any title I license from a foreign publisher: what would this mean?

- Professional translation and adaptation, or else the bond pays out for a new translation under the ‘minimum standards’ clause of the contract and

- Completion of the series even if I go out of business. Exactly like a bond would pay out to finish building the last stories of a 20 story building, fans [and the original rights holder] would have a completion guarantee that a series would be seen through to an end in translation. Maybe only, say, 1000 copies of each volume printed (or some such; terms as specified in the contract) but through to the end and to a specified minimum standard.

Wouldn’t this make licensing more expensive? Yes, and no. There are some fees involved in sourcing and adminstrating assurance bonds, but provided one meets all the terms & conditions of the contract, you get the principal back: which you can then recycle into the performance-and-completion bonds for the next title.

Would this make a difference?

For Japanese rights-holders who also happen to be the original publishers? Maybe not. I might suppose that they’d be more interested in dollars up-front, no matter how you package the deal – they would be not so much interested in series completion or other assurances, even when backed up by bonds.

For Japanese rights-holders who also happen to be the creators? Oh Hell Yes. Here I am, fronting a couple million in insurance just on the off chance that *if* I go out of business or you personally think my adaptation is crap and insist on a new version: completion to specs is spelled out in the contract.

Minimum standards, and guaranteed publication of all volumes [as specified, a shorter print run but one that is *guaranteed*] — your entire work will see print in English.

Tell me that isn’t a selling point.

For Fans?

Are you kidding me!?

Any company that guaranteed that all volumes of series will be translated and printed – no matter what the eventual sales might be?

You just bought yourself the undying devotion of a dedicated fanbase – and no matter what the actual sales are on this one series: you win. So, maybe you only print 1000 or 500 or 200 copies each of the last few volumes: it is enough that you tried, and saw it through to the end, and some quantity of the final books are out there for sale. Maybe they have to pay more (or buy them second hand) because the books are in short supply: but the books were printed: This is a readership that will follow you, even if it means going outside their usual comfort zones or into properties they’ve never heard of.

It’s a very simple thing: finish what you start.

And if it doesn’t make economic sense: well, that’s what the surety bonds were for. It’s a type of insurance. You pay a little bit more on the front end, but both your clients (the licensor and the fan) get the product you promised, the small financial loss is insured – and the gains are immeasurable.

Say, did you know you can embed selections from Google Books, just like YouTube Videos? Well, yes, we can.

This an excerpt from Publishers Weekly, 1888, on how a new sales-and-distribution model is threatening the ‘old’ way of doing business via established local bookstores.

Anyone care to draw parallels to Amazon, or to ebooks?

Do you know what I hate most?
[this week, in this particular instance]

- Business press reporting the stock price of a company like it has anything to do with the business. Are you kidding me? – in a world where one well-placed skeevy slimeball can manipulate the generally-misplaced-but-widespread faith in ‘stocks’ to scam $65 Billion out of intelligent, conservative investors – OK, you tell me, is the stock market little more than a lottery? And a bet that’s fixed in favor of the house?

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Sure, if you want to invest in a company, invest. Please do so, our economy needs it.

But buying stock is not an investment. A share in a company is just a token, a marker: the actual investment was years ago, with the IPO (or before) and now you’re just paying someone else for their stake – you don’t actually put money into the company, you’re just covering someone else’s bet.

All of the gains made in stocks [capital gains which are for some reason not taxable as regular income — even though capital losses are fully deductable] are little more than lottery winnings, pure gravy – & do nothing for the economy (the money made exchanging stocks do not go back the companies represented by them)

— and smart investments, long term capital investments that build infrastructure and create jobs, take decades to pay off, so the so-called ‘capital gains’ exception is meaningless and only encourage short-term, short-sighted investment.

I don’t understand the ‘capital gains’ exemption. I really, really don’t — and not from a political position, I can’t wrap my brain around it logically. Indeed, investment is never taxed. If you take money and pour it into research and facilities and payroll and product development and efficiencies in manufacturing and the supply-chain: you won’t be taxed for a single dollar of money you put into the business. Indeed, if you lose money, your tax burden goes down

Investors and Businesess are only taxed when they take money out, instead of reinvesting it.

Profits are taxed, not investment.

Large portions of certain politcal arguments about taxation and the economy are based on false premises: if corporations re-invested and hired new staff and created new product lines and put large sums into research and development: there would be no profits to tax.

We only tax the money individuals and corporations attempt to take out of the economy. There are no laws or rules saying you can’t cash out – but after taking advantage of the system for years you can’t suddenly complain that there’s an exit fee when you want to stop playing the game.

You object to my characterization of business as a game?

So:

• Did you use dollars, or another globally accepted currency, in you business? The alternative is barter; theoretically possible buy unlikely. Money is a fiction.
• Were you incorporated? Corporations are a fiction, a handy fiction that provides legal cover for owners, investors, and employees alike. Corporations are not people, even though they are treated as such under the law [notably in a Supreme Court decision I hope gets overturned someday — someday soon]
• Did you sell stock? Are you publically traded? More fiction: there is no way for a stockholder to go to the company and get a payment. You can only sell your share to someone else in a predetermined, closed market. Your share is worthless, unless you can sell it on the same exchange where you bought it — an exchange which is privately owned and has no obligation to the public whatsoever. If Nasdaq or the NYSE folded tomorrow, then your stocks go with them. …Unless you hold an actual stock certificate. When was the last time you even saw a stock certificate, let alone owned one?

The stock market is no more legitimate than the keno game at a casino – valid so long as the house plays along, but not a bedrock on which we should found our economy. It’s not money that is invested, it’s the ghost of old money traded back and forth and back and forth for decades. It might seem important, but stocks and stock prices are the least important thing we could talk about when it comes to business

Stock prices are just an opinion poll – kind of like using the votes for homecoming king/queen as a means of determining GPA, or using the ‘most likely etc’ polls posted in a yearbook to determine college placement.

Serious analysis [and serious analysts] should ignore the stock price.

The company stands or fails on it’s own merits; the stock price is nice bit of trivia but has nothing to do with how the company is run, or what it’s actual profit potential might be.

Please reference:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora
related: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_(Roman)
related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza
related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza
related: Public Square

— check that last link for synonyms: city square, civic center, commons, open market, French place, platz, praça, public square, town green, or Maidan…

like the Midan Tahrir — you might have heard of Tahrir Square. Seems something happened there last month.

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Open spaces have, from time immemorial, had to serve two purposes: commerce, and communication.

When two people meet, they can exchange goods. Depends on how good the price it is, though; if I don’t want your proffered wares (or if you ask too much in exchange) then we’re not going to make a deal.

However, when two people meet: they always exchange ideas. Even if you just sit there and refuse to talk, refuse to make eye contact even — well, I’ve certainly learned something about you, if nothing else. What you chose to share combined with the questions you refuse to answer — I can learn quite a bit about you no matter what other commerce or exchange takes place.

This is the Public Square, this is the Commons. We interact, we share [or not], we buy and sell [or not], and we negotiate. We debate. We conflict. We talk.

Compare the Agora to the Marketplace:

Since the earliest public spaces naturally attracted commerce, over time the nature of the word changed to the point that commerce became the only meaning of the word: the old senses of ‘public assembly’ and discussion and debate and meetings and comings and goings were subsumed into the larger and more ‘important’ economic aspects.

It’s not uncommon to hear the modern turn of phrase “marketplace of ideas” — which to me is kind of funny as the “markets” and marketplaces have always been about exchange, and these public spaces at their origins were primarily about ideas — meeting and talking.

The internet has become the new Agora: the gathering place.

To think of Digital Distribution and Downloads and eBooks and Amazon as the new market place, and as the internet as merely being a function of these [or just the underlying foundation, like a new public utilty] is myopic at best and willfully ignorant at the very least and downright stupid at worst:

It’s about more than just digital. It’s more than just commerce. The internet is the new conversation, a global conversation, and sure: that means we buy and sell stuff.

But the internet is so much more.

Like the Greek citizen-farmer-solider of Athens back in 500BCE we’re just going to have to work things out by trial and error: the rules and institutions of the internet as they currently stand are well-thought-out and they seem to address the needs of today—and seem to do so well enough—but the potential of the Agora was so much more, and so is the internet’s.

After 2500 years, we have two ultimate expressions of the Agora: the shopping mall, and the United Nations

in another 2500 years, what will the internet look like, and what will that mean for civilization?

Retail pays the rent, but isn’t what draws people into the store. For every single diehard reader that still buys books, there are

• 2 homeless people. I’ve been calling them ‘urban campers’
• 3 assholes coming in to use their cell phone, *noisily*, because ironically the bookstore is a quiet place where they can hear their conversation. (and so can everyone else… turn down the volume a tad; what, are you deaf?)
• 4 recent graduates reading GMAT/LSAT/GRE/MCAT study guides, and books on financial aid.
• 5 job-seekers looking at the resume books and career guides
• 6 students coming to read the graphic design, fashion, architecture, and art books, and magazines, and maybe a comic book or three — actually, well, this is particular to my store, since SCAD Atlanta is just down the street.
• 7 folks meeting — for dates, for tutoring, for interviews, for business, for the book clubs (we host 3)
• 8 people coming in just for coffee
• 9 people just ‘killing time’
• 10 folks whose first, last, and only question is, “Where is the restroom?”

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In the wake of the latest Borders developments, this is as good a time as any to reconsider the bookstore.

[I do this all the time but this is just one lonely blog with scant dozens of readers]

Books aren’t retail. — oh sure, many different retailers sell books: Wal-mart, Target, Costco, supermarkets, drugstores, internet, sidewalk vendors and even the local library (once a year)

But Bookstores aren’t retail: bookstores are social spaces, places to meet, places to spend time with the kids or with friends.

It’s easy to point out the “errors” bookstores make, in regards to the “business” — but do *you* really want your bookstore run as a business? No, honestly.

How do you use (and abuse) your local bookstore?

Extended aside: No, not the local independent, as I’m sure you love your local and buy items from them on occasion [even though the internet is cheaper] because you love them and *heart* them and they genuinely deserve it. They really do. Indy booksellers are pillars of the community and saints and everything and anything we can do to support them isn’t charity — we’re just looking out for ourselves, really, because what would we do without them?

No, not the cute shop in the hard-to-find building in the quaint shopping district just off of downtown — you know, with trees along the sidewalks and open air cafés and boutiques with precious dresses (all 3 sizes too small) and the record store that still sells vinyl and the art theatre no one goes to and the biker bar on the corner that you take your friends to on a Tuesday [“this is so authentic”] but are afraid to go to after 8pm on a Saturday night. —no, not this book shop.

Be honest: how do you treat your bookstore? The big box by the mall. The major chain. You Love the local indy and visit at least six times a year — but every freakin’ Sunday you’re at my store and you read a foot-tall stack of magazines and the sunday papers (the local and the New York Times) and leave a mess and a coffee cup and the crumbs and maybe even a used tissue.

I mean, it’s just a chain bookstore, right? They expect it. No Big Thing. They’re a major chain, nation-wide — if I don’t buy more than a $2 cup of coffee and maybe, maybe a donut it’s not like they’re going to be hurt by that — if they didn’t want me to read the magazines for free, why do they have the tables and comfy chairs and the low-key music and the shelves full of magazines? It’s as much a lounge as a bookstore anyway; I mean, I do buy something every now and then, right? This is how the book business works.

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Point 1: Can you name one, one, other retailer that would put up with this crap? You folks plop down in the aisle, take off your shoes, read items in full (meaning you have no need to actually buy them) while also physically damaging the merchandise to the point where I can’t sell it to anyone else.

Point 2: Borders declared bankruptcy. Investors, journalists, bloggers, and pundits are still debating whether this means Borders is going out of business. Or whether “book retail” is even viable in an age of internet sales sites and direct digital downloads.

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Borders made mistakes. Obviously. But in any other retail field, Borders’ “mistakes” are not only not obviously wrong, they are standard operating procedures and might even be good ideas: Expand nationally, and internationally. Serve multiple markets, from malls to downtown to suburban retail centers to airports to small town squares.

No supermarket chain is getting flack for ceding online sales of groceries to Webvan — but the pre-2008 Amazon/Borders arrangement is Cause One on many lists [including mine] of Why Borders Failed.

The folks who ran Borders (and there were a lot of them; their org chart has been a revolving door for years) can not be faulted: they thought Borders was a retailer. Their long experience at other retailers should have been all they needed to walk in a run a major nationwide chain, so long as it’s all still retail.

I find it interesting that business journalists can simultaneously condemn Borders’ management for not knowing books, for not being ‘booksellers’ while never explaining to their readers — or admitting to themselves — just what it is that makes the book business different.

Books Are Not Retail.

Big Box Bookstores are social spaces, have been since 1992 or so, and it is at least as important — more important — to consider community, demographics, sociology, psychology, and the whole grand tradition of books and Civilization Itself, as to rely on old models of retail and business.

Borders’ bankruptcy is not a failure of the business. Borders was run as a business, quite professionally, and using standard retail models.

The eventual collapse of Borders came because those in control of Borders forgot (or failed to ever realize) that Borders sells books.

And bookselling *is not* retail.

If you have to announce bad news, you drop it in the Friday News Hole. For most business news, that’s the hour between 4PM and 5PM EST, after the NY markets close but before the end of the business day.

Of course the word is out there (and if it’s really bad news, it’ll stick around for a while) but for a relatively small segment (bookselling) of just one part of the overall economy (retail) and with other news casting long shadows — the events in Egypt, for example, or Lindsey Lohan for that matter — the media’s attention is divided and a small bit of business news just might fall through the cracks, or even seem like ‘old news’ by Monday.

If I were running a corporate PR department, this would be a great day to drop a Bomb. Even if they aren’t quite ready to file yet, Borders could do a lot worse than to announce their bankruptcy this afternoon anyway.

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“Hedge fund financier acknowledges $125 million loss on Borders investment” – covered here http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/borders-investor-acknowledges-125-million-loss-on-investment/ by Borders’ local paper, referencing the Bloomberg BusinessWeek article:

Bill Ackman’s Soft Power — the main focus of that article, as I read it, is that Bill Ackman is a prick. —A lucky prick, who has made money, but who has also lost it. If I had $9 Billion and a staff of MBAs I could be expected to do at least as well. As cited in the article Ackman is seen by others as “a spoiled child unaccustomed to being told, ‘no.’” He’s not smart — at least, not any smarter than the folks he has working for him — he’s just rich, and with all the so called ‘luck’ that money buys you. Ackman at one point owned stakes in both Barnes & Noble and Borders — he was betting on (and actively campaigning for) a merger of the two booksellers. Only at the end of 2008 did he divest his B&N shares, and also doubled-down on the Borders Bet, providing additional loans when it looked like no one else cared.

Of course, even as recently as 2 months ago, Ackman was still fishing for his much beloved B&N&B merger — and with the expected payday that would engender, who wouldn’t? — but Ackman both undervalued B&N and has no concept of all of Len Riggio, a self-made man with pendulous balls of brass who actively defends his ‘turf’ and who genuinely understands his business and, dare I say it, loves books and bookselling. If the Borders/B&N combination actually made any kind of sense, Riggio would have been the first person to bring it up.

Borders has not really benefited from Ackman’s involvement, even with all his money. A restructuring 2 years ago wouldn’t have been any easier, or less messy, but the company wouldn’t have racked up those 2 years of losses, either. Borders has posted $800 Million in losses since 2006 — the writing has been both on the wall and in official SEC filings for quite some time.

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So: I predict an announcement in a little over 2 hours, that Borders is in fact filing for bankruptcy, if not today than quite soon.

I’ll be at work at 4pm so I won’t know for sure until much later tonight.

source of the rumours: a report on Bloomberg.com citing “three people familiar with the matter”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-01/borders-said-to-prepare-bankruptcy-filing-as-early-as-next-week.html

Borders has declined to comment. No surprise there.

It has been a little over two weeks since Borders secured the services of law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, “restructuring” experts who according to the Wall Street Journal were tasked with keeping Borders out of bankruptcy court, once again according to unnamed sources.

It was just last week that Borders announced they secured new funding from GE Capital, though likely not on the best terms, and even the announcement [details reported at Forbes.com] contained some caveats,

“GE Capital’s commitment is dependent upon the completion of supporting financial arrangements with the company’s vendors and landlords, as well as its finalization of a store closure program, among other conditions.”

As we heard on Sunday, Borders Delays Payments To ‘Vendors, Landlords and Others’ – of note first because it was announced on a Sunday and also because it looks really, really bad. Not paying the rent, no matter what the reason, is not a way to inspire confidence.

When the Bloomberg report hit, at 3:54pm (just six minutes before the close of markets) Borders stock tanked – losing 35% in a flurry of last minute trades, closing at a mere 47 cents a share. It’ll be interesting to see what the stock does tomorrow, and whether there will be any official announcement from Borders now that the news has leaked.

A follow-up on Bloomberg Businessweek provides the handy details,

“Borders has posted almost $800 million in losses since 2006 as it lost market share to competitors such as Amazon.com Inc. The retailer has also been slow to embrace digital reading, which continues to gain popularity with consumers.”

So, while I’m calling this a rumour for now, it definitely feels like a very real, very bad thing.

This is the last (or perhaps, only penultimate? I’ve got at least one more really good retail idea in me, I think) of the mini-series I’ve chosen to call “Unique Bookstore Experiences”

Previously: Zero – Intro – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 –

…and I’m shunting the rest of the boilerplate I’ve used as an intro in the last 4 ‘bookstore experience’ posts to the very end of this article; yes, this is part of the “Rethinking the Box” series — I’ve written more than 30 columns to date and it seems there is no end to the general topic — and indeed, I can talk for months [23 months and counting, and just three weeks shy of two whole years!] about bookselling, and bookstores, and retail, and publishing, and the very nature of the damn books themselves

But now I’d like to wander far afield (once again) before getting back to the point, and pull in some history, tradition, and philosophy, some obvious trivia and some not-so-obvious connections

For my last “unique bookstore experience” I’m going to try to sell you on an idea I’m calling “The Fleet Street Pub” – and it’s a bookstore that doesn’t sell books. (…well, we’ll likely end up stocking a few carefully selected titles—300 or so books, and a smattering of magazines—but not anywhere close to what you currently find)

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First up, why the name “Fleet Street”?

Here, let me quote wikipedia

As early as the 13th century, it seems to have been known as Fleet Bridge Street, and in the early part of the 14th century it began to be mentioned frequently by its present name, spelled, of course, in accordance with the customs of those days. Fleet Street began as the road from the commercial City of London to the political hub at Westminster. The length of Fleet Street marks the expansion of the City in the 14th century. At the east end of the street is where the River Fleet flowed against the medieval walls of London; at the west end is the Temple Bar which marks the current city limits, extended to there in 1329.

To the south lies an area of legal buildings known as the Temple, formerly the property of the Knights Templar, which at its core includes two of the four Inns of Court: the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple. There are many lawyers’ offices (especially barristers’ chambers) in the vicinity. Nearby, on Strand, are the Royal Courts of Justice and the Old Bailey is also only a few minutes walk from Ludgate Circus.

Publishing started in Fleet Street around 1500 when William Caxton’s apprentice, Wynkyn de Worde, set up a printing shop near Shoe Lane, while at around the same time Richard Pynson set up as publisher and printer next to St Dunstan’s church. More printers and publishers followed, mainly supplying the legal trade in the four Law Inns around the area. In March 1702, London’s first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, was published in Fleet Street from premises above the White Hart Inn.

At Temple Bar to the west, as Fleet Street crosses the boundary out of the City of London, it becomes the Strand; to the east, past Ludgate Circus, the route rises as Ludgate Hill. The nearest tube stations are Temple, Chancery Lane, and Blackfriars underground/ mainline stations and the City Thameslink station. Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane are at the western end of the street.

For many years Fleet Street was especially noted for its taverns and coffeehouses. Many notable persons of literary and political fame used to frequent these, and a few have survived to this day, in name at least. Along with Saint Dunstan’s, two other old London churches must also be mentioned as belonging to the Fleet Street region: Temple Church and Saint Bride’s. Fleet Street has witnessed throughout its long career many notable processions. Coronations, funerals, etc., never failed to pass through it. Famous men in large numbers had frequently close relations with Fleet Street, either by living there or in one of its many side streets, or by being regular frequenters of its taverns. Amongst these should be mentioned especially Ben Jonson, John Milton, Izaak Walton, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith and Charles Lamb.

[of course the actual wikipedia article is chockablock with links to all the particulars — though for those of you who prefer books, I might also point you to Akroyd’s London: a Biograpy and Standage’s The Victorian Internet]

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…Let me call back to the first batch of five case studies, where I posited another bar [Lloyd’s, in that case] with a very similar profile:

There is a segment of information junkies that just isn’t being served by other channels; cable news networks and NPR are a good start but where does one go for in-depth analysis and thoughtful commentary? Books are one answer, but where can one find the right books? — or the left books for that matter, or the just-a-shade-off-center-but-potentially-controversial books?

…And also re-post one of the primary conclusions to the very first Rethinking the Box column

Even more than the books, though, the modern bookstore sells atmosphere. It only seems like they give it away: cups of coffee, the occasional newspaper or magazine, and eventually the larger purchase (even if only once or twice a year) pays for the comfy chairs, the music, the knowledgeable staff, and all that reading you sponges do for free while lounging in the aisles, or the inconsiderate louts who tie up all the tables (and outlets) in the cafe with their laptops and accoutrement, and even the people sleeping in the aforementioned comfy chairs.

You don’t get any of that from Amazon.

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What use is a Bookstore?

…Or more to the point, what did we use for “bookstores” before 1990? Way back, before the Big Boxes invaded every suburb and when the “major chain” book stores were mall bookstores like B. Dalton or Waldenbooks? (around 1978, according to a Time Magazine article I linked to in the first “Rethinking the Box” post)

Where did you buy books in the 80s, before Barnes & Noble or Borders darkened the highway by your local mall? And by “you” I mean *you*, personally: sure, if you live in New York, or San Francisco, or Portland (I ♥ Powell’s. I will likely never even step foot inside, but still, I love that it exists) then you have to wonder what the big deal is,

but before the Big Box Bookstore, most of us lived in book deserts. Dependent on the skills of local librarians, the whims of hobbyist-booksellers, or genuine good luck if our local bookshop happened to be a true gem, a Light in the Wilderness.

The mall-chains were a step up for most of us. Borders, Barnes & Noble? These were revelations. No, really: and stop for just a moment and appreciate what the chains that many now despise [and which are, in the current economy, at least in part endangered] did for the average shopper in the average suburb all across the U.S.: 90% of us now live within 30 minutes drive of a 20,000+ sq.ft. bookstore that stocks 100,000+ books, and cycles through new releases on a weekly basis — not just the NYT bestsellers, but an astoundingly large percentage of books you’d never heard of and likely never would have in the book market just 15 years past.

Many forget what a revolution a Big Box Bookstore was in 1990, because it was immediately followed by the internet, and internet bookstores, in 1995 or so. But would Amazon (as a bookseller) have been such a success without the pioneering efforts of the major chains just a few years earlier?

That’s a point that can be argued, I think.

##

And What Do We Use Bookstores For?

Surprisingly, it isn’t now (and hasn’t been for at least 2 years) the sales of books — though of course that is the economic activity that pays for the rest.

Most folks buy bestsellers online, or from places like Wal-Mart, Target, & Costco. And sure, I sell an awful lot at the bookstore, too, (…that’s why they call them “bestsellers”, after all) but few go out of their way to buy a book from a bookstore — those that do are our best customers, and we booksellers love them, to bits — but the largest part of the market doesn’t want a bookstore, they just want the damn book. It was mentioned on Oprah, or Glenn Beck, or they’re making a movie, or it’s sparkly-vampires-in-a-barely-contained-metaphor-about-teenaged-sex or whatever. The Buzz surrounding the book has nothing to do with books-as-art or literature-as-our-collective-soul, but instead is just a facet of overall-media-consumption and honestly: some folks are put out that we’re “forcing” them to “read” a gods-damn “book”.

“Isn’t it a movie or TV show yet?”

[Obviously I have issues. Not as many issues as society, if this is where we find ourselves as a culture, but I’m the odd man out so it’s “my” “problem” and not a symptom of overall decay and apocolypse.] [In a “Mad Max”, “Zardoz” universe I’ll be the compulsive hoarder of books. And I’ll be happy. And armed. Back off.]

For a segment of books, and those buying them, there has always been a market outside the book shop. There were the racks at drugstores, newsstands, and eventually at the supermarkets — and Walmart and Target and everywhere: Bestsellers, genre fiction, the pulp and the popular. The book became a commodity, no longer a specialty product, in some respects no longer a ‘book’ – not libris ipsis but just another entertainment option next to $4.99 DVDs, tabloid mags, and the diversion available from cable TV or game platforms.

##

The old book retail model doesn’t quite work anymore, not in a world with online, discounted sales of physical books and instant downloads of e-books. But some of us (myself included) aren’t ready to let go of the ‘bookstore’ quite yet, and there should be some way to make a bookstore work even as book retail [as we used to know it] is significantly marginalized and in large chunks replaced by online analogues and substitutes.

One merely [merely, as if it’s that easy] has to “rethink the box” and come up with a new way to run a bookstore.

Why a Pub?

Well…

This not only plays into my proclivities (I am on record multiple times and across multiple platforms as a fond lover of alcoholic beverages) but also into my professional experience — a lifetime ago, before I was a bookseller, I worked in the hospitality industry (as a consultant—not a bartender or waiter, thank you very much) (though I’m a mean bartender, and even after 14 years off I still feel I could immediately step into that role and earn a few tips besides) and a lifetime before that I was studying architecture at Georgia Tech and I’m probably the only barfly on record who will sit inside a pub and analyze their lighting, acoustics, customer circulation, work flow behind the bar, HVAC, and décor — all while getting pleasantly stonked.

Also, as a business model: Pubs predate bookstores by a millennium. So what if the medium/media is/are dying? — alcoholism isn’t just recession proof: it will survive the end of Empires — and to date, it is impossible to download or pirate a beer.

##

So.

What does the public want from a bookstore?

• A public restroom, first and foremost.
• Free Wifi
• Many, many outlets where one can plug in and recharge all of our modern gadgets.
• a place to sit
• a comfortable place to sit, preferably — but any stack of books, empty fixture, or patch of floor will do — so long as it is next to an outlet.
• a table
• a table with a chair (or other place to sit) preferred, and so long as both are comfortable, even more so (and folks will stay all day) — But I’ve noted “customers” using counters, book shelves, window sills, empty tables (or promotional tables full of books) — it doesn’t really matter, folks just want a flat horizontal surface and if we don’t provide one, they’ll improvise.
• A computer to look up stuff. Ideally, they want an unrestricted terminal connected to the internet. Which is why they should go to a library, and we’re not the library, and they shouldn’t expect “free internet” on free hardware even when we do offer “free wifi” — but good luck explaining this to people. Failing all the internets for free without even a speedbump or one’s own hardware, most customers would be happy with a terminal that connects with our inventory system, so they can find “the book” [Oprah’s or otherwise] themselves. Because customers hate “customer service”. — Oh, it’s not that they hate the help; I think it’s that they hate showing weakness.

“I don’t need help. Just tell me where/how to find the books. I’ll do it myself.”

…except, if I tell you where/how, well, you’re not doing it by yourself at that point, are you? A related problem is folks who never, never go to the information desk (because they don’t need help) but who will stop a bookseller working in the stacks (or actively ambush one who happened to be walking past) with a “Oh, by the way” question that honestly, can only be answered at the desk, where we have computers that connect to the internet

This is my singular complaint, currently. I’ve taken to responding to these “oh, by the way” inquires with:

“Well, I don’t know that off the top of my head, but if you’ll follow me to the Information Desk where my booksellers can check the computer for you we’ll see if we have that in stock.”

Yes, you’d be able to hear the italics in my voice when I say it. It’s such a *heavy* hint that I fear I might harm some customers when I drop it.

##

The last thing people want from a bookstore is something to read, though that is the convenient excuse to stop by the bookstore (for internet via wifi, or to recharge a phone, or otherwise) — though of course if one does manage to make it into a bookstore, actually paying for something to read is so far beyond reasonable expectations that I’m almost embarrassed to mention it.

So.

Back the the Pub:

Folks want a place to meet, meet up, congregate, and maybe consume some media besides.

I can do that.

They want direction and guidance, on what to read and on what’s important and relevant:

This is harder. A lot depends on which booksellers I can hire, and also on the clientele my store supports; our customers are also our best resources. A shop could be built around popular genre categories: a mystery-theme pub — or a sci-fi theme, though the sci-fi fan base is fractious and hard to engage. A foodie-themed, foodie-friendly, come-in-and-cook-with-us bookstore would do exceptionally well right now, though I have some doubts as to the longevity of such a shop.

However: news, current events, relevant history and considered political discourse have been currant since Demosthenes, and has reappeared time and time again: from the first (wildly inaccurate, perhaps fictional) travel historiologues to Marco Polo to Amerigo Vespucci to Robinson Crusoe to Lewis & Clark to Daniel Boone to John Fremont to Huck Finn to William Randolf Hearst to Theodore Roosevelt to Hemingway to JFK to the NRPK

— and yes, some of those are fictional, but the ‘historical’ characters often aren’t much better, and the fictional stories are better (which is why we remember them) – and our appetite for news hasn’t diminshed at all over the 2500 years since dead Greeks figured out the message would carry further if they just wrote things down.

This idea of “writing things down” encompasses not only publishing but also newsprint, and all of its offspring: newsreels, evening TV newscasts on the 3 [only 3, at the time] broadcast networks, cable news networks, and eventually the whole blogoverse and corporate news websites besides.

Sure, we can navigate these strange. unexplored waters from home, by ourselves – but wouldn’t it be great to have a guide – someone who has been out there for years, who has been there before

Day to day, you’ll never actually meet this person; but if you’re lucky, you might find the bookstore/pub/outlet they work at.

##

A Public Place to meet
A Quiet Place to sit and read
A friendly port in the storm — with outlets, and wifi, and clean restrooms.
The last place in town that carries the London papers
…or the Washington papers
…or even [eventually] the New York newspapers. Used to be, you’d trip over these at any newsstand, but good luck finding a news agent these days

& a decent pint, with a decent lunch menu.

##

The Fleet Street Pub doesn’t even have to sell books, though I could see setting aside enough floor/wall space for five or six bookcases: for notable books — for sale or just to have. At this point, books are no longer the main profit center, or even the raison d‘être

Books are in our DNA, but the retailer of 50 or 20 years hence may not be a ‘bookstore’ per se. Just like livery stables and farriers transitioned to become garages and mechanics: booksellers & bookstores will still be around, but I can’t say exactly how we’ll be serving the community.

I think quite a bit of what we now call ‘bookselling’ — those who know books and follow new releases and make recommendations — will transition to the internet as we all become bloggers [book bloggers, in this instance]

…And actually, I’ve an idea or two on how to make that work, and pay…

but it is as hard to predict where bookstores will be in 50 years, as it would be to predict fast-food drive throughs and motels and Detroit car shows while shovelling shit in a stable in 1905. Anyone who claims to know is lying, and we’ve decades of technological change to deal with yet, before the ‘obvious’ answer even shows up.

##

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

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

Every Autumn (well, every Autumn I’ve worked for the past 11 years) my blogging and online activities have had to shut down (or at least slow to the barest crawl) — I just don’t have time, because it’s the holidays, and since I work retail that means Christmas starts in September and the ‘Christmas Rush’ has preparations and after-effects that last seemingly forever: “Christmas comes but half the year” — regular readers, all 9 of you, no doubt noticed the lack of new material towards the end of the year just past.

For months, we’re either setting up, refreshing, taking down, flipping overnight, or otherwise adjusting and manipulating all of our displays — on top of seasonal merchandise like calendars, stationary (holiday cards), gift wrap, and more toys and games than we really have space for (overflowing even in our back room) — or last-minute stupid Black Friday sales (I’m sorry, corporate would rather I call those “timely seasonal promotional initiatives”)

— or my Booksellers and I are hip-deep in the actual business of retail, providing customer service and Ringing the Register. *

* Because no one — not booksellers, not field management, not home office staff, not executives, not the stockholders — NO ONE gets paid until we ring up sales at the register. (Basic Retail 101. Seems some fancy MBAs occasionally forget that, though.)

This past holiday season has been really tough, as we’ve been cutting back on store payroll since the start of the fiscal year — That’d be February of 2010 for those of you not reading our annual reports. Since then—since November of 2009, actually—I’ve hired no one. Nope, not even for the holidays. We’ve accepted some transfers from other stores, but these merely offset losses due to other booksellers leaving. We haven’t had to fire anyone at our store * but natural attrition means my roster is 25% shorter than it used to be, and continual pressure from above to cut hours means that some booksellers were down to just one or two shifts a week. It’s been tough. It’s exceptionally tough if you’re trying to prep a store for the holidays, the busiest 2 months of the year.

[* We haven’t had to fire anyone at our store yet. And a change in accounting methods by corporate means my fiscal year doesn’t end until May this year — three more long, slow months with historically dismal sales]

I’ve been worked like a dog. And it’s not like anyone above me is offering to pay the overtime either: I just have to get more done with less, packing 11 hours of work into each 8 hour shift.

This is true across the whole chain, but at my store I’ve an extra headache: one of our managers quit in September, right before the whole mess got rolling. Not only do I not have the booksellers to assign to projects, I and the other members of the management team have had to work more openings and closings because right now there are only 4 people with the keys and codes to the building. [4 where we used to have 6, and where some stores have 7 or 8]

There were two occasions where I was so exhausted that I had to take a half a day off sick, just to go home and lie down — but only half-days, as I still had to go in and open up the store, and put in at least 4 hours so I wouldn’t fall behind (and to wait for the mid-shift manager to show up) (on days when we had a mid-shift manager; for half of our shifts there has been just one manager to open, and one to close, with just 2 hours overlap besides.)

Something had to give, and for me, it was writing and my other hobbies (I do odd bits of data analysis for the blog) — and that’s a hell of a thing to say, that I was working so hard physically at a retail job that after 8 or 9 hour shifts I was too tired to even blog.

##

Despite what Wall Street and corporate America thinks, you don’t just cut payroll to make ends meet.

Oh, sure, it’s the easiest thing to cut (gods forbid you stop paying stock dividends or forgo your own bonus) and since it’s so easy, one usually cuts payroll anyway even while making other necessary cuts — reducing inventory, streamlining processes, sourcing cheaper stock; renegotiating debts, leases and other fixed costs. Many other cost reductions require work, strategic decisions (sometimes lateral, out-of-the-box thinking), and might require sacrifices — whereas cutting payroll and concomitant “productivity increases” are simple. Just tell your managers to fire people.

Though, you don’t actually terminate people; that accrues its own costs (severance, etc.) — you tell managers to cut payroll — well, you don’t even do that, corporate uses weasel words and several layers of management and the decision gets translated to the store level as [*ahem*] “So, what are you doing to meet the new payroll targets? Mmhm?”

Pass the buck on down — leave the hard decisions (and even harder conversations with individual employees) to the stores. Executives don’t have to deal with booksellers: they get to talk about “numbers” & “targets”. At the store level, we have to explain to a part-timer who really needs the money why they are only scheduled three days a week when they used to work four.

Here’s the thing:

— And it’s not just true for retail, it’s a fact in every business:

“Productivity Gains” aren’t free.

Oh sure, you set your arbitrary targets and get stores to meet the new lower number, and even if sales are flat (or down) you make more money per payroll hour spent. The math says that you’re fixing the problem, & on paper it’s working out just fine.

But “Productivity Gains” are a paper illusion, and cuts in staffing save payroll dollars but also incur other costs. In retail, when you cut staff you negatively impact the customer experience. People leave because they don’t like waiting in line at the register. In a bookstore, customers wander and flop about and wait for a bookseller to engage them, and if no one walks up and asks, they’re more likely to leave than to go to the information desk and ask for help.

[I’ve just detailed two customer behaviors that bewilder & exasperate me: I’m so sorry you had to wait an extra four minutes to check out — I really should have opened up another register for you since after spending hours casually reading books & magazines and messing up my displays, now, suddenly you’re in a hurry — also, if you need help finding something, it might not hurt to go to the desk where I have both the staff and the computers to find books — so maybe “there wasn’t anyone at the infomation desk” in the 2 seconds it took you to glance at it while you walked by, but once again: it kills you to wait a minute? — my snark aside, customer expectations of the bookstore are completely unreasonable and non-negotiable. Logic doesn’t play any part here]

There are opportunity costs (dear executive: you remember ‘opportunity costs‘? back from Econ 101?) to cuts in staffing, and “productivity gains” are bought by spending customer & community goodwill, individual customer satisfaction, and employee morale, health & well-being. (I am not the only corporate bookseller who is grumbling.)

You also let go an experienced employee — or watch while your best employees leave, to take a job with better pay and prospects. It can be hard enough replacing a bookseller at the store level — I can only imagine the regret some will feel in a couple of years after letting experienced home office staff go

##

This past year, we have cut payroll while maintaining the same level of holiday merchandising — including calendars, holiday cards, gift wrap, and other seasonal product — while also executing extensive [corporate directed] re-lays of product categories, including *in-section promotional placement of new releases, additions to the educational/instruction categories (not just workbooks but educational toys & games), extensive changes to the teen fiction category, and the usual tweaks and shifts throughout the store

* “in-section” means on shelves in the stacks — in addition to and on top of all of the other tables, fixtures, and displays

All this takes work — and not just ‘sales’ or ‘customer service’ work, which can be hard to quantify and occasionally doesn’t result in an actual sale — but actual work-work where a person has to physically move tables, and fixtures, and tons of product. (books are heavy. the tons add up fast)

Also this past year, we have cut payroll in stores while launching our digital business. At the corporate level, yes, this has meant a lot of work: not just developing the device and negotiating with overseas suppliers & contractors, but building the website, the digital delivery model, new logistics and delivery strategies, and establishing new procedures and processes for stores to follow. Sure, it’s been tough, and I hesitate, heck I’m almost embarrassed to mention, that all that hard work can be done from a desk in a nice corner office. Maybe you have to wait long minutes while your long distance call to contractors in South & Southeast Asia connects, while sitting in a Herman Miller Aeron Chair.

In stores, we’ve had to dedicate square footage — the most prominent location on the sales floor, natch — removing [or exiling to some far-off corner] tables and other frontlist fixtures all to make room for the new digital desk. That’s… OK, actually. Folks tend to find the most popular books whereever we put them, and the loss of a front-of-store table probably worries publishers more than it even registers with our customers. But I then had to staff this new desk, pulling my most tech-savvy employees (and best salespeople) away from books [and from those customers seeking books who might have benefitted from their experience and expertise] to explain to a never-ending parade of customers what e-books are, why they should care — and for the customers who already know the answers to those first two questions, why they should buy from us.

To launch digital, we’ve committed to placing assets (including and perhaps especially our best booksellers) in prominent locations in stores. Also, the new digital sales conversations take as much as a half-hour with the new devices, rather than just the 3-sentence-book-pitch. Additionally, booksellers have taken on a whole new tech support role — not only helping customers set up the new device, but also trouble-shooting all the usual problems folks have with tech: from user error to connectivity issues to problems with the servers and software and problems and defects in the hardware

*I* can do this, as I’m smarter than the average bear and spent seven years at Georgia Tech besides. But I’m not saying I like it. I’m not saying I asked for it. I’m not saying this is a natural fit for booksellers, either. In fact, if I were to say something, it would be more along the lines of “I feel we booksellers at the store level have been thrown to the wolves” — but of course I would never say that as I am behind our company’s digital initiatives 100%.

We’ve made adjustments. The new digital sales counter (very nice looking, BTW, all white and black and glass) is staffed by some of my best booksellers for 90% of the time our store is open.

And sales were good. I’m sure there were/are some corporate press releases to that effect posted to the internet. We’re coping with our new tech support role as well (helped in part by the new device launched in November, as it is a much more solid unit overall than last year’s model).

But before you think it’s all roses and sunshine and profits, let me remind you: we launched the digital piece without increasing payroll. I wasn’t allowed to hire anyone, or if I did hire someone for digital it would have meant firing someone at worst, and at the very least further cutbacks in hours for all my other current booksellers.

Staffing the new department (and it’s a department just as much as music & video, newsstand, children’s, or even the damn café) meant re-assigning booksellers for 96 hours a week: the equivalent of 2.5 full-time, 40-hour-a-week employees, just to have one person at the digital desk — and on weekends you know a single bookseller isn’t going to cut it: if I only schedule one then they will be paging me to back them up when there is a line, because quite honestly there wouldn’t be anyone else, we’re staffed so tight.

Each and every store in the chain had to launch this new specialty department, staff it, train existing booksellers, spend hours to stock and track inventory, and to report sales info daily, *twice* daily for a couple of weeks, all without any additional payroll. Making do with what you have, and performing miracles besides.

##

The modern chain, big-box bookstore isn’t just about the books. We’re running 4 or 5 businesses, one on top of the other, each of which are specialties which used to command their own specialty retailers, and with this new digital hot mess besides.

Books, by themselves, are unique in retail. And books are different from periodicals, which differ from CDs, which are a different business from DVDs & Blu-ray — and even in books, Kids’ picture books are different from cheap genre pulps are different from hardcovers are different from trade paperbacks are different from ‘coffee-table’ books.

On top of all that, we’re also now stocking [select] games, toys, stationary, calendars [seasonally], journals, and assorted other crap lovely merchandise.

Add on the new e-readers — and selling the whole idea behind e-readers, which I challenge anyone to explain succinctly to the satisfaction of your Grandma — sure, tech bloggers get it, but tech bloggers aren’t buying anything at my store. I have to summarize the totality of the new digital book universe, in a way Antiques Roadshow fans will understand, in 30 seconds or less. [While resetting the whole store for the holidays, and simultaneously running a register and answering book questions because while I have staff on the schedule, they’re earnestly waiting behind the digital counter, waiting for the one-customer-in-ten who is shopping for a device and not a book.]

##

I love books. I love my job, since I get to work in a bookstore, but recently instead of being able to communicate my love of books to customers [in general, and for some books particularly] I’ve been stuck doing everything, all at once because some tosser in a comfy office at corporate decided each payroll hour spent needs to generate $140 in revenue instead of $100.

Instead of being able to share my enthusiasm for books with customers, my dedication to books is now sublimated into a grim determination to just hang on even in the face of a deteriorating situation — but with hope that things will improve when the economy is better. My fear, though, is that having realized “productivity gains” [& without recognizing exactly what those gains have cost] my corporate overlords will continue to run the bookstores with a skeleton crew and the bare minimum of new stock, all while asking management and other “lifetime” booksellers to do more and more — for and with less.

Some days I feel like I’m running the store by myself. And some days I ask, If I’m Running the Store by Myself, then hell, why don’t I just leave to run my own store? [I think this counts as one more ‘cost’ of cutting payroll: your best employees leave to do less work, working for themselves]

##

Corporate had to find the money somewhere, to pay for the digital launch.

And that’s fine.

I might wonder why we spent $500 million to buy back the college bookstore division from our own chairman, along with the rights to the company name itself — withheld at the IPO in ’93 for no other reason than the brand alone was worth at least as much as the company — but at a time when major investment was required, I’m a bit sore that money was spent on anything other than digital.

But the investment in digital by my corporate overlord (might as well name Barnes & Noble at this point in the essay) made by cutting payroll and other costs while stock dividends continue to be paid quarterly — a payment to shareholders that amounts to 50+ Million Dollars a year, every year since 2005 — leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Especially since all these “productivity gains” from “payroll savings” are coming out of my store, & my employees’ well-being, and my own health. When I collapse from a heart attack on the bookfloor because 2 booksellers just quit and I’m doing what I can to basically cover, after I’ve already worked overtime & invested my all into the store, & after doing everything I could to meet the [often unreasonable] corporate expectations and dictates — I hope you enjoy your 25¢ quarterly dividend and the smug satisfaction that you’ve ‘solved’ this retail ‘problem’ — and that any media attention that my final words and obituary will draw don’t inconvenience you too much

— after all, I was just a bookseller.