Rocket Bomber - retail

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)

##

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]

##

…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.

##

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.

Hi Kids.

…

So…

before I post all the crap I’ve been looking up on the internet since, well, September and quite a bit more intensely the past few weeks, it is necessary to post a disclaimer — it ran a little long, though, so I bumped it to the bottom of this article. Short version: I work for, but do not and can not speak for, Barnes & Noble. Clear?

So let’s talk about the Nook Color.

##

Background:

Engadget, 19 October 2010: Barnes & Noble holding a ‘very special event’ 26 October

A number of other media outlets also reported on the upcoming 26 Oct. ‘event’, presumably because they all got invites. Didn’t take long for the news to ‘leak’

cnet News, 21 October: Source: New Nook is Android-based, full-color

And the announcement:

[source: Techworld via YouTube]

Paul Biba of TeleRead took some video during the B&N presentation and posted it in two parts — I won’t bother to embed it here, but the links are there for those who just have to see it — and plenty of details are in the offical press release. Both cnet and engadget were on hand, and posted videos from the demonstrations made to the press after the event. B&N posted a promotional video to their nook website, and you can go watch it if you’re feeling masochistic, though I prefer the edited version Gizmo posted to YouTube.

Select Reactions:

Crunch Gear, 25 October: The Color Nook Could Be The Tablet Tipping Point
Salon, 26 October: Barnes & Noble’s new color e-reader: Locking down its new Nook tablet, the retailer cripples a potential breakthrough
Ars Technica, 27 October: Nook Color features LCD display, shorter battery life at $249
PCMag.com, 27 October: Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color Makes First-Gen Nook Obsolete
electronista, 28 October: Nook Color follows Apple’s ‘curated’ app model, uses ARM A8
cnet, 29 October: LCD vs. e-ink: The eyestrain debate
The Onion, 1 November: Barnes & Noble Releases Color Nook
Forbes, 3 November: The NookColor Won’t Save Barnes and Noble

If you’re interested in keeping up to date, you might bookmark appropriate searches at engadget, gizmodo, TechCrunch, and Google

##

Despite what anyone else might say in columns or thought-pieces, no one was predicting a new Barnes & Noble ereader.

The first rumors landed 2 days after B&N extended invites to its unspecified Media Event, and I know this to whatever degree of certainty web searches provide: I’ve bookmarked a specific Google search, ‘ereader rumor’, restricted to only the posts in the last 24 hours and I’ve been checking it daily since 23 September. That particular search turned up the same 20-30 pages for weeks, right up until… wait for it… 20 October, the day after the B&N press invite for a 26 October media event. Sure, folks have predicted color e-readers for a while now, kinda ignoring the color screen attached to 99% of PCs and laptops—which function quite well as an e-reader, as does the iPad—as apparently, the platonic ideal form of an ‘e-reader’ must be a handheld device that is neither a ‘phone’ or a ‘tablet’. Very specific, for some reason.

[and the same might be said for ‘e-books’ which for some (the same?) reason must be read on an ‘e-reader’ — and this reading experience is somehow more sublime than reading mere ‘documents’ or web pages off of your computer screen, even though 90% of us do 90% of our reading on the internet on an LCD, day in & day out for years now …but that’s a different rant.]

The problem with the tech press is that they are techies — they know too much. Anyone in a position to comment authoritatively on the matter has been following tech trends for decades and knows not just what’s coming out this autumn, but also the trends and new technologies that will likely come out in 2012 or 2013 — It is rare to blindside someone in the tech press (though Apple seems to be capable of at least mild surprises once a year or so) and no sooner is a new device released, than they begin to tear it down. [literally, in some cases, but metaphorically also]

Nothing is quite good enough. The 4g iPhone was all but perfect, but one could sense the barely contained glee bloggers and journalists took in reporting the attenna problems. The iPad is great, but it doesn’t have a keyboard and at all of 1.5 lbs., apparently it’s a leaden albatros around users’ necks. The Palm Pre was also near-perfect, but since the user base was too small there was no hope of a robust app store.

Easy-to-use gadgets get docked for not being ‘open’ and user-customizable, Open gadgets get points taken away for being ‘chaotic’ and hard to learn, and great gadgets of all sorts get panned because they’re sold with (and subsidized by) data plans from phone companies that tie you in for years. (Oddly, devices sold without the phone-co.-subsidy are then criticized for being too expensive.)

There is no way to keep the internet happy: Haters are going to hate, partisans of one brand will always disparage all others, and even perfect isn’t good enough, because perfect takes too long and the tech will be six months old [*ancient*] by the time it comes out.

Not that the Nook Color is perfect — with specs as advertised, it represents a set of compromises: decisions made to optimize user experience while keeping costs below one of the ‘psychological barrier’ price points [$50, $100, $200 — big round numbers]. But when reading articles condemning (or praising, but mostly condemning) the new nook, it’s good to keep in mind that these writers and reviewers are techies, and both their knowledge base and expectations are different from the general public — for sub-$500 units, different from the devices’ target market.

##

Nook Color: So what is it?

It’s an android tablet. No getting around that. It runs android, looks an awful lot like the emerging leader in the android tablet category [hey, there’s a lot to be said for being first, Samsung is going to build up a lead here] and let’s face it: the new nook has a LCD screen — in what seems like a step backward for e-readers [e-ink was one of the few selling points]

Ah yes, but what of that screen? LG VividView LCD. For most folks, I’m sure that means nothing. I’d certainly never heard of VividView, though I am familiar with LG — one of the top three manufactures of LCDs (second only to Samsung, in fact, and both based in South Korea) and certainly, they are folks who know screen technology. With bit of strategic Googling, I can demonstrate that VividView isn’t brand new; it’s been used for a couple of years now in high-end gaming laptops – and in those applications, easily HDTV capable. Now, I sincerely doubt the Nook Color is going to run HDTV – this is a $250 handheld and the stated resolution is 1024×600 (on a 7” screen; might I remind you that 1024×768 is often found on 14” laptops? —and that the resolution of the 10” iPad screen is also 1024×768?) and I don’t want to be blinded by the numbers; but the screen tech (despite not being Mirasol or color E-ink) certainly seems nice. I’m sure this lovely display is a battery hog and one of the reasons I’ll only get 4 hours (B&N says 8, and I laugh) between charges, but I’m eager to actaully see it. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has the same advertised resolution, 1024×600, for their 7” – though obviously Samsung manufactures the screen in that one. I’m looking forward to the write-up by a reviewer with access to each.

##

The other half of the “android tablet” dynamic isn’t the ‘tablet’ part: the new nook seems to run android apps pretty much out of the box [according to reports] — though it won’t connect to an outside app market of any sort; what’s available will be only whatever B&N deems worthy. While that seems like an unnecessary speed bump, B&N is positioning and selling the device as an e-reader, and has an open invitation to all developers. I called it a mere ‘speed-bump’ for a reason; either some smart cookie will figure out how to hack the nook without crippling it (allowing it to run side-loaded apps while preserving the B&N e-reader functionality) or Barnes & Noble may just sell enough of these to make it an attractive market for developers, who really only have to tweak and gloss already finished android apps so they look good on the nook …and the Galaxy Tab, which as noted has the same screen resolution and OS so there will likely be some synergy

— and since synergy has been so overused, I’ll link to wikipedia and also define it here: “two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently” — I might advise my employer to be very generous in regards to what programs make it into the nook app store as there is an opportunity to develop a 7” android ecosystem — with the Samsung device soon to be available through Verizon and Sprint, and of course sales of the Nook Color (at at least $100 less than Samsung’s unit) and I know, I know, we’re selling e-readers and not computers, but one should not discount the “after market” or all the uses a consumer—a purchaser of our product—might want to employ, all of which add value and increase sales — you know, if Sony had tacitly accepted PSP hacks instead of cracking down, the PSP might be outselling Nintendo DS right now — and might even be a passable e-reader, to boot.

##

So there it is; about all I can think to say about the new nook without actually having my hands on one.

Though I might note one other bias I think the nook encounters in the internet/technical press: Anything we do automatically gets discounted because we were two years late to the ball and we’re not a ‘tech’ company — it’s like your frumpy old aunt is getting dolled up and trying to crash the party.

As to being late: Apple is always late. They introduced iPods after MP3 players had been around for years, a phone after smart phones had been around for years, the iPad after netbooks had been around for years. [I’ve been over this in detail] Now, my [*cough*] beloved employer is no Apple, but being late isn’t bad.

And as far as not being a tech company: yes, I know many of you have Barnes & Noble ‘sussed out’ – there is a box somewhere in your head, labeled ‘bookstore’ or ‘place to plug in and check my email in an emergency’, and that’s the only role you can think of for Barnes & Noble.

We’ve offered wifi to customers for longer than I’ve had this blog; initially it was available only to paying customers, but we’ve had wifi in store since 2004 — what, 6 years as an internet service provider doesn’t count? — and for those of you who have been constantly re-learning and re-certifying for the past 20 years, where did you buy your computer reference books? Hm? Oh sure, you all buy them from Amazon now, but who stocked the books the Amazon programmers themselves used prior to 1994?

We’ve been here all the time.

I have to admit: some of the folks at the top are booksellers to the bone, and they don’t get the ‘new’ tech. But that’s why Steve Riggio stepped aside to let Bill Lynch take over as CEO — and B&N has had a website since 1997 (13 years now); & before the launch of BN.com, the company was selling books via CompuServe and America Online — OK, so that was a bad move in retrospect, but B&N was out there, out in front, back before a lot of you were on the ‘net.

Some might hate to admit it, but Barnes & Noble is a tech company: we are the entry point for learning, a provider of free internet for that sizable minority of ‘wifi gypsies’, and since last year: we sell portable electronics. Say what you want, but B&N has 20% of the e-book market and 1400+ stores and folks like me — who don’t have to defend the company…

You know, let me take that back a half-step: B&N corporate has cut my store payroll by like, 35% over the past couple of years and that, quite honestly, is killing me – I have a more than adequate base from which to criticize

…but that aside (or even taken into full consideration) – I still sell books, and I still work for Corporate Overlord Big Box Books, and as a blogger I might be considered an ideal interface to bridge old-school-physical-bookselling into the post-internet age, but not a one of my posts is sponsored or authorized by my employer, and I am at risk when I write about topics this close to home.

That’s a bit far afield from my point [though I consider it a necessary detour] –

I can’t help but get this impression from the tech press to date, “The Nook Color looks like a great tablet for $250 – a real bargain, even – it’s a shame it comes from Barnes & Noble”

##

##

The Disclaimer

• Barnes & Noble signs my paycheck. I’m not an ‘insider’ at the corporate headquarters, though, or an engineer (or even the janitor) at the shiny new Barnes & Noble Digital division in Palo Alto. [which is hiring, btw. obviously that link is time-dependent; this article was posted 11 Nov 2010.] I’m just field management, one out of thousands of Store Managers and Asst. Managers and dept. managers that actually run the damn stores.
• I’m not authorized to speak for Barnes & Noble. Period. Not officially, not “off the record”, not under condition of anonymity: nothing.
• Barnes & Noble doesn’t tell me squat, past what you can go read for yourself at their website. OK, so I know a little bit more about my store, like payroll and sales targets, but I don’t share that information for obvious reasons.
• When I clock out and go home and start drinking, I’m a blogger. Every word you’ve ever read on this blog is just me, Matt Blind: otaku fanboy loser, geek-correspondent-at-large, introverted alcoholic blogger. I’m also a bookseller, and I bring that perspective and experience to my posts, but I am in no way privy to any insider info on this one.
• And even if I knew something, I couldn’t tell you. In fact, if I knew even a few, minor details that would be enough to preclude me from posting any sort of analysis on this topic at all. You know, because I could get fired and whatnot, since fool that I am I’ve been writing RocketBomber (and blogging for years now) under my real name.
• indeed, “M. Blind” is neither a nom de plume nor nom de guerre — though it quite handily looks like one, something I’ve used to my advantage for close to two decades on the internet. (I started at Georgia Tech in the Fall of 1992 and one of the first things they assigned me was an email address.)

So, I speak for myself. I don’t have a crystal ball or Mímir’s head in a bag. I’ve got the internets, a search engine, a cooler full of beer, some leads, and the burning desire to know.

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.

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 –

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 –

##

The New Model Bookstore

What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.

criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra

##

Case Study #4: The Last Picture Show

Let me take it back a step – Last year around this time I was walking everyone through some simple guidelines for real-estate development, which sounds a lot fancier than what the actual posts entailed: figuring out a good place to locate a bookstore.

Among other rules of thumb, I told aspiring shopkeepers to pay close attention to their neighbors – being next to a restaurant or other retail was considered a bonus, being out in the middle of nowhere was not recommended (despite the cheaper rent). One advantageous adjacency that I don’t remember mentioning was movie theaters: being next to a movie theater is as close a guarantee of customer traffic as you’re likely to get in retail. Folks go out to the movies, and either just miss a showtime (and have to wait an hour or two) or the show they want is sold out so they choose another (and still have to wait 30-40 minutes) or rarely, they plan ahead but don’t encounter traffic or other delays, and so are early — typically they’d just sit in a theater watching the same 4 minutes of the movie screen equivalent of a screen saver (about 5 times over) but if there were an option many folks would much rather flip through magazines or take a look at the new releases. And maybe they come back after the show, for coffee and to talk about the movie, and just maybe to buy something that caught their eye.

If you can locate your bookstore along a restaurant-shop-theater axis, you’re golden: Given the difference between movie showtimes, the time to get seated and served at a restaurant, and other variables (John is running late, again, or Kristen called and she wants to bring her roommate so now they’re going to be another 10 minutes) there will almost always be an hour or so for customers to waste — and what better way than to spend some time than in a bookstore?

Someone who already has a coffeeshop in house will of course also be trying to get folks to eat (or at least snack) at the bookstore before they see the movie – instead of another restaurant. Indeed, a smart risk-taker might imagine putting a restaurant and bar inside the bookstore, to capture even more of that before-and-after-the-show business.

It takes a mad genius to make the next intuitive leap, though: heck, why not put the theater in the bookstore?

while I am a mad genius, I don’t get credit for this idea: my Music Department Manager, Brad, gets the nod here. At Big Box Books, we also sell DVDs (and an increasing amount of Blu-Ray) out of the music dept., and Brad has noticed several trends over the past couple of years – At least at our store, the disc-buying customer is much more cinema ‘literate’, and they tend to be collectors.

We can build on this [in fact, we have] and make it a point to reach out to this customer base. As a result, we sell more blu-ray, box sets, and Criterion than anyone else in the metro area – and maybe much further. Tapping into a collector’s market is great, as you see certain all-but-guaranteed sales in select categories with each new release. The Criterion & blu-ray markets are also nice for the higher price points: when list price is $40-50, even in a once-a-year 50% off sale ($20) you’re banking $10 a disc (and at those prices, the real collectors buy much more than just single discs.)

So extend that out just a bit. Open up a book & disc store with an art-house style theater inside.

Doesn’t have to be a huge, megaplex, stadium-style cavernous hall of a theater – something of a scale with your market and intended audience – indeed, a multi-use space better suited for live drama (though with enough room for a decent screen) would be a much better choice. Say 200-275 seats.

One way to envision this strange hybrid is to consider the local movie cinemaplex — that one with 10 screens and the football-field-sized parking lot out by the mall is a fine example. Their lobby is huge — really oversized and seldom used, even when folks are standing in line for Star Wars or what-have-you. Sure, there is the concession counter (also grossly oversized; I’ve seen a Starbucks do 5 times the business from a counter a fourth as big) and maybe some video games off to one side, but otherwise there is nothing but carpet, bare walls, and the occasional movie poster. Say we took that unused floor space and did something really simple: took 10 sq.ft. to add a small counter selling movie soundtracks. Folks just saw the film and some of them no doubt loved the soundtrack – why make them wait? Sell them the CD before they leave; they can listen to it in the car on the way home. Talk about a specific retail opportunity & exploiting an ideal market; you know, given the low investment cost (you’d need to stock, at most, like 10 different CDs – a far cry from the hundreds we have at the bookstore) and the similarly low payroll (a single person for like 10 minutes at a time as each show lets out) and the fact that the CDs could be locked in a display case—and you’re only handed a copy after the sale at the register— I am really quite surprised none of the cash-strapped theater chains hasn’t tried this already. Maybe as a one-time thing, or special promo (“buy 2 lg. drinks and a popcorn bucket for $22 and get a free CD!”) but so far as I know, it hasn’t happened.

Now, stretch it just a bit further: Showing Iron Man 2? Why *aren't* you selling the first Iron Man on DVD in the movie lobby? Allergic to money?

##

The idea behind “The Last Picture Show” isn’t to save the movie theater; in fact, just taking one failing business (theaters) and combining it with another slowly-dying business (retail sales of CDs and DVDs) is far from a recipe for success.

But, the whole can be more than the sum of its parts: think small, and build up.

• Art House style theater? check. Make it a multi-use space, suitable for small music ensembles or even live drama.
• Concession Stand? Nope – Instead: the ubiquitous bookstore coffee shop (sure, we’re still charging $4 for a large drink, but for some reason people don’t blink when it’s a coffee-based-milkshake) with something better than just candy – a decent sandwhich, to start with, and maybe even a small sit-down restaurant.
• Bookstore? again, check – but focused: ‘literary’ fiction supplimented by bestsellers and select genre fiction; biographies, select history & non-fiction titles; ‘coffee table’ books on cinema & things like “The Art of” and “The Making of” specific films; and obviously if someone ever made it into a movie we’ll want to stock that book.
• CDs? well sure, soundtracks, natch, but also a larger selection of classical and jazz – even at the expense of other “popular” CDs. The kids will download stuff (legally or not) so we’ll want to focus on music that requires more, hm, experience to appreciate: the thoughtful customer, the one with more money and a willingness to spend some of that money at a place that stocks (and can recommend) music.
• And of course, we’ll want to have DVDs and Blu-Ray: imagine, say, 3 times the floorspace of a Big Box Books (5-10 times what a Walmart or Target allots) and instead of inefficient floor bins, try putting most of them (the long backlist) into something much more like bookcases — at least along exterior walls.

Oh, I know why there are these bins that only hold (at most) 300 discs each (on 5sq.ft. footprints) in wide open floorplans: it’s to open up sight lines, so we (retailers) can always see what’s going on, at least nominally to deter theft.

Hate to say it, but it’s not the kids who steal our stuff anymore. Some professionals still do it (though I have to wonder how much they make fencing the stuff? it almost seems like too much trouble to list it on ebay for what folks are willing to pay…). And there might be other ways to deter theft; just because we have always done it one way doesn’t mean we have to continue – or even that it works.

Anyway: an extensive catalogue of discs (music & video, and video in whatever format is currently selling) combined with a decent café, a curated selection of books, a lovely place to hang out in and kill time, and the theater:

Aside from “art-house” films one could do almost-first-run films (skip the brutal opening weekends and just pick up stuff on its way to the dollar cinema, or to DVD) on Saturday nights, or cartoons once a month on weekends if you plan to also have a kids department, or special programming (Marx Brothers or Three Stooges, John Ford Westerns or Ed Wood Shockers, Japanese cinema—or anime, for that matter— Rocky Horror if you don’t mind the clean up, complete filmographies of Woody Allen or Godard or Kurasawa or Bergman or Weimar-Era German Noir or whatever you can think to program (and can get your hands on). [Here’s one easy idea if you can sign up for it.]

And the kicker: setting up author events in-store? Wouldn’t it be great to have a theater for that?

One of the struggles of book retail is getting people to come into the store; that’s why we have the comfy chairs and free wifi and don’t yell at you for not buying that humongous stack of magazines you just read cover to cover and didn’t even put back — oh, we still hate you for it but we smile and ask “find eveything you need?” in a friendly tone [through gritted teeth] as we clean up after your cheap, lazy ass. We need the traffic, as it is difficult to sell anything to folks if they don’t come in at all.

One of the struggles of a theater is that they are really only used for about 20 hours a week — out of 168, approximately 100 of which the theater is technically “open” but not working at anything close to capacity — for much of each day, even a Saturday, the huge house sits all but empty; there are movies playing but only to small handfuls.

So, we combine the two, seeking out the ‘literary’ aspects of a theater and adding in some of the ‘fun hangout’ aspects of the bookstore. We recoup the criminally underused space of the theater lobby to run a cafe and bookstore, we leverage the movie screen to help us sell DVDs and blu-ray discs, we capture the half hour a typical theater-goer will waste waiting for the next showtime and use it to sell books, and maybe we even manage to get in on the dinner-half of profits from folks going out for “dinner and a movie”.

With enough square footage (and a few millions) this idea would scale up into something grand. A truly unique experience. Even in a slightly smaller store, though, it could still be something quite special.

Concept: A movie theater that is also a bookstore
Related: sales of movie soundtracks, DVDs, and other discs
Relevance: People still consume visual media; and some things need to be seen live, in person, “on the big screen” – even in a world with internet streaming and downloads, there is value in the experience. We’re just suggesting a way to combine several, potentially related experiences into that perfect chocolate-and-peanut combo.

Let me sell it to you: well, I tried. Read the rest of this post.

Killer App: Taking a large iced coffee and a hot sandwich into a movie. (Are you kidding me? We’ve been smuggling food in for ages; maybe that says something about the available food?) — also, the bookstore as an Event space, not just a time-killer or occasional shopping trip
Alternate Profit Centers: I don’t know; popcorn, maybe? :)

##

“The Last Picture Show” is a 1971 film by Peter Bogdanovich, and a 1966 novel by Larry McMurtry — noted author & also, a bookseller. The name seemed perfect for this concept.

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.

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 –

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 –

##

The New Model Bookstore

What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.

criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra

##

Case Study #3: The Reference Desk

The typical North American will change careers at least three times during their career lifespan and will have an average of three to five different jobs within each career change. Depending on the size and scope of your ambitions it may take one to three jobs to reposition yourself. This is not as daunting as it may seem, since the average North American job only lasts 2-3 years. Thus, planning a career transition is an essential life-skill, and requires strategy and planning. [source: some blogger – additional note: “blogger” as a job/job title didn’t even exist 10 years ago]

So we will be (or should be) constantly learning throughout our lives, tooling up for the next job or retooling entirely for a new career – or just brushing up and picking up new skills to help ourselves in our current employment. Once upon a time one would waste invest four years in a decent college education, and that would be enough. Employment wasn’t guaranteed, but provided you actually finished a 4-year degree you could usually get in on the bottom rung of a management ladder and a comfortable middle class lifestyle seemed all but a promise, even a birthright.

I think successive bubbles and outsourcing and technological advancements and loss of manufacturing and what might be termed the New Reality have shown the old model to be a lie. It’s a shame high school guidance counsellors are still feeding this crap to impressionable 16 year olds — “Just go to college, dear, and everything will be allright.”

I call bullshit. For the record, I spent seven years in college — at a major, nationally recognized research university — and I work retail.

I may be grossly over-qualified, and I’m management, and I had my own reasons for wanting to work retail, specifically book retail, but that’s kinda beside the point. After 10 years in books, I’d have to go back to school if I wanted to do anything in any of the fields I studied at university. My education is, sadly, out of date.

The truth we should be telling high school juniors is that their first job out of college will be in a field that hasn’t even been invented yet. While at university, they should study problem solving, as much math as they can stand, a broad slate of other basic sciences (both hard science and social science), and the basics of business and entrepreneurship. Anything more specific than that is going to be on-the-job training anyway.

It’s fine to have a focus, admirable even. A concentrated study in anything is good for you, and looks good on an application. But one should endeavour to learn how to learn, and how to apply your knowledge base and skill set in creative ways to solve problems — that is what will help you best, moving forward. Commit to life-long-learning, never settle, never get too complacent — because even a white collar job that requires a college degree is no guarantee of lifelong employment.

##

To that end, and to support it, I’d like to propose a new type of bookstore. I call it “The Reference Desk”.

It will likely look a lot like Powell’s Technical Books — you folks in Portland are so freakin’ lucky it almost makes me sick — but I might do things just a bit differently if I were setting up my own shop.

Concept: life-long learning, job re-education, computer books & test prep & all sorts of hard-to-find or seldom stocked technical books.
Related: Text books — but only to a point. This isn’t the college bookstore. If the nearby nursing college wants to use us as an alternate (or primary) bookstore, that’s great: but they need to give us title lists. This annoying habit of just cutting students loose with the advice that the books ‘are available’ from nearby bookstores needs to stop. Now.
Relevance: Did my long intro not spell out the relevance of a post-college-collegiate bookstore?

Here, Let me sell it to you:

From my personal experience: about 75% of the customer calls (and occasional in-store request) that end in a “no” or “I’m sorry we can’t order that” are directly related to text books. [Protip: kids, calling the local Big Box Books isn’t how you buy textbooks. We’re not a college bookstore; we stock novels and bios and history and astrology and kid’s picture books – if you want Intro to Polynesian Fertility Rites you’re going to have to buy it on campus, order it online, or plan ahead – because there ain’t no way in hell I’m going to have a copy on the shelf. —and an aside: you think we’re going to be cheaper? Man, I would laugh myself into unconsciousness if I hadn’t heard it a thousand times before. Sure, you need it for class tomorrow; but a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Tough cookies, kid; and I hope this little exchange serves as a learning experience.]

However: A customer need that isn’t being filled by Big Box Books is an economic opportunity for the bookstore that can fulfill those needs.

It’s not just students, though: again, my rough estimate is that 75% of folks who come in looking for a computer book just can’t find it in the store — and there are folks looking for electrical & building codes, construction cost estimating, medical reference, project scheduling & management, guidance for setting up and running non-profits, and at least 90 other specialized fields that I haven’t even heard of yet. [except Organic Ostrich Farming – I’ve heard of that one; there is at least one customer looking for that book – if it exists. But I’m sure there are 89 other technical fields that are even further out there and that customer just hasn’t walked through my door yet.]

Alternate Profit Centers:

• Used books. Set up a system, say a set sale price (60% of list) with a set buy-back (30% of list) and just keep cycling books through the store. Since customers know that not only do they save 40% off the price of a new book but can expect to get 50% of their money back, dependent on how well they maintain the condition of the book – well, it might just earn our store quite a bit of repeat business. There would need to be very clear guidelines and expectations for customers, along with some real sticklers and hard-asses to work the buy-back desk, but this is something, unique, the sort of thing you just don’t find at other bookstores. As a bookstore owner, you’re looking at much larger initial outlay (you’ll need a separate budget for this, as it will take a while for the system to break even) and the stock will need to be periodically purged (annual clearance sales) but it’s something that could be made to work.
• Coffee, and food: I know folks are going to come in and camp out all day and study, or work their way through GMAT and GRE guides one question at a time (on scrap paper, not writing in the books – so they don’t have to buy them) and they’ll meet with friends and study partners and all the rest of that. Fine. I’m even willing to add extra tables & chairs (& outlets, for laptops and phones) and all that is not only not annoying, I’d love for you to come in for 16 hours a day. Even if you don’t buy my coffee or sandwiches, who do you think is earning money off of the vending machines? I could set one up that sold nothing but 20oz bottles of Mountain Dew for a dollar a pop and with this crowd, I’d likely be able to retire in ten years.

That Something Extra: Set up two ‘stores’ — out front, you have your coffee shop, free wifi, laptop friendly floorplan, all of last year’s books on convenient shelves, a Pocket Ref and Occupational Outlook Handbook on every table – multiple used books in the ‘reading room’ available to browse, or buy. But anything brand new, the most current edition, the latest version of the software, whatever is in demand — yeah, that’s going to be in the back. And by “in the back” I mean you’re going to have to pay for it in advance. But as stated: last year’s model is probably already sitting on a table in the reading room. Go ahead, read it. Steal it. You won’t be able to sell it back to me without one of our receipts, and it’s already out of date – still of some use, no doubt, but not something I’m as worried about. All the good books are “in the back”.

Killer App: 25,000 square feet of technical, educational, reference, and computer books — actually, let me make that 30,000 sq.ft., or more — with a place to plug in and plenty of interesting books to hand, and the one brand new computer guide you’re looking for in stock today

This wouldn’t be the easiest bookstore to set up and run, and it might do much better in some communities (Palo Alto, CA; Cambridge, MA) as opposed to others — but if your hometown is a college town, or a capital, or a major hub of whatever sort, especially if you have a strong entrepreneurial base — then I think you can not only make this work, after you’ve been open for a year folks will ask, “Now why didn’t *I* think of this?”

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.

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 –

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

##

The New Model Bookstore

What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.

criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra

##

Case Study #2: Living Memory

Let me start with an extended aside: the media we sell at retail is different from the sale of “content”.

We often conflate the two, but the sale of books [and also CDs, DVDs, computer games] via retail channels is still not quite the same as the sale of content. Oh, sure, in the 1950s there was no other way to sell content; it was intimately conjoined with the media on which it was recorded. As a result, many [most] [all?] content producers focused on the media-of-delivery, and assumed that the media equalled the message, and poured resources into the production of physical artefacts, as opposed to the production of content. The sale of music, or books, or [eventually] movies as a commodity, rather than a work of art. But that only works for so long as that one technological model applies; when the underlying game changes, the physical artefact that holds the content becomes nothing more than a curiousity, a footnote.

If one merely wants the content of a book [the e-book file, under current models] and one assigns no value to the physical artefact [the “books” I’ve been selling for years] then retail is already dead. This was the primary failure of the record stores — now all but extinct — as we saw almost the entirety of their business move online, both through piracy but more importantly through iTunes and other internet retail channels. No one needs a disc to listen to music.

Past that: retail sales of media competes not just with other goods but with itself — free broadcast and subscription cable TV, radio, and satellite offerings (both TV and Sirius XM), not to mention (but I’m going to mention) streaming video and music over the internet (free and otherwise) — the difference between “retail” and “broadcast” has disappeared. One consumes media like we consume water and air. Yes, we have to pay someone for it, but it is rare that we actually think of the infrastructure that provides our lifeblood; much of our casual, informal, personal consumption of media is done via subscription: we pay the cable bill, and that’s it.

Netflix & Cable are betting on subscription models; Apple, Microsoft, and Sony already own a substantial base of consumers through iTunes, XBox, and PSN, respectively; The Cable Co. (whichever your local happens to be) is itching to expand it’s offerings (with significant hits to your monthly bill) and the last thing any corporation wants is a free and open internet — one that could potentially spit-up the next Napster or YouTube. Yes, it’s all about movies and music now — but how long before even your choice of books is an extension of which bookstore you subscribe to?

Seems unlikely? really? Well, Kindle owners/users only get their “books” from Amazon; they don’t have the choice of other sales outlets. The e-pub format is “open”, but with 75% of the market tied up by Amazon [to date; things will change] how “open” is a format that is intentionally snubbed by the near-monopoly that claims to own the market?

Plenty of blame to go around, but I’m going to mound most of it on Amazon for being a dick. And let me expand on that: Amazon, darling, what do you lose by letting your books be read on other devices, or enabling e-pub support (used by current library systems for e-book lending) on the Kindle?

What, increased sales of Kindles is abhorrent to you? You don’t want the tacit concession of the e-reader market of Kindle as the ‘default’ e-reader device? Is monopolistic control of e-books so important that you shoot yourself in the foot (or the head) in a vain attempt to attain it? Or are you so insecure in your hardware and marketplace that you refuse to open your Kindle ecosystem to even the option of sales of competing units, and of a universe of content, because what, it will make Kindle ownership even more appealing for the vast majority of readers?

Monopolies went out of style in the 1890s (in fact are now illegal) and the current model is to put out a product that is so good imitators and late-comers just can’t compete. You can insist on a MaBell-USSteel-StandardOil model, but it only makes you look bad. Apple is in direct competition with several competitors, in a number of fields, but they don’t resort to dirty tricks – or insist on market dominance. Apple makes billions off of 15% of the market – and constantly looks for new markets to get into, and new technology that invents new markets.

The Kindle will always be an “almost” technology for as long as Amazon insists on direct control.

If nothing else, pirates will release ebooks as pdf files; readable on a kindle – or on anything else.

##

Y’all can take that and write your own editorials.

##

The point I’d like to make in this much larger debate is: It may eventually be the case that the only reason to buy entertainment on physical media is because you want to own it. Archivists, rights advocates, and fans may be the market of last resort, and the media companies who still want to sell discs (of whatever sort, type, or technology) need to engage them.

Case Study #2: Living Memory

Concept: A used record store, with used DVDs, and on top of that: a bookstore. At least when we open, it would be mostly a new book store, but also rapidly moving toward a used book store model. We all know e-bay and other secondary markets are strong and growing stronger; why not embrace the trend with both arms and a change in focus?

Related: Rare Books. Collectibles. Anything on the secondary market might be of use; we’d scour ebay and pick up anything that makes economic sense. Astoundingly, some customers still can’t be bothered to do their own internet searches and orders, and someone should capture those sales.
Relevance: Old. Treasured. Childhood memories, the comfort of the familiar, the joy of rediscovery. Not just old music and used books, but the vast selection of DVD releases that hit shelves in the past 5 years then just as quickly slipped into obscurity. If one is committed to accepting near anything & returning nothing – and populating increasingly growing shelves with the ever-growing backstock — then the only limiting factor is the amount of shelf & floor space one enjoys.

Here, Let me sell it to you: Vinyl records and old DVDs, CDs, and whatever other discs we eventually employ — sure, it could be that there is a new digital version to download and no one wants the actual physical media. But [to pull from my anime roots] say a licensor no longer permits a local-language version of a TV series to be streamed, but which also was previously released on DVD. So long as the physical media exists, there should be a storefront that offers the same for sale.

That Something Extra: Tables full of boxes full of vinyl.

Killer App: The Prisoner on DVD – or [choose your cult favorite] available [on the media of choice]

Alternate Profit Centers: One could try and work this like a bookstore, with a coffee shop and the rest, but it might be easier to go the comic-shop, gamers-nexus, used-CD-Store route. Embrace the media of the last century, and wallow in it.

(yes, this was previously posted in part, but it was hidden at the bottom of the last post so I felt it was worthwhile to re-format and repost it)

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.

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 –

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”:

##

The New Model Bookstore

What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.

criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra

##

Case Study #1: Books and Brews

Concept: Either a gastropub with books on the walls, or a bookstore that has a pub/restaurant in it instead of (or in addition to) a café
Related: Well, whatever type of bookstore you want: Call the bar MI-6 and only stock spy novels – Agatha’s could specialize in cozy mysteries and English pub fare – The Bar at the End of the Universe could be sci-fi themed (with Romulan Ale and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters) – Straight-up Irish with something like Ulysses’s, or Joyce’s – or maybe even Dodgson’s Pub, with a Lewis Carroll theme
Relevance: Folks gotta eat. Folks like to drink.

Here, Let me sell it to you: Actually, it was a conversation I had with a friend/co-worker while we grabbed a quick meal before a Emily Giffin book-launch party, at a local gastropub called TAP [warning, flash site with music] [aside: lovely place] – being book geeks and booksellers, of course the conversation over lunch was about books, and the business – but the venue — and the fact that we were off-site for an author event — also shaped our discussion. Books & Brews as an idea took shape that afternoon. Of course, I’m pretty sure I’m already on record as saying I’d love to open up a bookstore with a bar in it (rather than a café but here is the new thing: a bar, where books are just a ‘theme’ and decorations on the walls, and a handy hook for events: book signings, launch parties? Hey, we’re already a hot spot, just come on in.

That Something Extra: Beer & Liquor
Killer App: Beer & Liquor
Alternate Profit Centers: Well, in this case, any book sales are the alternate — we keep the doors open and make the payroll off of the sales of beer, wine, and food. The “Book” side of the business can be as large as the market allows, or as large as our given storefront — even just putting a bookshelf on any and all available walls would be enough. Ideally, this would be more of a bookstore than a bar — but the reality is that one can make a lot more money off of a restaurant. This isn’t a “corporate” idea and it’s not scalable – but as a single, landmark location: this not only works, I think it would pay for itself in under a year.

I’m writing a set of articles — a mini-series if you will — nominally part of the Rethinking the Box columns, but also something special — hence the subject line above: “unique experiences”

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.

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 –

##

In the new, post-e-book era, it’s not going to be enough to just sell books. You can stock your exhaustive shelves, hire bibliophiles, put out comfy chairs and sell a fine cuppa out of your café. You can host author signings and book clubs, do story time with the kids and “coffee talks” with the moms, reach out to your community: work with schools, churches, clubs, conferences, charities, chambers of commerce…

You can work your ass off, and still have people say, “Well, I love that you’ve been able to spend this time with me, to help me focus on just what I needed and heck, I didn’t even know about the book you recommended until you mentioned it and it’s perfect … but since you can’t beat Amazon on price I’m afraid I won’t be able to buy it from you.”

Whether it’s a single person looking for a single book, or an institutional order — or a big special event where we’d order dozens of copies of dozens of books, help you sell them, and process the returns of unsold books for you — doesn’t matter: First and often last words are “Well, why does this cost more than the price I found online?”

[facepalm]

Expertise costs money. Experience costs money. Sure, some people give it away for free but those people are nuts. In the hallowed, oft cited name of “Customer Service” I have to entertain many, many demands from visitors to my fair store, some of whom are downright snotty — and the worst of which don’t even come into the store; they insist on hassling us over the phone.

Sure, I can do computer searches that you could easily do yourself. Sure, I can order that for you. But: Just because I’m a person, someone you can actually talk to, and not an online sales site or automated voice at a toll-free number, doesn’t mean that I’ll be cheaper or faster. I can’t haggle. This isn’t “Let’s Make a Deal”. $22 worth of overnight shipping extended for free just because I didn’t happen to stock a book isn’t a “service” – it’s extortion, and you should be embarrassed for even asking.

Most folks who take advantage of my time and expertise in the name of “Customer Service” really like to stress the service part but ignore the Customer half of that: I’m willing to go the extra mile for paying customers but you are not a customer just because you have my telephone number. And this isn’t a relay: I don’t run my ass off and bend over backwards to help, just to hand the sale off to a website.

THE WEBSITE IS CHEAPER BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE TO PAY BOOKSELLERS! The nice folks who help you find things? The ones who put up with your crap? Remember them? I’d love to pay them more than minimum wage, but more and more the customers refuse to recognise the benefits of service, or to compensate us accordingly:

It’s not even like we charge extra for this — all we’re asking is that you pay the actual, listed price of the book. It’s right there on the cover.

##

As a bookstore, there is only one way to compete: Go Big.

More books on more shelves. Books in stock today — not available from a warehouse, but here — heck, turn the warehouse into a bookstore if that’s where the books are.

Become a landmark. Build a reputation. And of course, hire staff that help you achieve those goals.

In a world where books can be downloaded, though, and where some websites seem to be selling physical books way below cost [if I can’t explain basic retail to customers, I’m not even going to attempt a discussion of used books and secondary markets] — just having a book in stock isn’t going to be enough. When a customer can scan a barcode with her smartphone and pull up the “same” “book” for a tenth the price – and can buy it from her phone, no problem – then even the act of putting physical stock on shelves is suddenly turned on it’s ear: a book, in store, becomes just another “service” we provide to “customers” free of charge. All our careful organization, our research, our buying decisions, our merchandising; the attempt to generate a convivial atmosphere and inviting aspect, and enjoyable shopping experience — well, all that is secondary to price and booksellers (individuals, storefronts, and corporations all inclusive) might as well give up now.

##

Once upon a time, being a bookstore was enough. Bookstores were unique experiences; your town likely only had one (and maybe you had a library, too, but the bookstore was different) and very few wandered in looking for a title (a specific title, only this one will do) instead we went shopping for a new book — of course we all have our favourite authors, and genres, but it was enough that there was a book we hadn’t read yet, and we could buy and take it home today.

The internet has ruined this. I might even go so far as to say the hobby of reading — or perhaps, of reading books for the sake of reading books — is dead. 95% of customers aren’t looking for a good read, or a new book, they must have “this specific book” — it was on Glenn Beck, or reviewed by the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, or mentioned in passing by Oprah.

Almost extinct is the process of browsing shelves and the accidental discovery. It’s not that patrons and customers don’t want bookstores — while not everyone buys books, those that do love bookstores — it’s that other factors are slowly killing us. We can’t compete on price, and if one insists on buying based solely on lowest price, we’re dead. We can’t compete on selection — or if we can, say we run our own massive warehouse and website, suddenly the issue becomes speed: “What, you can’t have that here tomorrow? What, aren’t you a bookseller? Frak, man, you’re not even trying.”

Customer expectations are unrealistic and non-negotiable — and they defect to Amazon, and other web sites, all of which suffer from the same limitations of logistics — but since it’s all click-click-click and instant gratification very few stop to think that, hey, wait, it takes a week for Amazon to get that book to me, and the bookstore said the exact same thing — why didn’t I just buy the book from the nice bookseller who recommended it to me?

##

So: it’s not enough to be a bookstore. It’s not even enough anymore to be a landmark, destination bookstore, the sort that stocks hundreds of thousands of books, and sells CDs and DVDs besides, and has a cafe with National Brand coffee — and the chairs and tables and the hands-off approach to, you know, the actual-sales-of-books-thing.

The two major and at least two regional chains all do that already, and even in communities where the major chain bookstore outpost is beloved, indeed, is being fought over — that’s still not enough to keep the doors open.

##

The New Model Bookstore

criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy ‘events’

What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.

18 months ago, I posted five case studies outlining specialty, niche concepts that I felt would still be viable bookstores, even moving forward into the internet era — but now e-readers throw one more monkey wrench into the works. The last five

— Cookbooks
— Mysteries
— Travel guides, photography essay, and travel writing.
— Foreign & domestic newspapers & newsweeklies, politics, current affairs, and other select non-fiction (* with a coffee shop/bar)
— and large format, full colour art, design, & photography books on all sorts of topics; the so-called “coffee table books”

are all still valid (& I plan to revisit #4 in that list) but just selling books is no longer enough.

##

A Unique Experience: Books and Brews

Concept: Either a gastropub with books on the walls, or a bookstore that has a pub/restaurant in it instead of (or in addition to) a café
Related: Well, whatever type of bookstore you want: Call the bar MI-6 and only stock spy novels – Agatha’s could specialize in cozy mysteries and English pub fare – The Bar at the End of the Universe could be sci-fi themed (with Romulan Ale and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters) – Straight-up Irish with something like Ulysses’s, or Joyce’s – or maybe even Dodgson’s Pub, with a Lewis Carroll theme
Relevance: Folks gotta eat. Folks like to drink.

Here, Let me sell it to you: Actually, it was a conversation I had with a friend/co-worker while we grabbed a quick meal before a Emily Giffin book-launch party, at a local gastropub called TAP [warning, flash site with music] [aside: lovely place] – being book geeks and booksellers, of course the conversation over lunch was about books, and the business; but the venue — and the fact that we were off-site for an author event — also shaped our discussion. Books & Brews as an idea took shape that afternoon. Of course, I’m pretty sure I’m already on record as saying I’d love to open up a bookstore with a bar in it (rather than a café) but here is the new thing: a bar, where books are just a ‘theme’ and decorations on the walls, and a handy hook for events: book signings, launch parties? Hey, we’re already a hot spot, just come on in.

Killer App: Beer & Liquor
Alternate Profit Centers: Well, in this case, any book sales are the alternate — we keep the doors open and make the payroll off of the sales of beer, wine, and food. The “Book” side of the business can be as large as the market allows, or as large as our given storefront — even just putting a bookshelf on any and all available walls would be enough. Ideally, this would be more of a bookstore than a bar — but the reality is that one can make a lot more money off of a restaurant. This isn’t a “corporate” idea and it’s not scalable – but as a single, landmark location: this not only works, I think it would pay for itself in under a year.

[and this is 1 of 5 case studies for this topic]

If tomorrow’s ‘mystery’ announcement doesn’t have the word ‘mirasol’ in it, I think I’ll have to seriously rethink my current employment.

…and that’s about all I can say on the matter.