It's the little things

by Rachel S.

I agree with Michael’s post yesterday. Barnes and Noble and Borders are intimidating. Not to say that I won’t spend an afternoon there with a giant stack of books from a myriad of genres and the biggest cup of coffee they have to offer (which is pretty big), but on the days when I actually want to browse for a book I intend to buy, I head to smaller locations. I get overwhelmed by the rows and rows of shelves within shelves and soon realize I’m not even reading the bindings anymore, but just skimming the colors and shapes of each book—only picking up ones that stand out in that respect regardless of the title.

Smaller bookshops, whether they house used books, are devoted to a single genre, or are just mini versions of the massive box stores have an appeal that cannot be rivaled. My two favorite places to spend my book money in the city are the Housing Works Bookstore Café in Soho and WORD Books in Brooklyn. They both have their own unique feel—a sort of atmosphere that is lacking in the impersonal, albeit well-stocked shelves of the giant bookstore chains.

The selection is smaller, sure, but unless I’m looking for something absolutely specific, I find that doesn’t matter. I’ll still always find something I want and I feel that my choice is much better made. If I’m having trouble, the staff in a small bookstore will more likely know each book they do stock and will often have certain opinions and recommendations, which is an undeniable advantage of a smaller selection. In fact, both Housing Works and WORD pepper their shelves with little handwritten index cards from members of the staff praising their most recent literary loves. Because they can’t just sell every book that comes out, there has to be some level of thought and selection put into stocking the independent bookshops.

Smaller stores foster a sense of community—there even used to be a corkboard in WORD that served as a sort of personals section. Anyone could fill out a slip of paper with their name, age and email address followed by books and authors they loved as well as those they hated and then pin it up on the board, in the hopes that some book-reading match made in heaven would soon emerge.

As the holiday season is upon us, gift-buying must be as well. Shopping in an environment that fosters conversation and comfort as opposed to impersonal abundance, I feel, gives the gift itself greater meaning. Sure, the person you so carefully chose that book for might not know where it was bought, but the sense of thought and care that went into it is surely palpable.

I don’t want to come off totally disparaging the bookstore giants—I love them, too. If you’re looking for something specific, either they’ll have it or will almost certainly have the resources to order it for you. Nowadays there’s near a guarantee that they have a café attached, so there’s no end to the hours you can spend there poring over books you might actually have no intention of buying (okay, so there is an end, as the only times I’ve ever been in a Borders past closing time were for crucial Harry Potter book purchases). Living in the city, it’s easy to forget that oftentimes independent bookstores can’t survive elsewhere and it’s nice to know that the big places are still accessible to the vast majority of the population.

I have a specific experience in mind when I consider entering these havens I call smaller bookstores. When I go book shopping, I want to enjoy it, take my time and truly feel as if I picked the perfect book to read next. I know the next time I go into WORD, the girl behind the desk will be familiar and friendly. I’ll read the lists of updated favorites they tack to the walls as well as the new recommendations on the shelves. There might not be miles and miles of selection, but I’ll hardly miss it once I find the next book I have to have.

Go Blue!

by Jane

This weekend I went to my very first tailgate party and college football game. Both took place at the University of Michigan where my son is a freshman.

The party started at 9:30 on Saturday morning and continued until the game began at noon. There was absolutely no food served during the gaiety (much to my surprise) but we did have lots of fun and so I decided that I would share some pictures with our readers.

 

The game experience was truly amazing. The stadium holds about 120,000 people and it was almost filled on Saturday. Fortunately, after three overtimes, the Michigan Wolverines won 67 to 65, the highest score in Michigan’s history, I believe.





Still, being me I had to check out the bookstores. Since Ann Arbor is the home of Borders, I visited that and a couple more. (Can’t stay away from the biz!) Next time I go back, I will make sure to turn our clients’ books so that they face forward on the shelves.

For now, though, Go Blue!

Books on food

by Stacey

I've been really into food and cookbooks lately, as I've mentioned, both because I represent a lot of them and because I love to eat (plus I'm trying to cook more, in my dreams at least). There is a lovely little indie bookstore in San Francisco, Omnivore, that a couple of my clients have done events at, and that I visited when I was in SF last spring. It's totally adorable and they have a wonderful, eclectic, well-curated selection of classic and contemporary books about all things food and wine. They get great authors to visit, even though the store doesn't hold more than a couple of dozen people and even then it's tight quarters. It's worth checking out if you're in SF, or even if you're not, you can subscribe to their newsletter, which is always a lot of fun to read. Enjoy!

The return of the independents

by Jane

When Barnes & Noble announced a couple of weeks ago that they were for sale, the incredible irony of the potential results of such a move struck me. Almost immediately, I saw the very positive ramifications for our industry.

The incredible proliferation of the chain bookstores over the last twenty or so years has wreaked havoc on our business. The chains first and in a very dramatic way caused some of the greatest independent bookstores in our country to go out of business. It was in these individual stores that word of mouth about first time authors and their books would begin to build and spread outward. Many of these independent stores were responsible for creating bestsellers and successful writing careers.

But then the chains came in and knocked the independents out with their discounting and other mass merchandising methods. And these same chains because of their tremendous influence also dictated to publishers which books they should publish. When a chain “passed” on ordering a book, that title died—there was simply no place for it to go.

And then came Amazon, first slowly and then it exploded. Ordering electronically definitely put a crimp in the chains’ style and cost them dearly.

And this, of course, was followed by the development of e-readers and the new era of electronic publishing; the chains were becoming more and more irrelevant as places for books to be bought.

Now, Borders is barely surviving—they just laid off a bunch of staff at their headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And, Barnes & Noble might just be bought by its former owner Len Riggio who, undoubtedly, will take it back to being a much smaller, simpler operation—and continue to sell many items other than books simply because for a chain of any size, books are not as economically attractive to carry as they once were.

But the corner bookstore—and I actually have a wonderful one a block away from my home in New York City—is going to become more of a force. I don’t know yet whether the independents will multiply and grow as they once did—but I am counting on them wielding far more influence on what their customers read than they have in recent years. If this happens, then reading will benefit greatly whether books are sold in hard copy or electronically.

I am really rooting for the return of the independents and look forward to hearing what you think of all of this.

Where will all the bookstores go?

by Jane

Last week, I was chatting with a client who was visiting from out of town and who I hadn’t seen for a while. We talked about all of the changes in publishing, especially in the area of electronic publishing, that had occurred since we had last seen each other.

One of the things he asked, and which I thought was a very interesting question, was what will happen to the brick and mortar bookstores now that electronic books are gaining such a foothold, to say nothing about the increased market share that Amazon and the other on-line booksellers have. What will this mean for the large chains – Barnes & Noble and, especially, Borders.

Then on Friday, the 21st, there was a piece on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, “E-Books Rewrite Bookselling,” discussing just this topic.

And Mike Shatzkin, industry pundit, estimates that by the end of 2012, digital books will be 20%-25% of unit sales with another 25% of books sold online. That’s 50% of all books sold and it would seem to me that losing that volume of business will cause the large chains, at least, to shutter a significant number of stores.

The only way I can imagine they could survive is by carrying an even greater variety of products other than books than they already do. And, because these changes are happening so quickly, they would have to begin carrying this additional merchandise immediately so as to build up customers before their book business deteriorates any further.

I think the independent stores that are left—after the chains took over a huge part of the market and put many of them out of business years ago—will be less affected and, in fact, could thrive. For them, selling more varied merchandise will be less of a “leap” than their much larger, more corporate cousins and their customers are truly the most loyal of book lovers. How ironic, considering what happened to the bulk of the independent booksellers when the chains descended over a decade ago.

I am still convinced that electronic book publishing will increase readership as opposed to destroying it. It is up to the big retailers to figure out how to keep up with this new world in order to stay in business.

What do you think? Will the chain bookstores survive and if so, how?

The art of hand-selling

by Jessica

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, I attended the Middle East Studies Association conference, which is the yearly gathering of scholars of the Middle East. With its panels and papers, receptions and speeches, it is probably not unlike academic conferences of other disciplines, except that the music at the Sunday night dance party was Arab pop (if you’ve never heard the Middle East’s answer to Madonna, she’s worth a listen: check out Nancy Ajram on youtube) and among the post-docs getting down were a daunting number of accomplished belly dancers.

I go to MESA to get a sense of the ideas percolating in the field, sit in on assorted lectures, and meet with potential and existing clients whose research crosses over from an academic to a mainstream readership. This year, while helping out friends and former colleagues, I also had the memorable opportunity to moonlight as a bookseller. I have limited experience in the retail end of publishing; as an agent I’m in the business of selling books, but I’ve never tried it on a copy-by-copy basis. The experience was instructive, and I emerged from my adventure with a renewed sense of respect for the business of hand-selling.

It quickly became obvious that matchmaking between book and customer is both art and science—in this case I happened to know the books I was selling quite well, but to occupy that sweet spot between helpful and obtrusive was a wholly different challenge. When I convinced a browsing professor to purchase a novel I’d particularly loved, I was immoderately pleased. That she was already very likely interested in the subject I was peddling in no way diminished my sense of accomplishment. Other artisanal processes, like making cheese or crafting small batch whisky seem to be enjoying a renaissance, but hand-selling books, and the people who do it, ably and for real, are faring less well. Perhaps the book industry needs its own answer to the locovore movement. (Perhaps it’s out there—if yes, let me know).

Programs like B&N Discover and Borders Original Voices are efforts to scale up the hand-sell, and I like these programs immensely, but I note them professionally perhaps more than I respond to them personally. I’m curious to know how you all respond to them—ditto Amazon recommendations. Amazon’s ability to target my interests is undermined by the fact that I use the site as a research tool more often than I do to make purchases, but maybe you have better luck. Shelf talkers are great, but for me, nothing beats interested, widely read booksellers with whom I can speak; not only are they brilliant at suggesting books, they see the publishing industry from a perspective of the buyers who keep it alive. These days I’m particularly fond of New York’s Idlewild bookstore, which specializes in books on international themes—travel, world lit, etc.

But as I suspect is the case with many of you, indie bookshops have always had a special place in my heart. When I was growing up, each year, probably right about this time, my parents (both inveterate readers of nonfiction) would report to our local bookshop, where the owner would recommend a raft of novels that were just right for me. The stack that ended up beneath the tree, selected by Santa Claus, never disappointed. When, eventually I figured out that it was the bookstore owner and not St. Nick doing the selecting, it did not render the achievement any less magical. I was, however, crushed when the store closed (take that Virginia). Imaginary though he is, Santa’s position seems more secure than that of the independent bookseller, a figure whom I hope will not become a ghost of holidays past, as Jane touched on recently.

Jane's dream

The Wall Street Journal on Friday the 6th reported that Borders was going to close 200 of its Waldenbooks stores. True these are mall stores only, but it seems to me it was only yesterday that the chains were springing up every where. It appears that one of the reasons this is happening is that internet sales of books have greatly increased over the last several years taking buyers from the mall bookstores. The Journal also postulates that another reason for the move is the deep discounting of the bestselling books that has been announced.

My dream is that the closing of these mall stores might encourage one or two--or hopefully many more--entrepreneurial souls to open new independent bookstores. With the new readers that I hope are being created by books available electronically and by this deep discounting, perhaps there can be a big enough market to once again support these wonderful outlets for reading.

Do any of you have a favorite independent bookstore?


-Jane