Where Shopping is a Baffling Ordeal

I once walked into the Strand (login: bookninja, password: waaaa) on a Wednesday and left on Thursday.




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Futurigo

The downfall of Stoddart and the shape of bookselling to come in Canada.



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Borders Employees Strike!

Details on the Borders Union Web site.



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What's So Great About Independent Bookstores?

Well, they sell books, for one.



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The Canadian Book Trade is in Its Worst Crisis Ever

Interesting article on the bookselling trade in Canada, and the obstacles its facing. Although the author does make an odd complaint about the predominance of urban fiction, whatever that is. Because that's what's really selling in Canada, not historical fiction. Yeah..



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I notice a brief mention of Evan Solomon in the essay, but none of the expected scorn and ridicule accompanying it. What gives?

U.S. Poetry Store May Be Forced to Close

There's a poetry store in the U.S.? Wait, there's two poetry stores in the U.S.? (LOL*LISNews)



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Looking for that Hard-to-Find Gerry Gilbert?

Do you know Apollinaire's Bookshop? You should.



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Amazing. Any more info on this? Who, What?

It's run out of Toronto by Coach House poet and indie publisher Jay MillAr. His Bookthug press publishes beautiful little handbound books in short print runs. He's reachable by the bookthug email at the bottom of the page.

In Praise of Used Book Stores

Okay, it's really in praise of City Lights in London, Ontario.



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The article fails to mention the shelf and shrine to Ayn Rand that Marc Emory had adjacent to the register. I bought a Rand book for a high school project and Emory took the book out of my hands and circled the important bits
."You'll want to read this chapter first, then this one, then read the introduction last."

The best thing about City Lights though is the pile of boxes with free books that is always out front.

The worst thing was that they would never let me put a poster for a reading up in the shop.

bookthug has a list on line:
http://www.bookthug.ca/
which has a bunch of Gilbert titles on it.

on the topic of 2nd hand bookstore - Elliots at younge and wellesley in Toronto is generally pretty good. bought Patchens "poems of humour and protest" there on the weekend. seems that people who do review of canadian books dump their review copies there - so you can get a almost (or never) read book at not a bad price. they also stock lots of SF and detecive novels

The Earth's Coolest Non-Existent Used Bookstore

Apollinaire's Bookshoppe has a nice new site from which to sell the books no one wants to buy. Please spend your money here. (I kind of miss the old, lo-tech site that looked like it was done in about 1994, but this really is much prettier...) (Thanks to DFB for the link.)



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Twenty-five Years of Anarchy
Toronto's eye weekly has a piece about This Ain't the Rosedale Library.
"Established 25 years ago, This Ain't the Rosedale Library is the definition of quirky -- a neighbourhood literary bookstore in the heart of gay Toronto that also has an impressive baseball section. Run by two Americans who fled Nixon-era politics in favour of Canadian diversity, the shop has weathered Mafioso landlords (at a previous location) and, more recently, upheavals in the book business. It expanded in 2001 to include the upstairs gallery space/classroom."

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Looking for Independent Booksellers in the U.S.?
Booksense can help.

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Who's Responsible for the Death of Independent Bookstores?
The booksellers, of course. And the publishers. And the editors. And the writers. And the readers. Oh yeah, and the librarians. And the teachers....

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Just What Independent Bookstores Need

A price war between Amazon and Indigo... (If it's a choice between the two, I personally must side with Amazon. Anyone who pays people to perform editorial reviews of books of poetry is okay with me. What has Crapters/Indigo done lately? The cut the poetry section in Guelph from two full shelving units to half a shelf. The remaining space is now business and computer books... That's class.)



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It's Undeniable that Some Books are Levis, Some Jordache, and Some Rough Rider.... But This?

Selling books like common denim.



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Farewell Victor

Boston's Victor Hugo Bookshop closing for good leaving readers and writers alike out in the heat.



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Is It April Fool's Already?
Apparently book stores are valued in some parts of the world. (Play Deliverance theme music... now.)


In an ever-tougher business environment for independent booksellers, the town of St. Johnsbury, population 7,571 as of 2000, is offering startup money and a break on rent to a qualified person willing to open a bookstore downtown. The word is out in the book trade, and St. Johnsbury officials say calls are coming in.

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Books and Booze

Sounds like my desk. (From Maud)



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Mental note: apply at Crapters

Waterstone's employee gets first kids book published... Chain vows to do everything in its power to promote the book. How selfless, helping out their employee like that when they stand to gain nothing from millions of dollars worth of sales! Still, beats my job... Do you think my son ever says a word about my books to his friends? Noooo. It's just I'm-hungry! read-me-a-book! Why-won't-you-let-me-watch-TV?! Eat-eat-eat! Why-is-my-diaper-full?!



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In a crypt somewhere in Toronto, Heather Reisman points a talon at a map marked with red pins
Eye weekly has a profile of the oldest bookstore in Toronto. Anyone know which bookstore is the oldest in Canada?


The sign on the window naming The Book Mark, at 2964 Bloor W., the oldest independent bookstore in the city has a bittersweet undertone to it. The claim to fame comes at the expense of other, older independents that closed up shop during the great Chapters onslaught of '95 and the Indigo echo of ever-since.

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The Book Room, in Halifax, has a sign in its window that claims it is the oldest bookstore in Canada. Where says it was founded in 1839.

Too bad it's such a crappy store and has so little ambience.

re /m26

Word. There's so many better bookstores in Halifax, I don't know why anyone would set foot in The Book Room.

WordsWorth closes - a sad day for Boston

Well it should be, but there's this baseball thing... Apparently Americans like watching guys with pot bellies play air croquet. They call it a sport.

WordsWorth Books, a fixture in Harvard Square for nearly three decades, will be closing its doors Saturday after its owners failed to find an investor to help them refinance their bankrupt company.



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Warning: Bookstore jobs may not lead to fulfillment....
But they may leave you with great anecdotes.


A young colleague named Luke, taken on around the same time as me, was the first to realise what a dead-end we had landed in. In a bid to get fired, he took to answering the phone with the words: "I suppose you want a book." At last he hatched the perfect escape plan. The look on Janet's face when she found the humour table piled high and exclusively with copies of the Koran was remarkable. Luke left later that afternoon.

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Now there's something you don't see every day...

A bookstore with some class. Ottawa's Octopus Books takes an Adbusters-founded stance that would make certain big-box book retailers faint.

Buy Nothing Day is held each year on the first day after American Thanksgiving. This day has traditionally been known to kick start the Christmas shopping frenzy as the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. Buy Nothing Day is a campaign started by the folks at Adbusters and soon adopted by others around the world which calls into question the rampant consumerism associated with the Holiday Season. This is an exercise of consumer awareness asking shoppers to think about what they buy, from whom and why we often spend without thinking about the implications. Buy Nothing Day challenges consumers to refrain from shopping and encourages everyone to bring their lunch to work, stay away from the malls and shops and to spend the day thinking about how consumerism has become entrenched in our lives.

My suggestion is that the day after this event, you should head back in to the store and do all your holiday shopping there.



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South of the Borders, down Unionville way...

Another stake in the heart of the corporate vampire. Why won't this thing just die!?

Borders employees initially voted to join Local 789 in October of 2002, but negotiating a contract proved to be an arduous, frustrating process. Borders was unwilling to budge on most major issues, such as benefits and wages, and months often went by without any meetings between the two sides. The vast majority of workers who endorsed collective bargaining have since moved on to other jobs.

The two most vocal supporters of the effort initially, Holly Krig and Jason Evans, both left the store earlier this year. Just hours after Krig quit, workers found a pamphlet left anonymously in their mailboxes informing them how to decertify the union. "It was a huge slap in the face to all the work that Holly had done," says Erin Dorbin, who's worked at the Uptown store for a little over a year. Dorbin believes the heavy-handed move backfired. "I think for supporters it really pushed us into action," she says.



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Coolest. Bookstore. Ever.

Though I'd hate to be looking for anything in particular. (From Bibliovixen... at who's site I can't post comments for some reason.)



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And in the latest installment of our bookstore blog...

WordsWorth Books has left the building. Massachusetts liberals weep like struck children.

At 6 o'clock on Saturday, Oct. 30, after the last customer had bid goodbye and the melancholy staff had departed for the farewell party at Charlie's Kitchen, at long last, after 28 years, it was time for Hillel Stavis and his wife, Donna Friedman, to lock the doors of their bookstore for the final time.

Hell, working at Coles as a teenager, I DREAMED of that day. I had plans to walk out with half the inventory.



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The last time we invaded they painted the House White when we left... If you get my drift

Canadian Sarah McNally spreads out in her posh new digs in downtown Manhattan. She's bringing a piece of the family book business to the town that publishing forgot. Oh wait, the opposite of that. I'll check out the store while I'm there and report back.

On Monday afternoon, the store was in a state of construction chaos: a table saw sat on the basement floor, sawdust caked around its legs, while workmen on scaffolding tried to finalize wiring in the ceiling and booksellers tucked volumes on shelves shielded by clear plastic drop sheets. After months of renovations, the opening looked unlikely, but McNally faced one hard deadline: a party tomorrow night for hundreds of media and publishing types, who expect to see a gleaming palace of books.

Assuming it's open, of course. (Speaking of which, I want to start a series of bookstore profiles. If you have a favourite independent bookstore in your town and want to write about it, send me a note here.)



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Asking the questions we don't want to hear the answers to

Michael Crichton is about to smash the world over the head with another book and Mad Max Perkins, pseudonymous proprietor of the best anonymous lit blog out there (if you haven't been following, he claims to be a bigshot editor in NYC, and from his posts I would tend to believe him), having talked to editors and writers, now reaches out to booksellers:

Popular as it is in blog-dom to bemoan cultural de-madeleinization, and book industry conglomeration, and brand proliferation, and literary marginalization, and animal exploitation for the purposes of a better facial lotion, is there any bookseller--

(HONESTLY, now)

--is there ANY bookseller who is not glad, in a dollars-and-cents fashion, that today is Michael Crichton Day?

I can't imagine a no in the house. Even the used bookstores ought to have copies the day after tomorrow.



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I am a bookseller, and I have this to say about to Crichton's new book. I read the first page of this abomination today. No further reading is required. I am ready to nominate Crichton's new book as worst of the year. For a good laugh, go read the first page. It reads the begining of a cheap porn treatment. But whatever you do, do not buy the book. Do not encourage him. Take your money and encourage Dan Brown, if you have to, but please send Crichton a message: stop writing books.

Edited by author 12-08-2004 12:47 PM
at least the people purchasing those crichton books are supporting the book store and helping to keep its doors open. that way, i can keep buying obscure poetry titles and camping books. some bookstores have to do what they can to say afloat...for example, one bookstore I frequent sells poppers, sorry, "leather cleaner", on their counter. considering the mark-up on poppers (HUGE), i imagine it's one of the nasty little habits that helps them get by. maybe crichton is a nasty little habit to keep (not that you have to buy the books; let other schlubs do that)the store open. too idealistic? maybe. just a thought.

I agree. Who cares if Crichton takes up the entire front window for a month at Giftmas, if John Degen can get some space in February?

People who seek literature are willing to walk to the back of the store to get it -- the important thing is that there's a store there, and stocking the good titles along with the junk.

I'd rather see a twelve foot display of Crichton than a sea of yoga mats and candles.

G

But perhaps if Mr Crichton took a yoga class his chakras would realign and he would be a more successful writer.

Om.


Namaste.

Vixen freak out

Like a diva freak out, only hotter. Bibliovixen gets some bad post-holiday service at Borders.

...when I come to your fucking customer service department, I have not only the author, his latest work's title, the amount for the hardback, the ISBN and the edition, *but I've also checked your fucking store's own database* and have scouted the goddamn general section (twice) for the book before coming to your pathetic, eye-rolling, deep-sigh-bordering-on-hyperventilation self for further help. I do not approach you fresh from my car saying, "It's like a strange orange cover with some funny characters drawn on it."

Therefore, I expect fucking H-E-L-P from your sorry ass, I don't give a fuck the reason for your shitty-ass, fucked up sense of entitlement when a K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E-A-B-L-E customer arrives and patiently, calmly asks for your assistance.

I wish I had been there. Browr.


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Regina Loses its bookstore

I'm sure there's more than one. Isn't there? Out by the hitching post? Just kidding. Not more than one like this, I suppose. Sad story. (Second item)



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The hitching post! Err, it never fails...

Yes, there's more than one bookstore in Regina. The university has rather a nice one, and don't forgot the small but fabulous Buzzword Books, on 13th Avenue.

The bargain table

Are book sales killing booksales?

The danger is where a half-price discount on a hardback becomes endemic, and the perceived value of the product ebbs away. Instead of stimulating more book buying, the offer merely encourages everyone to wait for a half-price offer in one chain or another. Once an expectation of discounting has become embedded in a consumer's mind, it is very hard to dislodge: the carpet and furniture retailers, with their endless sales, ensure no one except the deluded buys a sofa at full price.



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true. i used to work at an independant bookstore downtown and we had many customers who only came in to browse the discounted tables. when they exhausted the selection, they moved on to another store or didn't buy any books at all.

This is nice, I like nice things...

Kids' bookstores rely on the handsell to draw readers in a way the big box chains can't. That's nice.



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The end of days for bookstores

But what about the cafes and the couches? The cafes and the couches are staying, right???

The book trade tends to enjoy long, stable periods of operation punctuated by seismic upheaval. The next big upheaval is imminent. Go into any high-street bookshop today and you are confronted with a dizzying profusion of wares. There are more books on display than any normal person could read in a lifetime. Where to start?

It used to be that patrons (never "customers") went into a bookshop, browsed for hours on end and bought one book or perhaps no book at all. Now booksellers want you to "load your cart" with three for two, or an armful of "50% off" items. It's the Tescoisation of the British book business. Nowadays you would no more think of going into a bookstore and old-fashionedly browsing than taking a tin-opener into the local supermarket and sampling the baked beans.

Despite the healthy Christmas sales, the walk-in, walk-round bookstore is doomed. "Cyberglobalism" is about to happen. International copyright is already a dead letter. You want the book everyone is reading in the US? It won't be published in the UK for months, but Amazon.com will send it to you, copyright restriction be damned.



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Sex sells

So read this article on the trends in racy books and then go buy something in our store. (Better than sex selling, would be sex donating...)



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Amazon Prime
I had a fantasy with this name when I was younger (OK, yesterday). But this Amazon Prime only offers unlimited two-day shipping for $79 US. Still, useful for those who buy a lot of books from Amazon and want them NOW. I hope this doesn't come to Canada. I have trouble resisting speedy gratification....

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Is Amazon a good place to sell your books?
This guys thinks so.

I can't understand how Amazon has figured out a way to make money. It seems to be emulating AbeBooks (www.abebooks.com/), which functions as a listing network for bookstores, and it's possible that Amazon's ultimate plan is to get out of the storage and shipping of physical objects and become an intermediary for transactions, a place you order books through, rather than from. Oh, and kill off the Victoria-based AbeBooks at the same time.

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She can make it there

Sarah McNally's Manhattan-based Canadian bookstore seems to be doing just fine. Who'd have thunk it? I still haven't been able to find it when I'm there. The article says Soho, but I think it's technically in Noho. Whereho? Someho? Whoho?



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The open-to-buy system
I've never heard of this book-purchasing deal before, but I don't like it. But I do like the title "stockmistress." Mm-hm.

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You've already got a stockmistress!
Um, excuse me, sir? Could you help me heave this big ol' heavy book way up there on that groaning shelf of grammar reference classics? I'd do it myself, but I'd have to lift my hands way up overy my pretty lil' head and my skirt is just so short....

Lonesome Shelf

Larry McMurtry is closing his bookshop, as you likely know and are considering how to best deal with. Sad whistlers and cigar store Indians from around Texas are headed to Archer City, hoping to provide ambience for this tragic event.



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The differences are so much the same

Israel, looking at its bookselling industry, sees some familiar things.

When books are distributed to independent bookstores, the publisher keeps a bigger share of the catalog price of the book to himself. There are few brave publishers who will not give in to Steimatzky's discount demands. At the end of the day that chain stocks books by all of the local publishers - but displays those on which it got at a bigger discount more prominently.

(My favourite part is the mention of Aharon Appelfeld, fiction god.)



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Edited by author 03-13-2005 11:31 PM
Books in Beijing

Are a baffling ordeal. And that's just for the publishers.

At Book City, shoppers face an entire floor of English-learning materials. One, ''Love English,'' offers pick-up lines and pillow talk with cultural hints. Among its instructions: that '' 'I'm bored' really means: 'Do you want to have sex?' '' Practice cassettes are included.

For the language part, right?



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Three for two

No, not that little tryst you've been dreaming of with the stock boys and/or cash girls at Zehrs... A common model of British bookselling that may be on its way here, like a bird flu or mad cow.

The three-for-two promotions, advertised in large front-of-store displays, have become ubiquitous in all major U.K. chains, such as Waterstones and Books Etc. According to a 2004 story from The Bookseller about the phenomenon, the “multibuys” serve three basic purposes: “to give value back to the customer, boost the perceived value of the brand and put more books in the hands of customers.” The promotions, which take a variety of forms (for example, in the form of two-for-£10) are most popular and successful in the three-for-two variation.

Though the practices are considered beneficial by many British publishers and retailers—some argue the promotions provide a much-needed way to boost sales of backlist titles—there are consumers and industry insiders who find the three-for-two model both annoying and disconcerting. Book-buyers complain that the discount themes become repetitive and are, ultimately, limiting.

Squawk! Moooo!



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10,000 wooden mice

A life in bookstore management with the lonely wind of the prairie whistling in your ears. Just goes to show you, you never know where you're going to find yourself, of what kind of vermin you'll have to deal with. (From AOABS)


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Where are your non-fiction novels?
How about your novels by Moby Dick?

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Thank you for that cartoon, Peter. It made my day.

I posted it with you in mind.

P

As bookseller or customer? Badum bump!

When I worked for Coles, back in the day, a guy came in and asked if we sold cement. I blinked and tried to be of service: "Do you mean rubber cement? Like for models?" He said, "No, I mean mixing cement." It was Christmas and I was harried. I left the cash and said, "Follow me." I walked outside the store and pointed up at the sign. "What does that say?" I said. "Coles," says he. "Coles what?" I reply. "Coles, The Book People," he says. "THE BOOK PEOPLE!" I screamed. "THE BOOK PEOPLE!! THE BOOOOOOOK PEOPLE!!!" And my manager bought me lunch.

G

Edited by author 04-08-2005 07:51 AM
The real enemy

Israeli indie bookstores are losing ground against mall chains. When is the war to save intellectualism going to start? I'm gearing up and I'm ready to head in. You girls with me?

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Hey, I just found this cool site, http://www.thriftbooks.com. They've got loads of cheap books. Check it out y'all.

Edited by author 04-13-2005 07:33 AM
Strange and stranger

That's what I call mine, anyway. Pamela Anderson plays a bookstore clerk in the new sit-com 'Stacked.' Judging from the Big-Macization of the box chains and their minimum wage approach to staff, this (and this) is about right.

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Great. Just great. Now everyone I work with is gonna want to get fake boobs.

Edited by author 04-13-2005 06:33 PM
That sounds more exasperated than I imagine you actually are.

G

A bookstore without a health section

More on Pamela Anderson's first brush with books.


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They're disdainful and rude out of love, man...

Is it more respectable to work in an independent bookstore? I'd say yes. But then, I just spent $100 at Book City yesterday on two books. Those sneaky independent clerks ignored me in circles until I was so flustered I just bought the first dense anthology of modern French poetry my hand landed on.

No matter how you paint the picture for strangers, retail work is not particularly rewarding. But there is a perception that independent stores do carry an inherent nobility. They are fighting the good fight against Big Corporate America, and retail clerks are the foot soldiers. We are on the side of quality products and customer care. We represent freedom of choice and giving back to the community. We call our manager by his or her first name, wear jeans to work, and recognize frequent customers. And we like to think we are infinitely happier than the corporate slaves in the chain store around the corner.

My two co-workers used to work at this chain bookstore. One, a woman in her mid-fifties, was in charge of ordering books for the adult retail department, but she quit when the higher-ups hassled her for ordering academic titles instead of Danielle Steele and John Grisham. My other co-worker, a man in his early twenties who manned the information desk, felt uncomfortable working in a bookstore where employees were forbidden to read the books and expected to stand for eight hours a day. (To ensure that employees were not tempted to rest, management took away all of the employees' chairs.)

(From Moby)


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I just read the post about www.thriftbooks.com and was very impressed! I love books and I think found a great new site for purchasing all my future books! I want to thank ZW whoever he/she is for making this site known.

My only question is how they can make money selling books for a penny???

Yeah! Way to shill for spammers, ZW!

Yeah, and don't forget to click on the amazon links so Bookninja gets their money when you support a business that undermines independent booksellers.

What's remarkable isn't that ZW is a jerk who can't admit when he's wrong--it's that he's a jerk about such a wide range of things.

Are bookstores killing America's literary future?

Very good essay on the damage the bookstore chain is causing in the literary world.

The nature of this crisis is actually fairly simple. Writers can only publish what book publishers are willing to buy from them. And book publishers, in turn, can only publish what bookstores are willing to buy. In the past, there were literally thousands of independent bookstores across the country, each deciding for itself which books to buy from publishers. A large number of these stores, in fact, were dedicated to selling the works of emerging writers, to taking a chance on an unknown name. Thus, there was a market for a great variety of literature.

Today, however, the landscape has changed. Three bookstore chains control three-fourths of all book sales. Each of these chains has only one or two people in charge of buying books from publishers. Instead of thousands of independent buyers looking for books, there are now only five book purchasers who determine which books are sold in the vast majority of the nation’s bookstores. Publishers who cannot sell to these five buyers are now more than ever finding themselves in financial dire straits. And thus, writers who are trying to express a vision that doesn’t appeal to these buyers are finding themselves without publishers. The rise of book superstores, in short, has threatened the literary life of our country. In a world where publishers are being forced to determine the worth of a book by the number of copies it can sell instead of its inherent merit, the outlets for authors of serious literature are dwindling. As the type of books being bought by bookstores (and thus the type of books that get published) become more and more based on mass-market appeal, literary innovation will inevitably decline.

(Thanks, Dan)


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Edited by author 04-28-2005 04:59 PM
When Old growth forests die, what do we conclude?

Well, it depends on how they go.

If it is a result of some incompetant tending (like that purposely set control fire that got out of hand in B.C. (you'll say, that wasn't old growth, and I'll draw your attention to the qualifier "like" prefixing) then we'll say, what a shame, and the like.

If, on the other hand, the old growth goes because of some force majeur like lightning we'll think that this is best as stimulating the growth cycle.

I think it's like this with American letters.

So they are under threat from business.

Well, if the threat is because business is targetting American letters (how would it do this exactly?) then
that is something one can oppose. (Don't target American letters big business tisk tisk.)

If the threat is because that very industry is so silly as to destroy its own resource (that it needs to sell American books) then that is self-destructive and contains its own punishment and disincentive to these bookstore chains.

If, on the other hand, the business is just trying to make money (no more and no less than this) but without a specific agenda against American letters then I'd say that we have to realize that American letters had their run, and that now, if the chains can import wares from literay sweatshops from Africa and Asia, that's the run of things.

One thing more about brands and logos. As ridiculously priced (by general estimation) logos actually disincentivize sweatshops by acclimating the consumer to paying more for clothes. Indeed, it is the "no logo here"
movement eschewing logos which creates the false expectation that one should be able to buy garments for next to nothing, and that that is what drives sweatshop practices.

The translation here, is that we take, as a given, that literature should be something consumable at a reasonable price through a chain or not through a chain store, and wherein we can recognize a brand of a given author.

Perhaps we should rethink whereby we instead might gravitate towards anonymous authors from other commercial
publishing models.

This could be the good side of globalisation -- CHANGE, rather than an inexorable expectation of progress of American consumerism, cultural production and consumption --hmm, that false expectation of inexorable progress and pre-eminence -- sort of sounds like the Wolfowitz doctrine.

The best advice: back away, and let it go.

Obviously, this is an issue in this country as well as the States.

Writers cannot hope to produce credible material when editors and book buyers are only looking for the next Harry Potter. How can you be creative when now, more than ever, you are plagued by doubt? Instead of: Who will read this? we're asking ourselves: Will they market me?

We're being told to watch reality TV, listen to J-Lo, drink Starbucks, eat Mcds, there is nothing sacred. Reading is not the last safe haven for the intelligient, socially critical person. The clones, the Chapters and Indigos, are deciding in advance what should be popular. You have no say.

Boycot the big ones. Go to one of the few remaining indy bookstores. Help them stay alive. If you need food in your bookstore, check out McNally Robinson if you're fortunate enough to have one nearby. Calgary has a decent one, and Saskatoon's rivals any Chapeters for selection, and is bar none the greatest bookstore I have ever been in.

You're smarter than Heather. Don't listen to her.

Never read a Harry Potter.

If you want creative, look to music.

Credible implies accepted standards of judgment.

I think it is a culture war in a very visceral sense,
and so standards of judgment don't really apply.

One could say it is a win-win-win situation all-around
(just not for everybody?)

If you hate doubt, and want consensus, or 'the redemptive,' letters aren't your area, I should think. That's what pottery is for.

"Will they market me?"

Maybe not.

I'm fairly immune from these influences (Jello and Macdonald's) and you could be too, but you have to fill the space with other things.

Edited by author 04-29-2005 03:00 PM
As a staunch supporter of many things that are not mainstream, I enjoyed this essay immensely. I discovered the joy of independent bookstores while I was a cash-strapped student of classical music, and to this day, I support these stores. Yes, the "big box" stores can order some of the authors whose work I prefer to read, but I have no desire to give my hard-earned dollars over to them when I can still just as easily travel five minutes further down the road to the neatest little hole-in-the-wall store where the clerk is just as interested in literature and free thought as I am.

This is what I am supposing is most troubling to corporations; that the independent bookstore is just that - independent - and that this kind of thought and action is a direct threat to the kind of intellectual and social isolation that occurs while the big corporations claim we are all becoming a global village, all of us being equal in it. Equal in what way - our mediocrity?? I have heard people claim that socialism is the vehicle to equal mediocrity; I suggest that corporations are more likely to bring about such a reality, and that they are capable of doing so without enough realisation on our part that it is even occurring. (After all, a poison pill is easier to swallow when it is coated in sugar and advertised as the latest, greatest pill ever.)

I am not overly anxious, however, about the lack of viable avenues for authors: the single thing I remind myself of is that it is often in troubled times that the greatest art is produced. Art, of which literature is of course part, always finds a means to survive. To quote Oscar Wilde on this matter:

“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A really great poet is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.” (taken from The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Literature will prevail. Just as in the past, however, great literature will take time to unearth from beneath the mountains of literary junk. Don’t let the “big box” stores arrest this process. Support independent bookstores.

Edited by author 05-02-2005 11:07 AM
A fate worse than remaindering

A used bookseller in Wigton has decided to burn all the books no one wants to buy.

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Well that's quite the story. "Once you’ve consigned it to be burnt, that’s it." Eek!

Hmm. If I'd known about this earlier I could have shipped over a few hundred watercolours to get the fire started...

Maybe we should call them tindercolours? Wouldn't WATERcolours put the fire out?

G

Sad, sad news

The Double Hook Bookshop in Montreal is closing. (This is a subscriber-only link on Q&Q, so you can't read the whole story -- but the news isn't announced anywhere else online, that I can find. I'd buy a membership to the site -- which has been just fantastic since its inception -- but it's too expensive. Hint hint, guys.)


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I'm sad to hear that. I love that bookstore and always go there when I'm in Montreal. If they feel they've accomplished their mission in Montreal, perhaps they could come to Ottawa. Canadian literature, especially the small presses, still needs a champion here.

Edited by author 05-03-2005 02:01 PM
I remember taking a Poli. Sci. course which required readings on the Meech Lake Accord for a paper due. I am dating myself. With a great reputation in books on Canadiana, I went to the Double Hook and asked if they had this particular book. One of the old ladies working there said they didn't but would be happy to order it. I said that it wasn't necessary as I did have other books already. She goaded me into giving her my name and phone in any case with no obligation to buy it.
How could I lose? Well, the book came in a MONTH later and I promptly got the call. I said no thanks. However, the calls came in weekly saying that if I ordered the book why wouldn't I pick it up? I was harrassed for over the next couple of weeks with these types of phone calls. Yikes -- never again. It was a book about the Meech Lake Accord for God's sake. This experience left a bitter taste and I don't think I ever went back. Yes, it's sad, but not that sad. Still was a nice bookstore nonetheless.

Edited by author 05-06-2005 09:41 AM
Swap shop in the air

Paradies airport-based shops start a grass roots buy-back program and it works. This reminds me of a little cafe bookshop in Thailand where farangs could trade in two for one.

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Supermarket books bring down prices, intellect

Article states obvious.


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Edited by author 05-26-2005 10:21 AM
Bookseller whisperers

I've known booksellers like this.

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Although less exotic and more British, Mr. Hatfield, the independent bookseller in Place Bell on Elgin Street, is one of my favorite booksellers. He frequently tells me what I should read. He's one of the best.
-JM

Janet of Annex Books at Bathurst and Dupont in Toronto is a bookwhisperer, fer sher.

G

Edited by author 06-06-2005 01:34 PM
Which came first?

Sure people are more focused and less able to idly browse bookstores but might this be, in part, because you can barely enter a bookstore (hell, any store) these days without being queried by a smiling, uniformed clerk or sometimes several smiling, uniformed clerks as to how you might be helped? No wonder no one feels they can hang out. The other problem is that rarely does one find something truly unusual in a bookstore any longer unless, of course, you are where I was this weekend or somewhere like it.

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Speaking of the superstore question...

This piece seems to have an answer, if not the answer.

Virgil can't turn away from a volume about "Sex and the City." John Milton is locked in a staring contest with "Dealmaking in the Film and Television Industry From Negotiation to Final Contracts." Such a cruel irony of juxtaposition. And yet that's the essence of the contemporary bookstore -- a place of clashing cultural interests and dueling human needs.
...
That has always been the magic of a Barnes & Noble. It manages to seem friendly and folksy even while you know -- you know -- that every nook and niche has been vetted by multiple focus groups, that every detail has been polished for maximum consumer appeal. Yet even with all the hyper-charged corporate scrutiny, a Barnes & Noble never feels cold or sterile. You can chalk up this phenomenon to two factors: The softly comforting presence of books; and the inarguable truth that if you can fake sincerity, then you've really got it made.


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Edited by author 06-15-2005 10:13 AM
Indigo goes generic

Watch out for their new line of green products. Folks, its another big corporate squeeze. President's Choice is busy putting small operation farmers out of business; what will this mean to the our small presses? Ack! Spread the word before it's too late.

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Will Indigo's new line of books *really* put small presses out of business? I'm not so sure. Small presses have always produced books that are worthy of being published but which are not moneymakers, which larger presses are not typically interested in. I have a hard time believing that Indigo's new publishing line is going to be seeking out the best in new poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction...

Or perhaps by "small press" you mean "any book publisher in Canada"... which is another matter altogether.

Edited by author 06-15-2005 04:57 PM
I think that the market often has more to do with publicity than quality of material and Indigo will certainly have the dollars to put behind their new line of products; small presses are already pretty invisible in the marketplace. If you want a small press book you pretty well have to know about it and go seek it or else have a conscientious bookseller bringing it to your attention. In my experience these sellers are rarely in Indigo. In the Chapters in my neighbourhood, the first half of the store is recent releases, mostly HC and the odd PB where the press has been able to afford a few weeks co-op, then come the reams of candles, health kits, and yoga supplies, then the cook books, self-help. The fiction is a mixture of pulp and lit, the odd title face out (if paid for or particularly nifty looking). All decisions come from above in a Chapters/Indigo I've heard (I may be wrong) -- my first book ended up on display for some time without my press paying and when I asked why, the staff said they were directed to put it there and it was probably due to a strong Globe & Mail review. So I was briefly lucky. How many other small presses are though? Award winners, I guess. And don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter. I'm just trying to be realistic. And yes, I agree this may make the lives of 'any book publisher in Canada' difficult. Branding, if done well, can be very enticing indeed (Penguin is an early example). Will Indigo publish new poetry, fiction etc.? They will if they think they can accrue. Same as the other publishers, you may argue. And you may be right. As for cyber storefronts like the one Anansi has initiated, this seems to be acres apart from what Indigo is up to. Anansi has only control over their own stock; Indigo is a massive outlet. How is this fair if Indigo now decides that the best point of purchase will be Indigo brand. That means Anansi, even if they have the means won't be able to display there. What does mean spiritedness have to do with commerce? All's fair, I suppose even when it is bereft of integrity.

K

Edited by author 06-22-2005 09:46 AM
Lost in translation

Mary Duncan on the fate of her Moscovian Shakespeare & Co. bookstore.

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Edited by author 07-21-2005 09:25 AM
Bankruptcy
 
Is Harry's success leading to bookstore failure? How ironic. What was that about the rich getting richer? Wasn't Harry Potter lauded for singlehandedly (I know books don't have hands) getting the wee tykes reading? Now where will they buy the next installment?

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Cuts Like a Knife

Deep discounts on Harry are killing retailers. Die, retailers, die! (That's just German for "The, retailers, the!")


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Edited by author 08-19-2005 09:52 AM
King of Hay making hay

Richard Booth, the eccentric bookseller monarch of Hay-on-Wye, is putting his shop on the real estate market. Books not included.

Mr Booth says he is willing to sell the shop's thousands of books in a mass public sale. He said surplus books would be translated into "Bootho's", a "complimen-tary time-based currency guaranteed to outperform the euro and the dollar"

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Browsing for yoga mats
An elegy for the bookstore.

The new-style ''mega'' complexes in which the shopping mall meets the community arts center have bred a new bookstore culture where it's virtually impossible to do the thing that used to lure most of us to bookstores: browse.
It's not just books on sale anymore -- it's CD's, DVD's, greeting cards, stationery, sundry gifts, coffee and baked goods, and very likely health and beauty aids or tires in the not-too-distant future. More products means more to advertise.

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The essential Sartrean lesson that modern bookstore shopping teaches us is this: Hell is other people.

Shopping in just about any kind of store will teach you that. At least the shoppers in a book store are smart enough to read.

"There's a lot of opportunity in hospitals."
Indigo's new market.

the company is now in talks to boost its presence inside hospitals, Ms. Reisman said.
Indigo began experimenting with the concept in June with the opening of an Indigospirit store in Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital. Two months into the trial, the company is now seeking additional sites.

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If you like these books...
The politics of racial profiling in bookstores.

The dismantling of the Colored Section may help a writer like me. Front and center at Borders, The Untelling could catch the eye of "mainstream" readers who have heard my name before or seen the book reviewed in the major dailies. But where would this leave the other authors who rely so heavily on the browsers of The Colored Section?

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Now that's a community that loves its bookstore

$500G raised to keep store open. I feel warm fuzzy inside. But I think that's mostly the day-old roti I just ate.


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Boycott the big stores

Alan Bennett lost his local bookstore to bix bog competition and now he's urging those who can afford to buy books at the regular price to do it at independent retailers instead of Waterstone's and Amazon. I second the motion.


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Edited by author 10-28-2005 11:18 AM
Indigo and its band of merry elves

Possibly, I'm in a bad mood; well, probably I am but this annoyed me. Heather Reisman has a board of youth directors. The part about empowering children is cool, I guess, but the part about them being a board upset something in me. Isn't this sort of like slave labour? No, no. They each get a thousand whole dollars to spend -- guess where?

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She's also got volunteers - volunteers - staffing the Indigo gift shops now opening in hospitals.

volunteers.

House of books

Forget shelving those books too carefully. They could all be sold by tomorrow.


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Speaking of the big box

The Waterstone's amoeba is growing. Soon it will touch pseudopods with the Indigo and the world will develop a massive case of dysentery.


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Top 10 bookshops

Hey! Toronto's This Ain't the Rosedale Library makes the list. Suh-weet! Great bookstore staffed by great people. One of the best, for sure. I've only been to three of these stores. But I would have been to four if New York's Three Lives had made the list, as it could have on any other day.


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Authors have power
Well, maybe British ones.

Some of Britain's best-known authors are celebrating a partial victory after the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) refused to wave through Waterstone's attempt to acquire its independent rival Ottakar's.
A deluge of complaints from readers, authors and publishers prompted the competition watchdog to order an in-depth inquiry into the £96.4m bid yesterday, on the ground that it threatened a thriving book market. The Competition Commission will have until next May to decide whether to allow the creation of a bookselling powerhouse.

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Discounting Christmas sales

British chain Ottakar's admits it can't compete with the deep discounting of supermarkets and other rivals. It's strategy? Don't engage them in the price war. Here that sound? It's the Ottakar's stock price taking a dive. Ouch.


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