I keep saying I'm going to get back to regular blog posts, and then I stop. A few months go by, I try to start a post, then stop again. It is a hybrid form of writer's block at work here, built from a conflict between working for a living and writing for my customers and friends, who are often one and the same. It's not just that working for a living takes up time and creative energy that might go into writing. My blog has always been meant to promote bargain books to booksellers, and bound paper books to the digitally addicted. In the times we are living through now, there is an additional conflict between that mission and the need to say something more generally helpful. That conflict gets the best of me when I freeze up and can't write anything.
So, for this post, I am going to stay off my bargain book soapbox and focus on booksellers, those marvelous beings who have, for my whole life, walked a fine line between success and poverty, threatened by chains, online behemoths, competing platforms, and the relentless dumbing down of their cultures.
I would not be writing this post were it not for my readers (yes, okay, both of you!) telling me they miss my posts and, especially now, think other booksellers could benefit from them. And when I say "writing," picture two of my thumbs (I have ten of them) pressing a couple of keys and then disappearing from the vicinity of the blog for another few days, then coming back to delete the few characters they input before. This has been going on for weeks; I hope today will be the day I finally manage to publish my sorry efforts. Thank you for urging me on.
Seeing so many of you doing whatever it takes to stay safe and keep your customers safe, while at the same time investing incredible amounts of energy and elbow grease in getting books to them using whatever tools you have available, is an inspiration. What have I seen and heard? For starters:
💖
Arranging books by author, theme, or subject category, as if in a store window or end cap or tabletop display, and posting pictures of those displays on social media, in email, on websites.
💖Here's the amazing Arsen from Boulder Book Store on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y2VOht226s&fbclid=IwAR1ceBiV5aknczsTC6u64TvR7d8Kp_CcC4B69Ev2pPQ0GBDFuYrIE7m_qfM
💖Creating packages of books based on what particular customers like and having them delivered to those customers. The customers can then call and say what they don't want, the booksellers picks them up, and collects the payment for what was kept. All of this is done with disinfectant, gloves, and masks applied at the right time in the appropriate places.
💖Fulfilling wishlist items for kids in foster care.
💖And then there's this from the amazing Megan at Hills and Hamlets Bookshop and Underground Books:
https://www.facebook.com/UndergroundBooksCarrollton/videos/247338776503365/?t=2
💖Third Street Books is tweeting black ownded bookstores all day, 6/2/2020:
💖For those bookstores with pets beloved by many customers, the pets show up in the posts with various backgrounds, maybe including books, maybe not, more just to say hello and comfort the lonely.
💖Doing "buy 3 from this stack, you get one free from this stack" deals. See above bit about posting pictures. (Uh-oh, I feel a plug for bargain books coming on...)
💖Here's Janet at Source Booksellers getting on BookTV on C-Span:
https://twitter.com/sourcebksellers
💖TONS of readings online. Booksellers reading children's books for the kids, authors reading novels for the grownups.
💖Here's Third Place Books raising money (and books) for students in need:
https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/books-students-fund
💖Several friends are in danger of losing their businesses during this time. Some are doing "GoFundMe" drives, asking for donations to keep them going. One pays her employees whether they stay at home or not, whether or not they are getting government money, whether or not she ever gets her PPP. Another, who did finally get her PPP, announced that she is going ahead with her long-delayed plans to finish her build-out on her new location, making sure everybody knows she is still in business, is not going away, and is aggressively moving forward.
💖Some are driving (or riding bicycles, or walking) summer reading mystery bags or boxes to customers who have subscribed to the service. At first, they had the impression that this was partly charity on the part of their customers, but so many have said that it's so great that they want to continue past the reopening, that now they think, if it was charitable to start, now it is just another fantastic way to sell books.
💖And many, whether or not they've been told they can reopen, would rather not expose their staff and customers to danger, as Hannah from The Book Shop at Beverly Farms writes here:
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/05/22/massachusetts-reopening-small-business-hannah-harlow
Ostensibly, I suppose, all of these efforts are meant to, eventually, in some way, directly or indirectly, lead to sales, but they sure feel like they are really there to help their communities through this time. It all takes immense amounts of work, time, planning, thinking, creating. Who else, what other merchant professional does this? Outside of some nonprofit organizations, health and medical professionals, and the military, are there other industries like this? Our extended family of booksellers is made of some tough, good, wonderful stuff.
I had a dear customer respond quickly to my post of yesterday with questions and suggestions. I am transposing them here, much paraphrased to protect the innocent, with my answers below each:
Q: What are ways us regular remainder buyers can improve the quality of the titles we get access to?
A: You might be subtly alluding to the fact that I have terrible organizational skills and lose the thread often, leaving you wondering whatever happened to old Ben Archer. But when I send you my lists, and I promise to send them to you more often, I really am sending you everything I can find. To fine tune to the extent that the big remainder buyers see better lists than small remainder buyers would be so conterproductive as to cause our sales to decrease as we spend time figuring out what to show who and when. And the big buyers that compete with you for inventory, meaning the largest indies and used bookstores, not Safeway or Dollar General, want exactly what you want, 90% of the time. However, all that being said, sales reps almost always send the most info, lists, "good stuff," nudges, etc., to customers who respond. It hard to send lists, deals, and announcements week after week, month after month, to a "customer" who never, or almost never, responds. I have very few customers, count 'em on one hand, who respond immediately to 75% of what I send them, and, yes, guilty as charged, they do get my attention. I'm sure most of what I am writing here applies to other reps. It's human nature. (Dear customer: I hope it is obvious that I am NOT talking about YOU!)
Think of your customers, walking into your bookstore. Some come in almost every day. They may not buy anything most days, but you get to know them. You think of them when you order books. You call them when something comes in that you know they would want.
Access Tip: The biggest buyers, and lots of smaller ones as well, visit our warehouse. Some visit once a year, some once per month, some visit for a few days at a time, some a few hours, but that is the best way to get the best books. You can't just show up, we need to set up appointments, but start talking to me about it now, and we can make it happen.
Q: How can I get a better rate of fulfillment?
A: You can order immediately, you can order on our site (well, all right, that might actually be a bit better), call ahead to reserve inventory, you can cajole, berate, plead, and harass, you won't get 100% fill on anything but a handful of orders. Some might be 95%, but 100% is the holy grail. Sometimes books are damaged out after we receive your order. Sometimes our receiving process glitches and we did not get what we thought we got. We have over 30,000 titles here, but about 10,000 of those are available in quantities under 10 and you don't see them on our lists for the simple reason that the fill rate on those is so low. (Tell me if you want to see such a list and I'll send it to you, as long as you consider yourself forewarned.) If all you cared about was fill rate (like the chains), you would only order from lists where the available quantities were high, say, 100 minimum. You can ask me for that, too, but you won't buy much. I know others might have better fill rates, but we have the best books in the industry, so it's a trade off worth making.
Going back to those few hyper-responsive customers, they have the same fill rates as everybody else, but they order the same title over and over, whenever they see it on a list, until they get it.
This customer also had a suggestion, for me to create a "Pro Tips" page, which I will do, just need to give it a little thought. While most readers of this blog are pros, I am not, so will need some more suggestions to get that project done.
Thank you for being a bookseller!!!
It has been a long time since I've posted. My plan is to post once or twice per week, add a "best seller" page for books we at Book Country are selling best to our indie and used bookstore customers, and put daily deals and links in the "Deals and Steals" page.
Since my only concern is our customers, I'd love to hear questions from you, either about Book Country or the industry in general. While I probably will not have the best answers to your industry questions, I can point you in the right direction or get those answers for you and credit the source when the the source wants to be credited.
I will stay with some of my old threads. I see in PW that print sales were a bit down in 2019, mostly due to lack of blockbuster best sellers (and maybe lower print runs?), but clearly, the billionaires and the publishers were wrong when they said that books would be replaced by digital media. People will be reading beautiful wonderful physical books long into the future, as long as there are publishers printing them.
WAY more bookstores have opened since I last posted here. What happened? Borders and Barnes & Noble were said to be killing them, Amazon wanted to kill them, Walmart and Costco and all the other big baddies were supposedly killing them... but they weren't and they didn't. The experience of shopping in a bookstore, especially a local, one-of-a-kind bookstore can't be matched. The ones that did go out of business simply were not buying enough bargain books. Oh all right, yes, I am joking, but take a look. Not that big a joke. The hugely successful, big indiependent bookstores that have survived, thrived, and dominated, buy a LOT of bargain books. I will hit that point hard in coming posts.
I want to post more about how successful booksellers work bargain into their mix, how they merchandise, how they use it to generate sales and interest. Publishers are not huge fans of bargain, though they should be, and the trade press is all about making the publishers happy. After all, they support them. Years ago, PW and The Bookseller had occasional columns about the bargain book industry, but that has all but disappeared. If I can help make up for that dearth in any small way, I will.
Again, if you have any questions or suggestions, anything you want to share with other booksellers, please email me. Most of you reading this blog know me, so just email me. Email works better than comments on the blog.
Thank you for reading!
