Comments on: Books from the Ashes

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:58:08 +0000

About 8 years ago I actually interviewed at the big Chapters in downtown Montreal–and we definitely talked about books. It was a group interview (about 10 of us in a circle with the HR dude) and we went around and had to talk about recent books we liked and why. It was a very bizarre staged/forced conversation with everyone trying to sound smart :)

I’d say about 60% of the interview was book talk, the rest was role playing client situations.

There was definitely an expectation that you know something about books.

By: Hugh McGuire

Hugh McGuire — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:51:40 +0000

Yes, I think that’s part of the same kind of problem: that the big stores, and hence staff training, is focused mostly on moving product, rather than serving book lovers.

By: AH

AH — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:29:10 +0000

How about booksellers being uninformed to the detriment of small publishers? I remember working at the info desk at Chapters around the time of Indigo takeover. When a book was not in the store or the ordering system, the computer would turn up the message “not available.” We would translate this as “out of print” and send our customers off with no hope of locating the book.

Chapters was on the outs with several small publishers who, for reasons mentioned in the post, would no longer sell to the chain. When people came looking for these books, we told them they were out of print, making it very unlikely that they would keep searching at competing bookstores. Its not that we minimum-wage retail workers cared about the store’s profit margin – we were just misinformed about the inventory system…

Later I worked in a university bookstore that had Books in Print and realized that I had misinformed dozens of customers.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:22:30 +0000

Murakami is a funny example — not only will most booksellers at Chapters/Indigo not know him, they won’t be able to find him either. He is the most stolen writer. One of the ways I can tell if I am in competently run bookstore is to check Murakami. If they don’t have him, Fail. If they have him but can’t find him, half-FAIL. If they have him and he is behind the counter, WIN. Growth may be the capitalist curse, but theft is the curse of the inexperienced book seller.

By: Hugh McGuire

Hugh McGuire — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:03:46 +0000

@mark:
1. yes, I agree that publishers are part of the same problem. My larger point is that in the book business (publishing & selling), value has been stripped out in order to create profit. And the whole ecosystem of making books has been hurt in the process.

2. is that your experience of the majority of staff in chapters/indigo? My experience is that they never know the “obscure” writers I’m looking for (say, Murakami). But yes, a bit unfair to ask them to know their whole catalog. Still, I don’t get the impression that Chapters/Indigo employees are hired for book knowledge.

3. This comes from a conversation I had with an agent, see:
http://hughmcguire.net/2008/08/06/books-out-smelly-candles-in/

@deb: Yes, I wonder how much of an article like this is just pining for the old days though. I do think that the book ecosystem has to do a better job of supporting independents though – writers, publishers, stores – since the indies are the grassroots that feeds into the more profitable business.

By: Deb

Deb — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:45:04 +0000

Great article! As a writer (published by a small press) and a book-lover, this has been a topic of much discussion in my household. Here in Flagstaff, one of our last indy bookstores was forced to close up shop after more than 20–maybe 30–years. Though books were stacked willy-nilly with little discernable organization, the shopkeeper knew just where everything was and seemed to have read every book in stock! She always had a book open on the counter and would stick a bookmark–often made by a neighborhood kid–into whatever she was reading when a customer needed her help. This store was very supportive of local authors like myself, particularly those whose works were published by small presses or self-published. A real loss to our community, that store. I miss the smell too. Big chain stores just don’t have that kind of charm.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 17:36:31 +0000

It is a great time for authors and creators. It is a great time for something new — like bookoven. It is not so great a time to be a publisher. And retail is simply retail — it expands and contracts as it always has.

A couple of nik-picky things about your post:

1. Publishers are as guilty as retailers when it comes to value creation. In my experience they are more obsessed with the bottom line than the retailers are. They tend to have bigger meaner corporate parents.

2. The slag against booksellers that don’t know anything about books doesn’t wash with me. I can introduce you to booksellers that individually have more book knowledge than a class of MA students. Often booksellers don’t know anything about YOUR book and that is entirely understandable when there are 100k in the store.

3. Chapters/Indigo is increasing sku counts across the country. Linear feet did decrease and will decrease again as sales go digital but the idea that they are targeting Canadian fiction specifically is preposterous. HRM knows the book business is in decline, so she is diversifying accordingly.

I wholly agree about the demise of the independents. That is brutal, but I am looking forward to McNally Robinson’s expansion east.