Location Taken: Arcadia, Michigan
Time Taken: May 2011
Sometimes it’s peculiar how companies seem to shoot themselves in the foot.
Yesterday, for the first time in a bit, my mom and I went out to buy a book. Now, we’re both voracious readers, but she’s got a Nook and buys most of her books electronically these days, whereas I tend to either read from our already extensive collection or hit the library. But a new book by one of our favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, had come out. It’s Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, the fourteenth book in her fabulous Vorkosigan series. I probably wouldn’t suggest starting with it, since the world is so solidly developed that she can’t take time to explain all the characters she throws in to each book any more, but I do solidly recommend reading this series if you have ANY interest in, well, good books. Start with Shards of Honor or the omnibus that includes it, Cordelia’s Honor. Seriously.
Not that you’d have any easy time finding it at certain stores. Our old preferred bookstore was a Borders, and when that closed due to bankruptcy a year or so ago, it was replaced rather quickly with a BAM! Yes, that’s what they decided to put on the sign out front, “BAM!” I’ll not elaborate what that means, because either their branding worked and you know what it means or, much much more likely, it failed entirely and doesn’t matter anyway. Anyway, it’s still the closest bookstore to us, so that’s where we went first to find this new book in a popular science fiction series by a well-awarded science fiction and fantasy author.
They didn’t have it. We looked in the fancy new arrivals display, the not so fancy new arrivals in science fiction display, and then just on the shelf. In fact, they only had one book by Bujold period, one lone copy of Cryoburn (the previous book in the series, and again, one I wouldn’t recommend to start reading the series with). And it’s not like they didn’t have the shelf space. They’d both reduced the amount of shelf space available compared to the layout Borders had in the exact same location, and decided to turn a lot of their books face-out, so the pretty picture on front showed. Which generally meant one book in the space that three or four could have taken. Oh, and the popular books? Those had shelves to themselves, full of fifty copies of just one book and a large assortment of copycat books hoping to get picked up by foolish people who assume that they look the same, and thus must be just as good. But well-loved science fiction author? Nah, let’s not give her any space or bother stocking her newest book. Science fiction is a chump’s genre, anyway…
So we had to go to another bookstore. It’s far enough away from my house that we really never get out to that corner of the world. Which, in this over-crowded area, means about ten miles away. But it was ten miles in the direction we’d already gone five miles in, so to that store we went. We walked in, and right there in front of the door on their top tier new arrivals shelf was a large stack of copies of Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. Didn’t even have to go to the genre’s shelves, just grabbed it and bought it, nice and easy.
The first bookstore is part of why so many people think the book industry is dying. The second one is part of why it’s not and is in fact booming. The first bookstore was nearly empty of people, and half the store was dedicated to non-book materials. Heck, they had a scented candle display right by the check-out line, which shows a real lack of comprehension of the differences of human biology. Neither mom nor I can go within five feet of such displays without holding our breath lest we get nasty headaches. Putting it next to a place you expect people to be standing in for a couple minutes is just cruel! And of course, one of the easiest ways for a business to fail is, quite simply, not offering what people want to buy. We couldn’t buy the book we wanted there, so we (obviously) didn’t. That’s a solid lost sale. And in fact, lost customers in general. We’ll probably either go to that other book store or just order the books online.
Which is a large part of why the book industry isn’t dying: it’s just moved digital. Lots of people have eReaders these days, and are buying more books than ever for them. And if you want a physical copy because, say, you want to share the book with family members who don’t have eReaders, it’s really easy to find them at online retailers. Just wait a couple extra days and it’ll be delivered right to your front door. And the bookstore that was well stocked? It wasn’t empty like the other one, it was nicely crowded. They’ve also got a really strong tie-in to a popular eReader, so they’re doing well digitally too. Amazing how well actually selling what people want to buy works, no?
