Pretty simple midweek update. Lifebringer has hit 200 pages and 40,000 words. Still got a fair way to go though...
In other news, the main inner city bookseller, Whitcoulls, is closing their doors. After a series of rough years and a total failure to so much as try and get it right, they're shutting their largest store. The company isn't going under, but when all the other locations sell board games, greeting cards and 17 of the Top 50 bestsellers, it certainly feels like they're on their last legs.
Whitcoulls, I'll let you in on a little secret. If I want to buy a board game, I'll go to a fucking specialty board game store. Same with greeting cards. You know where I go to buy books? The bookseller. You know what you are? A bookseller. You know what you need to sell? SOME FUCKING BOOKS.
Take the Hunger Games off the 'Top 50' shelves already, it's been there for 3 years. Give some other books the chance to shine. Trim down the 'generic crime thriller' section, and can the whole 'bestseller' isle. You're losing out to the online market, and that's because they're selling all those things for $20 cheaper than you.
You know what your point of differentiation is? Immediacy. That's right, you bitch and whinge that we're the 'instant generation' and have forgot to cash in on exactly that tendency. When I pay the extra money to buy a book from you, I'm not paying for a book, I'm paying for the convenience of having it straight away. When I order from the Book Depository it'll take a month to arrive, if it arrives at all. When I order from Amazon, I pay $30 in handling fees. And that's before shipping costs. I want to buy some goddamn books, and I want to hold them in my hand, and read them on the bus home.
You know why I don't buy from you? Because you don't stock anything I want to read. All the Jeffrey Archer, and Patricia Cornwell, and Dan Brown, and Clive Cussler. That's the shit people are buying online. They know those names. They don't need to see them on a shelf to be reminded of their existence. People will go buy those books where they're cheapest, and that place isn't your bookstores.
I've spent 5 months looking for a copy of Ernest Cline's 'Ready Player One' and Andy Weir's 'The Martian'. You don't stock them. At all. Not one copy. I've finally relented and paid $60 to have them both shipped to me, and it'll take 2 weeks for them to get here.
Bookstores aren't about buying what you know, or buying the latest 'bestseller', they're about discovery. Discovery, and niche markets. When I walk into a bookstore, I want to find something I would have never heard of otherwise. When did you stop delivering that? And for fuck's sake, why?
Hire a team of buyers for each genre, even each sub-genre. Have them buy stuff a little more off the beaten track. Have them be your quality control for indie books. Have them find stuff that isn't Dan Brown, or 'the next Dan Brown!', or 'praised by Dan Brown!'. Have them find books the rest of us never would without them.
Oh and when you only have 10 shelves for Fantasy and Sci-Fi, A Song of Ice and Fire shouldn't be taking up 4 shelves.
Don't sell chunks of printed paper. Sell discovery.
End Rant.
You pricks.
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