A Glass of Wine and a Good Book

Greetings, gentle readers...

I recently stumbled across a fascinating article / slide show on the Huffington Post. The piece was a simple nine-part primer on how to find a good bottle of wine. Written by Adam Morganstern, this step by step instructional was eye-opening, but for me, it was not about wine, it was about books. (Here is the wine article).

I recently ended a fifteen plus year career in bookselling. Over that time, I worked for three popular chain bookstores (okay, only two are popular in the US) and a now defunct music chain. Above all, I have been a lifelong lover of books, devouring up to three novels a week while working a full-time management gig. Though I worked for chains, I, like many of the book lovers still toiling 'in the system,' had a deep appreciation for independent stores. I am currently residing in Seattle, and the indies here are superb.

As I was reading the wine article, I was noticing just how similar the art of wine buying / selling is to the art of book buying / selling. I also realized just how far chain bookstores have strayed from the basic tenets of selling books.

In the very first slide, Morganstern says to avoid stores that carry more liquor than wine. In other words, a true wine store, one that a customer can trust, will not diversify, or get bogged down in other product. When I left, the chain bookstores were coming dangerously close to devoting more space to 'other stuff' than the books. Overpriced candy lined the register aisle, knick-knacks and tchotchkes took up a whole department, and the kids section was converted into a toy warehouse. How could customers take us seriously as a bookstore if we couldn't?

He then says that the customer should avoid stores where you see only big name brands, that the more you don't recognize the better. This is also true of bookstores. Maybe it's unfair to criticize chain stores for only carrying the big name brands. After all, these big superstores once started out as small boutique mall stores that would only carry the big bestsellers. But, now that big box superstores are all over the map, they have the room to deepen the selection. But, before I left, the company that used to employ me had systematically returned that depth of selection to carry MORE copies of the brand name stuff. The justification? The more places we can stack up, face out and highlight the brand names, the more they'll sell. I get it. It's business. But, every store is going to carry Catch-22, every store is going to carry War & Peace, but not every store is going to carry Something Happened or Resurrection. Usually only the independents will carry even those somewhat popular novels from very well-known writers. If a store carries The Alexandria Quartet and a wide selection of Italo Calvino's work, I'm happy.

The third slide seemed innocuous enough, a whiff of common sense about good customer service, and then I read the last beautiful line. "Good salespeople are attentive to what you're looking for and respectful of your budget." If there was ever a maxim that chain stores did not follow, it is this one. The very last thing on the minds of chain bookstore higher-ups is to respect their customers' budgets. Upsells and add-ons were and are the name of the game in the chains. From that aforementioned candy to the toys, it was all about how big a bookseller could make the purchase.

"People used to know their butcher and baker. Supermarkets have eliminated these relationships, but with wine you still need to know the person selling it to you. It's not like buying crackers or soda." Amen. Nor is buying books like buying crackers and soda. Buying books requires just as refined a taste as buying wine, in my opinion. "Beware any wine they can't tell you anything about or haven't personally tried." I was floored by this statement, mainly because of the situation in bookstores right now. Before I left, there was a program in place to forcefully sell one title to every customer. I, like many booksellers, believe that there is a different great recommendation out there for every customer. These may happen to overlap at times, but I could never imagine that it would be appropriate to blanket recommend one book. Most of the time, in fact, nearly all of the time, booksellers were not provided a preview of the book, much less the time to actually read it, before being asked to recommend it. If there was one thing that went against my very nature, instincts and philosophy as a bookseller, it was this.

There are four slides out of the nine that deal with "Starting a relationship with the staff." In chain bookstores, this is virtually impossible. The amount of turnover is staggering. Furthermore, it has long been a contention in the chains, a struggle between those who know books and those who know selling. It has always been and will ever be. Thus, those in corporate feel that those who actually know books and can speak about books to customers, are too introverted to do so, and should not be hired. Instead, they seek people who can sell, clerks who have previous retail experience, regardless of the experience. Again, selling books is not like selling soda and crackers, but the chains sure want to believe that it is.

The thing is, I've received the kind of service that Adam Morganstern recommends from several independent bookstores, and that kind of service requires intimate knowledge. This is the one piece that chain bookstores are missing from their establishments. I know that some independent stores in Seattle require a book knowledge test before the interview. Brilliant. I once asked at a management training session if someone had ever considered such a test, and if anyone had ever figured out the cost effectiveness of giving someone with high book knowledge a little more money vs. how much it costs to train a new employee with no book knowledge. No one could answer me.

Over the years, chain bookstores have repeatedly gone through the rumors of merging, of collapsing, of dying out completely, yet none of these have come to pass. I fear this is a reflection of the idea that not many people read books anymore. Maybe this has always been true, and I've just been deluded into thinking otherwise. My hope is that more people read books, and when they do, they frequent a store they can trust, who know books, love them and respect them.