Bestselling author Ann Patchett promotes indie bookselling on The Colbert Report

Her talents reach far and wide, yet Ann Patchett has chosen to use her talents, media attention, and energy to speak up for the value of indie bookstores. As a special guest on Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report on Comedy Central, the bestselling author volleyed back and forth with Colbert and was able to get in the final word.

Click here to view the video clip – http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/408775/february-20-2012/ann-patchett

We’ve just gone through a time when few people speak up for the value of quiet time untethered by technology. In this way, it’s remarkable — and refreshing — to have someone speak to the value of face-to-face conversations, remark on the importance of sharing ideas, and uphold the benefits of having a bookstore as a special place in our community.

Bravo, Ann Patchett, and thank you for using your pulpit to question, challenge, and articulate what matters to us as individuals and as a society.

Watchung Booksellers, a successful neighborhood bookstore capitalizes on great service, an amazing inventory, and an inviting atmosphere

After the demise of the Borders chain, many readers sought out local indie bookstores. The American Express Small Business Saturday promotion helped educate cardholders about the value of shopping locally. And, physical books make wonderful gifts, especially when recommended by a savvy bookseller for that hard-to-please relative. All of these factors helped fuel the positive momentum.

During the conference, even more reasons for optimism surfaced. The new Verso Advertising survey indicated that while e-books have gained popularity, about 50% of people have no interest in reading on an electronic device. For avid readers who have adopted e-reading, the survey showed that they plan to purchase the same number of print books as electronic books this year. Books are a part of our material culture and the demand for printed books is not going away.

Publishers were at the convention with heart-felt support. From small presses to large publishing houses, representatives were there to give us the inside scoop on debut authors and exciting new books. It’s the glue that binds us and what gives indie booksellers an incredibly important role in the world of books. Indie booksellers, because of their passionate recommendations – that are not predicated on any computer-generated algorithm – help introduce new authors and break-out works. Without indies, we might only get to see those titles now stacked high on the floor at the warehouse clubs, or be able to sort through the kazillions of e-books online, few of which get much marketing support due to the quality of the writing.

Indie booksellers are now talking of expanding the number of locations, redesigning their current stores, and expanding events. They are changing the complexion of their inventories, spotlighting wonderful books and other fun items that reinforce the community’s character and make it fun to come to the bookstore to shop. It’s been a long haul, but people finally seem to be over the fascination with big box stores. They understand the importance of strengthening local economies, and want to find peace, comfort, and a truly good read from their locally owned bookstore.

Book"selling" is really about opening the conversation.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “A customer walks into a bookstore … and leaves empty-handed.”

When you consider that exceptional customer service is one of the few competitive advantages that an indie bookstore can rightfully claim, it’s mind-boggling to see just how often booksellers fail to initiate a conversation with customers, or worse yet, ignore them completely. While we may just want to browse around, it is nice to have a friendly soul offer a warm greeting. Isn’t it one of the things we expect when we shop at a small business?

There are any number of reasons front-line staff may not be so comfortable opening the conversation:

• they are avid readers and passionate about books, but socially awkward
• they are engaged in another task and feel the need to complete it without interruption
• they are absorbed with technology
• they don’t want to appear to be intrusive or overbearing
• they’re too busy talking with one another behind the cash wrap

The truth is that it is a bookseller’s number-one responsibility to engage customers in a positive and meaningful way, which may be easier said than done. However, with a bit of training and direction, or leadership by example, booksellers can actually engage customers and inspire a sale. Let’s look more closely at how this can be accomplished.

Before a single word is spoken, you’ll need to make direct eye contact, and make the customer feel welcome and appreciated with a smile – even if you’re in the midst of doing something else. If it’s someone you know, what follows shouldn’t be difficult at all. Simple statements like “Good to see you again” or questions like “How are you today?” work well as starting points.

But if the face is unfamiliar, your task is a bit more challenging, but not by much. You could say “Welcome to the bookstore. Please let me know if I can help you in any way.” But that places the burden on the customer, who will most likely not want to bother you. Another option might be to say “Welcome to the bookstore. We make every effort to get to know our customers, but you don’t look familiar. Is this your first time here?” Depending on how the customer replies, you now have the makings of a conversation that can allow you to learn more about how she or he found out about the store, and ultimately, his or her tastes, interests and needs.

It may not be readily apparent, but most people hunger for acknowledgement and sense of connectedness. You may be surrounded by books and believe that a book can sell itself, but the more you can focus on what customers experience when they walk in the door and the more you can engage their senses, the more likely it is that a sale will result. It all begins with a smile and ‘Hello’.

Occupy Amazon.com movement gains momentum

When I blasted my friends and neighbors about Amazon.com’s recent promotion, I quickly got responses like “disgusting” and “who would want to support that kind of bad corporate behavior”. One honest response was “I will never buy anything from Amazon.com again.” What’s the fuss? The offer encouraged customers to use the company’s smartphone price check app — essentially, go shop in a store, scan the item you want, and buy from us and you’ll receive a discount of up to $5. Customers are allowed to do this up to three times on Saturday, December 10.

Josie Leavitt, co-owner of The Flying Pig Children’s Bookstore, blogged “Honestly, I’m sick of Amazon. I’m tired of people saying, ‘But it’s so much cheaper than what you can offer.’ Yes, it’s true, the new Steve Jobs book is 49% off at Amazon, and that’s 3 to 6% more than I can buy the book for from the publisher or a wholesaler. So, yes, I’m sick of Amazon acting as its own retail distribution center and getting a far better discount than I can. I’m tired of faithfully paying sales tax and having customers tell me how much they like saving money with Amazon.”

In a letter to Jeff Bezos, Oren Teicher, the CEO of the American Booksellers Association, stated, “We could call your $5 bounty to app-users a cheesy marketing move and leave it at that. In fact, it is the latest in a series of steps to expand your market at the expense of cities and towns nationwide, stripping them of their unique character and the financial wherewithal to pay for essential needs like schools, fire and police departments, and libraries.”

Is it legal? Absolutely. Is it ethical? Hardly.

In the United States, you can sell below your own cost. You can sell below cost on so many items as long as your stockholders are willing to wait for you to kill off your competition and then hike prices to regain your original profit margins — when you are king of the marketplace. Amazon.com poured millions of dollars fighting states’ efforts to get them to collect sales tax. Main Street shop keepers have never questioned the value of collecting sales tax for the greater good of their communities.

We write and share this not to make anyone feel guilty for owning a Kindle. We simply think it is important for all of us to be aware of what’s happening to make informed choices based on values.

In the book business, we’ve seen relentless pursuit by Amazon.com to own the entire publishing and bookstore business — from printed books to ebooks, publishing to retail. There’s tremendous danger in having one company dominate in any industry, but especially when one represents the world of ideas.

Where you choose to shop makes a statement about who you are. We hope you’ll choose to shop local.

America has always been a land of entrepreneurs with a “can-do” attitude. Just last week, we visited Athens, Georgia to help put the finishing touches on a new indie bookstore, founded by one of the country’s youngest bookstore entrepreneurs. We first met Janet Geddis at BookExpo in 2009 and later that year, she attended our five-day intensive workshop retreat on owning a bookstore. Attentive every moment, she took copious notes, engaged in “group think” with the class, and asked smart, timely questions about the industry.

The Avid Reader opens in Athens, Georgia this week.

Her greatest challenge was the lack of start-up capital. Without it, how would Janet get this business off the ground? We knew she had the intelligence and passion to create something wonderful if she could only find the funds. What has subsequently unfolded in Athens is a story we hope to see played out in communities everywhere.

Janet relied on her personal network and social media to share her dreams with friends, neighbors, colleagues, and the local press. With an already strong ‘Shop Local’ movement, a younger and educated demographic from the University of Georgia, and an interest in grass-roots efforts, Janet was cultivating fertile ground and kept widening her network, winning fans along the way.

She started small, launching a web store to get going, showing up at festivals and other gatherings with a table to sell used books, created fund-raising events around her photographic art. She bartered, sent out ‘wish lists’ of things she needed to get the store open. She was never reluctant to ask for the help she needed. And she was determined to realize her dream – even when a bookseller from another town suddenly opened (and just as suddenly, closed).

This week, Janet will officially open Avid Bookshop in a quaint historic neighborhood of young families, professors, and students. A large replica of a colorful hot air balloon brightens the children’s room, courtesy of an artist friend. The fiction section has been personally selected by Janet and when chatting with her new staff, Tom, Sonia, and Rachel, you can foretell they will sell an amazing amount of fiction because of their passion for debut authors and taste for masterful writing. There’s a display of hand-made books created by another local artist.

It literally took a village to create an indie bookstore, and a young entrepreneur made it all happen. When we create a new economy with integrity and connection, we’re headed in the right direction — and a new generation of entrepreneurs, just like Janet, will lead the way.

In a society where attention deficit disorder is rapidly becoming the norm, imagine how pop-up ads will contribute to the distractions. To sell below your own cost of materials and overhead, money has to come from somewhere; when you can promise lots of eye-balls, advertisers will be willing to pay. The high cost of cheap is that we sacrifice our quiet reading space.

And imagine the value of data-mining private information about individuals. When a corporation can collect information about what we buy, what we read, how and what we research, and then sells that data to others, our loss of privacy becomes their financial gain. So, the high cost of cheap is giving away intimate details about our lives to people we don’t even know.

From a perspective inside the book industry, we see that the more power Amazon.com holds, the more it will attempt to dictate to publishers everything from price to content of the literature published. The high cost of cheap now extends to one company having a disproportionate amount of power. In other industries, this has resulted in a loss of jobs, choice, and quality.

With companies specializing in technology, more flexibility (not less!) is the goal. When customers are used to being able to navigate and buy freely, there are limitations and inconveniences to exercise that freedom. The high cost of cheap means supporting a corporation that wants to limit navigation for its own advantage.

Perhaps most importantly, it’s hard to believe that after a summer of its fervent opposition to paying state sales taxes (as even the smallest retailers manage to do), this corporate goliath would imagine it to be unscathed. The high cost of cheap is rewarding bad corporate behavior.

Ultimately, our decisions about what we buy and what companies we support is a reflection of our own values — and when, in the long run, cheap becomes too costly.

Was this predictable? Maybe in part. The last three decades brought us a deluge of stores and shopping centers that began to look the same. Perfectly coiffed with the same merchandise, their appeal didn’t have staying power. When the economy softened, corporate decisions, meant to preserve profits and shareholder investments, resulted in dark storefronts all across the country.

Bookstores draw the right clientele

And who survived? The tenacious, spirited indie retailers — yes, the “Mom & Pop” stores. Not only have they weathered economic ups and downs (most recently created by the temporary deep discounting offered by the chains when they first moved to town), owners of independent businesses held on because their entire livelihood was on the line. Their commitment to community reached far beyond hitting profit targets – they were in it for the long haul.

Now that hundreds of communities are without bookstores — some driven out by the proliferation of Wall Street financed chains, and now Borders stores closing as a result of the ongoing mismanagement of the revolving executives who ran the company — there are openings for new anchors on Main Street and in retail developments from coast to coast. An independent bookstore is a wise choice to fill an opening, especially if the objective is to draw an upscale demographic.

While some would have us believe that e-books are rendering bookstores obsolete, brick-and-mortar bookstores are still relevant and here’s why. Printed books account for 85% of book sales and research now shows that those who read e-books still value — and buy — printed books. Bookstores are considered gathering places and symbolize an educated community that values learning as a lifelong endeavor. Also, people who read want to know what to read next. Independent booksellers have long been recognized for their genuine passion for books, honesty in making recommendations, and their ability to help publishers launch new writers. In most redevelopment polls, people say they most want a bookstore in their community — and will support it.

To developers and landlords, we suggest you look beyond the media’s obsession with technology to see the opportunities in your own backyard. An indie bookstore will draw the right demographic, hold a long-term commitment to the area, and will contribute to the well-being of the community.

As consumers become more and more mindful that a ‘Local’ focus helps their community, the momentum is continuing to build. To ensure that developments gain (rather than lose) appeal, you need look no further than an indie bookstore. It may require some investment and accommodation on the developer or landlord’s part to get a bookstore open for business, but its presence will generate ongoing tangible results.

Borders closing remaining bookstores

While the large-box model has proven to be unsustainable for some retailers, we are not returning to the days before big-box growth. It’s different now. Borders, with its aggressive promises to shareholders, set up shop in many communities that already had successful independent bookstores. With deep pockets, the corporate stores were known to enter a desirable market and offer deep discounts to push the single “Mom & Pop” operations out. They did so successfully.

Now, with Borders in the process of closing its remaining stores, there are often no independent bookstores left to serve those communities. Chris Smith, a columnist for The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, California asked in his July 7, 2011 article, “Is it a town without a bookstore?” The worst-case scenario he posed was, “We all shop online at home, get great deals and avoid paying sales tax, then walk through our lifeless downtowns with wired plugs blocking our ears.”

Having managed a large-scale indie bookstore, my sense is that most of the Borders stores were selling at least $5 million to $10 million a year. For independent bookstores, there’s a profitable model at just $750,000 to $1 million in annual sales in much smaller spaces. With no shareholders to satisfy and large corporate staff to support, an owner of an independent bookstore in a former Borders market has the opportunity to win the hearts of citizens, achieve healthy sales, and enjoy a meaningful career in the bookstore business.

Never before have I seen such ideal timing to open a community-based bookstore. With ‘Buy Local’ campaigns growing stronger, authors enjoying more media time, Borders stores closing, and banks once again lending at low rates, now is the time for locally-owned bookstores to re-emerge as focal points within their communities.

The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser

In his book, Pariser discusses the rise of “personalized” search results on the web – when two people conduct the exact same Google search but find radically different results. Pariser, founder of MoveOn.org, and a conservative friend were both interested in the unrest in Egypt earlier this year. They both search Google for “Egypt”, yet his friend sees nothing about riots or an uprising on the first page of search results. The algorithms used by Google and other search engines intuit your interests and provide results consistent with data gathered from your past searches.

The implication? In a world where people are already polarized by wealth and beliefs, the Internet actually furthers the divide. Some would say that this algorithm-driven process is essential, since it narrows an overwhelming amount of information into more manageable chunks. What if the most important information is not what we already know, but what we need to discover and learn?

This is why we remain so committed to a world with independent bookstores and public libraries. By simply going in and wandering around, you expand your world of ideas. Not every book is on the shelves, but the selections are shaped by current events, the time-tested works of history, and new books by promising writers.

Book industry research has indicated that over 40% of people who shop in bookstores discover something they did not specifically come in to buy. Little have we realized how utterly important these venues have been to broadening our horizons instead of narrowing our views.

One of the sessions presented at BookExpo America last month by the Book Industry Study Group focused on today’s “power e-book buyer.” Since we’ve heard from a number of booksellers who feel threatened by the emergence of e-books, as well as a number who are optimistic about the future of retailing in spite of the rapid ascent of e-book sales, we thought it worthwhile to take a closer look at available data and the implications for books in print.

It was no surprise to learn that 66% of those power e-book buyers are women, whose average age is 44 years old and average income is $77,000 per year. And it was also no surprise that about 60% of all titles purchased in e-book format are fiction, that the proprietary e-reading devices belonging to Amazon and Barnes & Noble comprise more than half of the market, and that Amazon has a 65% market share of e-books being purchased. But that’s where the data gets a little interesting.

It looks as if romance is the leader and fastest growing segment of all fiction titles downloaded in e-book format. Some of them are now “interactive,” with features that draw the reader further into the setting and story. Yet for most general trade bookstores, “romance” would hardly be a best-selling section. So it’s difficult to see how this trend would impact an indie bookseller, though it does present an opportunity to cater to that market.

Two of the more interesting nuggets from that session were the findings that customer satisfaction for all e-reader devices was less than 50%, and that the young adult and 20-something age groups were now reporting “digital fatigue.” So what are the implications for storefront retailers?

It suggests that the experience of reading (not to mention the experience of shopping) should be made as much of a priority, if not more, than the physical book. It also suggests that booksellers could appeal to market segments previously ignored, especially by staging some special events catering to specific age groups.

With the growing realization within the publishing community that “print pays the rent,” and with research that shows that the vast majority of readers learn about what to read next from a physical bookstore, it will behoove indies to pay closer attention to the art of retailing, in order to become a showroom for the thousands of new titles being published each year.

We strongly believe that the combination of an attractive and inviting physical space, a thought-filled inventory presented in a variety of formats, along with exceptional customer service and an aggressive calendar of events, will well-serve indie booksellers – and their communities – for many years to come.