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Sign of the times.
It’s during a conversation with a co-worker yesterday that I learned about Border’s announcement of their new face-out policy - meaning you’ll no longer have to turn your head to read the titles on the spines. Spines? Who needs spines when you’ve got full cover real estate to play with, right?
Then I read this on Galleycat today.
When I was younger and a little more stupid than at present, I wondered why most bookstores seemingly hid the awesome covers of some equally awesome books. Those better books should’ve been facing outward so others could see them, right? So they would know how great the book is too, right? Sometimes, as a kid and well into my teens, if I saw a book I loved hidden among a dozen others, I would pluck it from its hiding place and turn it face-out so others would notice. I’m sure this pissed off the clerks at the bookstore (as it did me when I finally got a job at a bookstore), but hey, my heart was in the right place. After all, supporting the artist is a win-win situation, as it allows the artist to continue to produce more great work. Right? Right.
Then I got that job at Books-A-Million several years ago and my perception changed. Aside from special promotional tables, end-caps (those little displays on the ends of aisles), and the Best-Sellers rack, all of the books were turned spine-out. Why? Because there are a lot of books and not enough space. Sometimes we had to jam books into their proper shelves so tightly that customers would need a crowbar to pull them out. Yeah. Space was limited.
Reading about Borders’ change of procedure made me wonder. Sure, there’s speculation in that Galleycat article about the good it will do for small publishers (I’m going to go out on a limb and say little to none, if not even less - but hey, I’m a cynic), and I understand why my corporate bookstore of choice would make such a change as the economy is currently going tits-up and everyone has to do what they can to make ends meet, but the one thing that stood out in my mind was a simple, single, two-word sentence: Less books.
I love Amazon. They also happen to own Borders, but that’s besides the point. Amazon is a godsend sometimes, and their free shipping for orders over $25 is a brilliant up-sell technique that works every time. But is this a sign that they’ve won whatever kind of economic power struggle between brick-and-mortar stores and the online empire? For as much as I love Amazon and its convenience, I also love going to a bookstore and getting lost in the aisles of books. The thought of walking into my local Borders and finding fewer books kind of makes my heart hurt a bit.
Sign of the times, maybe? What are your thoughts?
TK
Comments
4 Responses to “Sign of the times.”
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I agree. I love just wandering in bookstores. Luickily the closest bookstore worth driving to is B&N which as I understand it doesn’t have this policy, yet.
I agree with the space thing, there was less than zero room in our bookshop at any one time. My job for about three months over the holidays turned from selling books into finding inventive ways to fracture space to fit more books in. I can’t help but wonder where they’re going to get the extra room from to do this, and if they can’t find it, then that means that they must be recouping the loss somewhere–presumably in ‘rent’ from companies in search of greater exposure for their authors.
Oh, and interesting fact time: since I worked at Dymocks for quite some time, I got some inside information about Borders’ Australian invasion strategy–basically they moved in as close as they could to any Dymocks or Angus&Robertson bookstore (the two major chains here) and were as aggressive in pricing as possible. It failed horribly, and they announced their decision to retract and franchise/sell privately the stores that they owned all over Australia. So there you go.
I must agree, one of the greatest experiences of visiting a bookshop is the volume of books on the shelves. When I worked in a Booksellers (a little back street one, might I add) there was a sense of weight to the thousands of books, either upon the shelves, or stacked in unkempt piles from the floor. The organisation was less about genre specifics and more casual, ‘where they can fit’ process. I think that style really does give a sort of magic to a collection of books; that the words weigh down so heavily on the place, as people get lost in the stacks and piles of books they can truly feel like maybe, just maybe, the place their in is its own God of Physics.
After all, what else are books for, if not to capture the world?
Yeah this sucks, it is true that there is so little space even with the spines facing out. Though I do agree with you, one does sometimes have to pull hard on the books in order to get them out and putting them back is even a bigger pain in the ass.
I read the second article (since the first requires me to subscribe) and I again do agree, what books will be chosen when they order them and what will be ‘tossed’ out? Now this is a big deal because I have a really good feeling best sellers and books written by famous people will be chosen over those books being brought out by authors who haven’t even started their careers. Like the second article said it’s most likely Oprah will be among the shelves more than anything and that’s really bad.
Looks like it’s going to get difficult for us even more now huh? Not only do we have to worry about being published but now we must worry about if we are good enough to actually be placed on the shelves…