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Tuesday
May012007

The Bookloft's Online Sense of Place

Shelf Awareness--Wednesday, April 25

Writers are often praised for evoking a vivid "sense of place" in their works. Seldom, however, is the compliment applied to bookstores, and almost never to bookstore websites.

Let’s change that today by showcasing the Bookloft bookstore in Great Barrington, Mass., which projects a distinct sense of place online. The "place" in question is the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts and the "sense of" originates with the bookstore's owner, Eric Wilska.

The Bookloft's home page tells us that when he isn't in the bookstore, Wilska "can usually be found at the world famous Sticky Fingers Farm, known for the best maple syrup this side of the Mississippi!" As a bookseller, Wilska deftly walks the line between technological sophistication and Berkshire country life.

The Bookloft.com uses a standard Booksense.com template with creative twists and links, some of which we'll explore in more detail next week. A few years ago, Wilska co-authored the bookstore's first website, but "it was just ridiculous." He is pleased with the current setup, even as he considers improvements. 

He gives Booksense.com high marks for what it allows him to do. "I believe they're doing a good job," he said. "For the $225 per month, it's worth it for the content. This has been an expense, but it's also a leap of faith. I believe bookstores that don't have an active website two to five years from now will miss the next generation of readers."   

Still, it's what Wilska and the Bookloft docreate within the Booksense.com template that gives the site its individuality and regional flare. At the top of that list is the beneficial relationship between Bookloft.com and the store's other website, BerkshireBooks.com. "I absolutely believe that the combination of Berkshirebooks.com and the Booksense.com site is key," said Wilska. 

Location, location, location . . . BerkshireBooks.com was created to take advantage of the bookstore's advantageous setting in the heart of the Berkshires, an immensely popular New England destination spot--as anyone driving through Lenox or Stockbridge on a summer afternoon can attest--where thousands of visitors flock every year for outdoor activities as well as a lavish cultural menu that includes world class music, theater, art and literary events.

When you visit the Bookloft's main website, you'll notice a colorful banner for Bershirebooks.com occupying prime territory in the top right corner of the home page. If you click Read More, you stay within the Booksense.com site and link to a page with local titles available exclusively from the Bookloft. If, however, you click BerkshireBooks.com, you leave the Booksense.com site and link directly to the bookstore's regional showcase, where an array of titles and products are offered.

Let's say you click the link for Berkshire Regional histories, and suppose the book that catches your eye is Ghosts of Old Berkshire by Willard Douglas Coxey, which is described here as a "fascinating facsimile paperback edition of the original 1934 book. Full of curious early Berkshire tales, myths and traditions visualized in story form."

Should you decide to purchase the title and click on the cover, you are linked back to the Booksense.com site and given the option to add this esoteric, long out-of-print title to your shopping cart.

The ease with which a customer can move between the websites--taking advantage of regional sense of place at BerkshireBooks.com and the convenience of a Booksense.com shopping cart--has become a powerful online sales tool for the Bookloft, but there is another aspect of this transaction that is particularly appealing to Wilska.

While BerkshireBooks.com offers in-print books of regional interest and searches for hard-to-find titles, a more recent innovation allows Wilska to produce some of the public domain titles he sells here thanks to Troy Book Makers, a print-on-demand venture Wilska owns in partnership with Susan Novotny of the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza.

"We've sold 97 copies of Ghosts of Old Berkshire at $10.95 since last November," he said. "I paid $1.50 each to produce them. You give me 30 or 40 of those little niche books, and I print them, and that's real profit."

Did somebody say Long Tail Theory? Actually, Erik Wilska is happy to bring the subject up, noting that his efforts to find profitability through books like Ghosts of Old Berkshire "is a way of using that whole Long Tail thing. I love the Long Tail theory."

Next week we’ll explore Bookloft.com's subtle mastery of the Art of the Portal.

Wednesday
Apr182007

Wizards & Poets in My E-mailbag

Shelf Awareness -- Tuesday, April 17

Perhaps my e-mailbag runneth over this month simply because Potter and Poetry have distinct, magical qualities, which elicit thoughtful and passionate reactions. People--readers, booksellers, writers, publishers--care about the two Ps and say so. Reason enough to highlight a few noteworthy responses to the recent Harry Potter and National Poetry Month columns.  

Jeffrey Inscho, marketing manager for Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Pittsburgh, Pa., wrote that "we’re launching an online/real world scavenger hunt website (Harry Potter Pittsburgh, countdown tracker up now) on June 1. The final clue that participants receive will be an invitation to reserve their copy at JBB, which gains them VIP treatment at our HP7 party. We anticipate this to be a really beneficial tool, framing JBB Pittsburgh as the Pittsburgh HP7 authority."

Virginia Duffey reported that Page One Bookstore in Albuquerque, N.M., is "selling vouchers at 20% off the full retail price of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, advertising our traditionally big release-eve party, and a stub from the voucher will be entered into a drawing for great prizes like an iPod Shuffle, Dragon-head wizard staff, Alivan wands and other Harry Potter-related gift items. The only way one can be entered in the drawing is to buy their HPVII from us."

According to Elisabeth Grant-Gibson, Windows a bookshop in Monroe, La., "is selling the book at full price (as always) and working on another great Harry Potter Pajama Party. We've also started a Hogwarts Study Group, which is meeting one time for each of the first six books to thoroughly examine the question 'Severus Snape: Hero or Villain?' None of our study group members have read the Mugglenet book about what might happen in Book 7."

Is there any bookstore that can resist Harry's siren song? "We won't be stocking this last Harry Potter and neither did we stock any of the previous titles," wrote Sherri Israels of Watermark Books on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. "The best reaction to this 'fray' is to stay out of it completely. We don't have to deal with the vagaries of supply and demand on these ludicrously over-hyped 'entertainment items.' We just keep on selling good books to intelligent readers day after day. (Our store is a Harry Potter-free zone, much appreciated by our clientele.)"

---

"And life is, I am sure, made of poetry," Jorge Luis Borges contended in This Craft of Verse. "Poetry is not alien--poetry is, as we shall see, lurking round the corner. It may spring on us at any moment."

Penguin rep Meredith Vajda lauded the Poetry Month efforts of Mary Shadoff, bookseller/buyer at University Bookstore in Seattle, Wash., who has "spearheaded their celebration of poetry for the last eight or nine years, maybe longer. Each year, Mary solicits favorite poems from other booksellers at the main store . . . and puts together a chapbook that is used as a giveaway to customers and as the centerpiece of their in-store displays. Penguin has supported this project with co-op advertising for the last four or five years. . . . There is also an evening during the month where local poets read and there’s an open mic time for the public. Mary is a hero to her bookselling associates (and to me!) for the time and effort it takes to pull this together."

Elaine Bleakney, National Poetry Month coordinator for the Academy of American Poets, noted the efforts of Michael A. Mart, "an independent bookseller from Long Island and one of the poetfans we selected after a nationwide search for individuals engaging with poetry in their daily lives. After 34 years of selling books in Port Jefferson, N.Y., Mart developed poetryvlog, a website to support video streams of poetry readings."

And Shawn Wathen of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Mont., said he "just wanted to contribute to the discussion on poetry. It must, especially in the U.S., be a labor of love and responsibility. When I think of its lack of widespread support, Czeslaw Milosz's preface to A Treatise on Poetry springs immediately to mind." He sent me the poem, which ends: "Novels and essays serve but will not last. / One clear stanza can take more weight / Than a whole wagon of elaborate prose." You should find the rest of the poem and read it for yourself.

And maybe a little prose can be your April mantra. Consider this excerpt from David Markson's recently published The Last Novel: "I've had it with those cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy the book. Growled Kenneth Rexroth."

Wednesday
Apr182007

National Poetry Month Meets Icarus

Shelf Awareness -- Friday, April 13

As I made my broomstick flight in search of Harry Potter #7 promotional activity last week, I gradually became aware that something was missing from many of the bookstore websites I visited.

National Poetry Month.

That realization has bothered me, so this week I traded in my HP7 broomstick for muse wings (not made of wax, I hope) and set off on a new bookstore websiteseeing quest.

"In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away," Auden writes in "Musee des Beaux Arts." He explores a painting in which the everyday world grinds along, oblivious to a tiny splash in the ocean that is the only evidence of "Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky." It is easy to be oblivious; easier than flying; easier than poetry. In financially-strapped bookstores, where shelf space and inventory turns are eternal subjects of heated debate, April reminds us just how difficult some merchandising choices can be.

For many readers--and all poets--poetry is a necessity. For most bookstores, a serious commitment to poetry is optional. A comprehensive poetry section in a general interest bookstore is a conscious and costly statement. The section is not likely to earn its keep and will have to be subsidized by increased sales in other categories. It's not an economic loss leader in the classic Harry Potter sense. Perhaps another term is needed. Cultural loss leader?

Poetry Month reminds us that poetry is still a retail labor of love. Over the years, I've met Poetry Month evangelists and detractors among booksellers, readers and writers. Even some poets I know have expressed mixed feelings about the concept, wondering why poetry has to be trotted out like an orphan up for adoption once a year. Why isn't it irresistible? The answer is that it is an orphan for most readers. 

At one end of the April celebration spectrum is the Academy of American Poets, which spearheaded the original concept more than a decade ago. Somewhere in the middle you'll find the ABA and its 2007 Book Sense Picks Top 10 Poetry list. At the other end of the spectrum are the cynics--represented here by a classic Onion article--and the vast number of people who simply don't care. 

Booksellers fall into place at various points along the spectrum, which prompts certain questions. Is promoting Poetry Month with events and displays a bookstore's option or responsibility? Does it take a devoted poetry reader on staff to drive creative, energetic participation? When, where and how often will art trump inventory turns, even if only for 30 days?

During this week's website exploration, I looked for bookstores that were showing signs of Poetry Month life. Most were not. Fortunately, I did find some that were and here's a selection: 

Schuler Books sponsored a Poetry Month haiku contest that drew nearly 300 entries. John Shupe composed the winning entry: Crisp paper pages, / Stiff-spined binding slowly yields, / New book, old pleasure.

McNally Robinson NYC is offering an impressive and ambitious April poetry events schedule. Books Inc. also has an intriguing Thursdays in Verse event, "The Most Powerful Thing in the World." Jack Hirschman moderates a discussion with poets W.S. Di Piero, Wanda Coleman and Daphne Gottlieb.

As would be expected, poetry readings are the most popular bookstore option for Poetry Month, though I found fewer of them on event schedules nationwide than I thought I might. Looking Glass Bookstore features a strong schedule, as does Tattered Cover, Amherst Books, Bear Pond Books and Big Blue Marble.

Customer interaction is encouraged at Galaxy Bookshop, where patrons who are willing to stop in and give a dramatic reading of a poem receive 20% off the purchase of any book. At Olsson's Books & Records, one night a week this month has been set aside for customer readings of their favorite poems. Bookends will hold a poetry writing workshop.

Some Booksense.com stores took advantage of the option to link to the Top 10 Poetry Picks, but Milestone Books found a creative way to blend Book Sense Picks with the Academy of American Poets offerings to create a Poetry Month page.

Perhaps many bookstores are participating in ways that their websites do not reflect, and it's unfair to invoke the myth of Icarus. You have to wonder, though.  

On the other hand, in his poem "Failing and Flying," Jack Gilbert reminds us, "Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew." Maybe the wonder is that Poetry Month still flies.

Wednesday
Apr042007

Harry Potter & the Deathly Loss Leader

Shelf Awareness -- April 4, 2007

Yes, kids, it's scary. It's mysterious. It's not for the faint of heart. It can be a dramatic sales builder and a profit killer, but it is also one of the inescapable facts of retail life.

It is that fiercest of villains, the Loss Leader.

And the fate of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with a 12 million copy first printing and pre-order discounting in extremis, seems to be to reign forever as loss leader king of the publishing underworld.

In February, Marc Perton noted in a Consumer Reports piece that he'd already fended off early sorties by Loss Leader, cleverly disguised as Barnes & Noble (40% off on a pre-order of Harry Potter #7) and Amazon (46% off). That was just a warning shot over the bow.

I received an e-mail recently from a very good bookseller expressing frustration with the extreme discounting techniques currently being deployed for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by online and chain bookstores, big box discount stores and warehouse clubs, grocery chains, convenience stores, gas stations--the list, as they say, goes on.

The bookseller reasonably asked how many--or how few--of those millions of copies being printed would be "sold at a fair price by hard-working independent booksellers, who will work extra hard producing Harry Potter parties in the hopes of selling some books."

It's a good question, and one too easily answered. Most of those millions of copies will be sold as loss leaders, and few will be sold at full retail by independent bookstores.

It is also a classic biblio-philosophical conundrum: If 12 million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sell in the magic forest, do they make any sound in terms of profitability?

The answer is complicated.

And how much will it matter to the nine-year-old who has already pre-ordered a copy from somewhere and is eagerly counting the endless days until July 21?

Unfair question.

Still, indie booksellers live in this world and must find ways to deal with Harry Potter and the Deathly Loss Leader. Whether they sacrifice margin for sales or sell at full retail and sacrifice total units, HP7 will still play a critical role in their summer business plans.

So how are independent bookstores preparing both to welcome Harry and to do noble battle with the evil Loss Leader? 

A quick broomstick flight among bookstore websites provides some intriguing early clues. Hang on to your hats, kids; this will be a fast and bumpy hyperlinked ride.

By definition, loss leader implies sacrificial price breaks, but some indies are offering pre-order reserves for no discount whatsoever, including the Reading Grounds, Diane's Books, Books on First, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and Bunch of Grapes Bookstore.

Other booksellers have chosen to sell the novel at substantial discounts. Among those already offering reduced prices for pre-orders are Saturn Booksellers, Toadstool Bookshops, the Book VaultR.J. Julia Booksellers, Millrace Bookshop at the Gristmill and Bookland & Café, which adds a 25% off coupon for a second book "so you can find something to read while you wait for July to come!" Yankee Bookshop an features an interesting mathematical alternative.

Tattered Cover Book Store has opted for a modest discount and a number of promotional activities and events for the community. Events have traditionally been a way for independent bookstores to counter the discounting wave, and both King's English Bookstore and the Bookloft are showcasing their celebrations online. Queen Anne Books is posting occasional 'missives" to keep loyal and impatient Harry Potter readers primed.

Combining events and discounting is a popular strategy. Titcomb's Bookshop, Quail Ridge Books and Left Bank Books offer variations on the theme.

Perhaps the most intriguing strategy I've found online has been the one taken by indie booksellers who've chosen to employ good wizardry by turning a loss leader into a charitable donation. This option has been employed by Odyssey Bookshop, Orinda Books and Capitola Book Café, which gives its customers a choice between a 30% full discount, or 20% off the book and a 10% donation to the local literacy program. The website's challenge: "What would Harry do?" 

Our final stop on the broomstick tour will be Learned Owl Bookshop, which offers not only an irresistible Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release date countdown clock, but a creative, charitable answer to the loss leader blues.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Loss Leader is coming to retailers near you. What's your plan?

Wednesday
Apr042007

Time Traveler Uncovers Book Club Threat

Shelf Awareness -- March 30, 2007

The bookstore Web siteseeing tour bus occasionally swerves down unexpected byways. This happened on a recent trip to the digital archives of the New York Times.

What I found in the past was an odd reason for momentary hope, a reminder that to some extent this has been an industry in which the sky is perpetually falling.

A little time travel can do wonders for your perspective.

Eighty years ago, a new menace appeared in the world of books. The February 10, 1927 edition of the Times reported that the Literary Guild planned to offer subscribers home delivery of a dozen books per year for $18. It was encountering industry resistance and "charged that the opposition arose because the guild was able to offer books at a lower price than book stores sell them for. . . .  The guild hopes not to antagonize the publisher and the bookseller, but to increase the business of both by winning for them a new and larger public."

Could this also be the 80th anniversary of that ever-elusive yet never-ending quest for a "new and larger" reading public?

On February 11, Ellis W. Meyers, executive secretary of the American Booksellers Association, spoke to the Times about industry concerns regarding the Literary Guild's unfair advantage in its focus on bestsellers: "According to Mr. Meyers, the booksellers' association informed the guild that the dealers were compelled to supply the public with 10,000 new volumes a year and to keep on hand 250,000 standard and classic works. . . . 'Publishers,' said Mr. Meyers, 'get out between 200 and 300 books a year, including some for which there is little demand. The expense of publishing the latter is borne by the best sellers. Take away the best sellers, as the guild would do, and the publishers would be left with the unproductive end of the business on their hands.'"

The March 4, 1927 edition of the Times reported that tensions were mounting to the point where some booksellers had announced they would not place publisher orders for the Literary Guild's first selection, Anthony Comstock, Roundsman of the Lord by Heywood Broun and Margaret Leech.

Two years later, at the 1929 ABA convention in Boston, the book club issue was still a prime concern. On May 15, the Times carried an article in which E.P. Dutton & Co. president John Macrae "urged members of the American Booksellers Association, in convention here, to demand that publishers give them a discount equal to that allowed the book clubs. He told the booksellers that they had the 'economic power' to make their demand effective. The proposal was suggested as a remedy for a reported depression in the retail book trade."

Dr. Robert E. Rogers, a literature professor at MIT, also spoke at the convention. According to the Times, he warned that book clubs "were threatening the last stronghold of individuality by establishing 'a censorship of snobbishness' . . . These are not the best books. . . . But the thing will grow. The American public is so used to standardization that there is no end to its possibilities."

Rogers offered a rural analogy to help save book dealers: "'Hoe your own row,' he said. 'Build up your own business. If people want book clubs, they will prosper. If they don't they will peter out. There is nothing you can do about them. My advice is to let them alone and put more creative ideas, vision and acumen into developing your own industry.'"

Some day, Professor Rogers warned, "'the logical end would be reached with the formation of the 'non-literary guild for the worst book of the month--and then perhaps the American people will wake up.'"

The Times also reported that a "spirited discussion and a premature ballot at today's session . . . revealed the existence of two strong factions, one favoring open warfare against the monthly book clubs and the other counseling peace and possible union among all the branches of the book business."

ABA president Arthur Brentano Jr. said that the association would offer several resolutions, including one formally putting the ABA "on record" as being "opposed to book clubs as unfair competitors" and urging "publishers to join with small-town booksellers in an advertising campaign to meet the competition of the book clubs."

In response, Literary Guild president Harold Guinzburg said "he believed that the book club method of merchandising had taken some trade from the bookstores, but added, 'how many new readers they have created it is impossible to say.'"

This year Literary Guild celebrates its 80th anniversary. Are you still worried?
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