Dear Indie Booksellers: Please Take Your Eyes Off Your Classmate’s Paper And Focus On Your Own Work
From author April L. Hamilton:
Dear Indie Booksellers:
Whether your operation is brick and mortar, strictly online, or a combo plate of both, you have an important role to fill in the communities you serve. It makes me sad to see shop after shop shuttered, and I miss the ones I used to frequent. So please, know that as both an author and a consumer, I want you to not only survive, but to thrive.
But many of you, those whose daily operational thoughts and actions are totally dominated by fear of being driven out of business by Amazon and the few big chains that are still in operation, need some tough love. As you read this, bear that thought in mind: I’m tough because I love.
. . . .
Please stop obsessing about, and badmouthing, Amazon and the chains. It’s no more attractive to retail customers than attack ads are to voters.
Please stop badmouthing consumers who shop at Amazon and the chains. Most consumers will buy some things from Amazon and the chains, and other things from smaller outfits. There’s no better way to ensure they’ll start buying everything from Amazon and the chains than to insult them.
Please stop trying to base your marketing and community outreach plans on guilting the public into believing their Amazon and chain purchases are leading to the destruction of reading culture as we know it. Nobody wants to be bullied or guilted into a purchase, consumers know they have a right to make the best choice for themselves based on their specific priorities, and they hold that right pretty dear.
. . . .
Please do not argue that you can order any of the same books one can find on Amazon or through the big chains, because we live in an age of pathological convenience and instant gratification. Most consumers who have already made the trek to the store are annoyed if they must leave empty-handed. Now granted, it’s not like in pioneer days when Pa would take the wagon into town for supplies on a weeklong trip that could very well end in death on the way there or back. But consumer expectations and demands have changed.
. . . .
Do, and offer, what the 400-pound gorillas can’t: passion and specialized knowledge not only of the products you carry, but the communities you serve. I’ve noticed that most of the successful, healthy indie retailers in any community I’ve ever called home have one thing in common: they specialize, and whatever it is they specialize in, everyone from the store owner right down to the stock boy is an absolute geek about it.
Link to the rest at Indie Author and thanks to Big Al for the tip.
The post includes descriptions of several indie bookstores that April loves.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
This, PG, is a good post. She hit it right on. Listen up all you indie bookstores, if you want to stay in business.
JEH
That’s a great post.
A while back, Blake Crouch and I offered Indie bookstores a list of suggestions they could use to compete.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/05/indie-bookstores-boycott-konrath.html
Number of bookstores who took us up on our suggestions: 0
Great advice. Indie bookstores need to learn that you don’t generate business by insulting potential customers.
My experience, from when I was traveling a lot, strongly suggests that the reason for the existence of the median independent bookstore is to provide opportunity for the proprietor and his/her clique of “regulars” to insult potential customers.
I wish politicians would decide attack-ads aren’t useful.
I’m pretty sure the data shows that they ARE useful, actually. Otherwise they wouldn’t use them. A lot of time, money, and effort goes into an election campaign. The campaign managers and candidates can’t afford to waste any of those three on something that demonstrably can’t, or doesn’t, work.
Attack ads are used for their negative impact. They don’t win votes for the candidate conducting them so much as they decrease voter enthusisasm and turnout for the other guy. They do frequently backfire because they have to go over just right.
A few months ago, I attended a local workshop on ebooks. The owner of our local indie bookstore was a presenter. When it was her turn, she pointed to a picture of Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) left on the screen by another presenter and commented, there should be a red circle with a line through it over his face. She assumed that everyone in the room agreed with her.
Here’s what I would have said to her if I’d had the opportunity:
Last year my book sales on Amazon doubled my income. The only way I can get your store to carry my books (I’m an indie publisher) is to pay you $25 per book, hand you 5 copies of each book, and watch them shelved, not under the category where they belong, but in the “local authors and indies” section. Who do you think I’m going to support.
Zingo, Catherine.
“I can get this book for you.” is not as dead as it might seem in the day of the smartphones.
Look at the statistics. There are still lots of, usually older, people who don’t use the Internet.
There is also a market for older and rare books, it has always been there. Nowadays it is simple to get these books, if you can use the Internet.
Only a few stores are willing to sell books which they can’t order from their distributors. Most that do so are also in the used book business. But you don’t have to stock used books to sell them to your customer, you can resell them.
When a customer asks for an old book they usually know that they won’t get it immediately. Rather they already suspect that they won’t get it at all. They won’t go home and order it via the Internet – because they would have done so if they had known how.
So after you have looked into your computer can tell the customer that you a) can get the book, but that b) it will take time since you have to order it from Europe/Australia/… Double the price you pay at abebooks or ebay, add another $10 or so on top. If the customer is still interested you are in business. (On this side of the pond let the customer sign an order for the book and then either collect the money on the spot or enclose an invoice if when you mail the book to the customer. No discounts for collecting at the shop.
)
One of the Indy stores here is known to for sourcing even obscure books. The service is not necessarily cheap compared to ordering directly on the net but they definitely are the place to go to when you want a certain book and have no clue about the Internet. (Or can’t find the book yourself.)
Service, esp. service in areas which other shops don’t offer at all, goes a long way to differentiate you from others.
I would never badmouth Amazon, but maybe that’s because I use Kindle Direct and Createspace as an Indie Author.