From Publishers Weekly:
At a Digital Book World panel called “Will Bars Save Bookstores?”, panelists, among them, American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher, bookseller Jessica Bagnulo and IPG CEO Joe Matthew, cracked jokes (“retailers turn to drink”) but used the opportunity to examine a wave of new strategies behind a resurgent independent bookselling sector.
Teicher called the booze in bookstores theme, “a euphemism for all things smart entrepreneurial spaces are doing to attract consumers.” And it’s not just beverages, Teicher said. Bookstores, he said, are running summer camps, offering dance classes, hosting travel events, “hundreds of innovative things that are helping stores thrive in a very competitive environment.”
. . . .
In an environment where e-books, online retailing and less time for reading is challenging business of physical bookstores, Matthews said, “we need experimentation. This is an effort to drive traffic and keep consumers in the store. You can’t download a cocktail.”
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
“You can’t download a cocktail.”
Eighteen months from now:
“Alexa, single malt, neat.”
Yeah, this will make bookstores more attractive: Reduce shelf space even further to make way for bars.
My plan to save the bookstores: remove ALL the books and just sell only liquor!!
“Booksellers Wonder if Booze Will Save Them”
I read that as the booksellers hitting the bottle themselves.
Indianapolis has one bookstore that’s also a microbrewpub, and another that’s also a bakery. They both seem to be doing okay for themselves.
At the same time, it also has a traditional “cluttered” bookstore (like the one in the Agatha Christie quote further up the page) that’s going broke.
So, anecdotal evidence suggests it might be a good idea.
The same people who are deploring the lack of buyers in bookstores are trying to control – to a few bestsellers – what those buyers are allowed to buy once they get into the bookstore (the airport bookstore used to be a great example of this).
People don’t like being controlled; not finding the other books in a series; having ‘bestsellers’ practically shoved down their throats on endcaps and piles on tables; having limited selection.
People didn’t use to have choices; now we do. We like it far better.
And people at the top of the pecking order in traditional publishing don’t like being undermined. Nobody does, really. It is hard to lose what you thought you were entitled to.
Their attitude in keeping us self-publishers out (we used to send them our precious manuscripts) is coming back to haunt them – and they are not pleased. Well, they weren’t very nice to us before – so we see no need to be nice to them now. I think the world could literally exist fine without the publishers and bookstores (assuming you removed the protectionism from governments), but it would be much harder to go back to pre-Amazon.
Buy indie books! Support your favorite artists!
Well my idea has always been for these new modern bookstores to provide barbers.
That way, you could have a shave and trim while reading a book and If you like it, you could buy it.
Sure, I’d buy a book with someone else’s hair clippings in it.
Not. 😉
Though it does make me wonder about these new book store cafe things, what happens if a customer spills food on the book, would they have to Buy it?
In fact, come to think of it, that would be a great way to get people to pay for overpriced books When they don’t really want to.
In the days before my local B&N closed (it’s a grocery store now) it was full of kids using the tables to study and deadbeats using the chairs to read for free. One clerk told me that people would sit all day reading most of a book and then ask for a discount on it because it was “used”.
Dance classes and summer camp? I don’t get it at that point. It’s not really a book store.
(I know – stating the obvious but that’s just stretching things a bit far)
They have the problem of ‘we can’t get people to buy our books if we can’t even get them in the front door’ and ‘how do we get people in the front door?’
So far their ideas do little to get people ‘in their doors’ and nothing to make them want to buy a book.
“Will Bars Save Bookstores?”
No. Next question please — and try to make it something that actually requires thought if you can.
.
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn’t.