On First Looking at thebookseller.com

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” - W Edwards Deming

1. I was in Foyles on Charing Cross Road, one of the best of all locations for a bookshop. A student was asking about a book - I think it was a fashion book.  The guy at the counter, who might as well have been wearing a badge saying "I'm not happy to help." Looked the book up on his computer and said
"I'm sorry, it's out of print."
[Student] "So you can order it for me?"
"Duh!!!! No!!!! It's OUT OF PRINT.  WE CAN'T ORDER IT"
I walked away vaguely wondering why the most unhelpful customer assistant in the universe couldn't have looked it up on the internet and ordered a copy for the customer, slapping on a decent commission. 

2. My wife, who is a tour guide @greekguidetolon  went, again into Foyles and asked if they had a copy of a book detailing locations used in the filming of the Harry Potter movies.  She was rather abruptly told that no such book exists.  She came home, found it on amazon.co.uk and ordered it, it arrived the next day.

3. I was in Borders in Cambridge, a foreign-sounding gentlemen had made the mistake of going in there to try to find a book. Again, he was quite rudely told that the book was out of print and couldn't be ordered.  I took pity on him and wrote down the URL of abebooks.co.uk certain he would find a copy there.

What was it exactly that drove, or is driving these booksellers out of business? Was it really a perfect storm? Or was it perhaps laziness, rudeness? Appalling customer service?

I was very surprised and depressed on reading the news items and blogs at thebookseller.com. Rather than trying to engage with the amazing new technologies and maturing technologies, which offer all manner of opportunities for book creation, book distribution and book reading, it's correspondents seem to be able to do nothing but moan.

They moan about it not being the good old days when the state guaranteed them a living through a return to the net book agreement.

They moan about amazon.co.uk being competitive and having and excellent service at a low price (the bastards).

They even moan and take hoary side-swipes at their potential future customers expressing "understandable concern about the attention span of a generation encouraged to communicate in 140-character bursts" (there's only one correct response to that, it begins with F and it nearly rhymes with "duck cough.")

They don't talk about the new Kindles.  Yes, that's right. They don't talk about the new Kindles.  Good job survival isn't mandatory.

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly