Backstabbin'

I just had a hissy fit on facebook but figure this is probably a better place for it.  A friend remarked that today was Lawrence Ferlinghetti's birthday, and then quoted him: "Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back."

My response was as follows: "So, we are supposed to refuse what tiny, pathetic opportunities we have for publicizing our work, further restricting our already-meager options for finding new readers, to serve somebody else's anti-corporate agenda? As if anyone gives a rat's ass that a literary writer somewhere is taking a bold stance against some hairsplitting distinction that about nine people in the entire world even recognize. Ferlinghetti should try opening an independent bookstore in, say, Ohio or upstate New York, and see how much traction he gets. Personally, I feel stabbed in the back when I'm told how and where to sell my books by somebody I've never met."

Sorry, Corey, don't unfriend me.  But really: as a corollary to the last post, I personally decline to feel bad about failing to sell my own work according to some impossible left-coast standard of moral purity. And though I love my local independent, and support it with my dollars, rhetoric, and what little authorial clout I possess, the fact is that indies have been a niche business for a long time and are only going to get nichier.  People don't like them, they like Barnes & Noble.  Or ebooks, for chrissake, which are selling like mad, and this is for reading on a device aesthetically akin to a home perm kit from 1983.

Physical books and independent bookstores are a fetish.  I happen to embrace this fetish, personally, but I do not have the mental energy to proselytize about it, or to get all high and mighty about the method by which readers pay attention to what I do.  Frankly, this amounts to stabbing readers in the back.  "No--you're liking me wrong!" is the message Ferlinghetti is encouraging us to deliver to them.  Honestly, their only reasonable response would be to give up liking us at all.

What happened to Borders?

I was in the local Borders the other day, helping my kids cash in some gift cards, and was kind of shocked at the state the place was in.  The inventory computers were grimy, old, and slow, and couldn't tell you if books were in stock.  A book we were looking for showed two on hand but the bookseller couldn't find it.  The CD shelves were almost completely empty, and the place was understaffed.

I worked at the Borders in Madison, Wisconsin in 1992.  It was great--in those days, the staff of a new store was hired before construction was finished, and the booksellers themselves assembled the shelves and unloaded the books from the trucks.  Everyone had a section they were the expert on (mine was cooking), so somebody could always, always find a book.

Nowadays, Borders is definitely number three, after Amazon and B&N--or four, really, if you count Wal-Mart.  They have the shittiest e-reader, and it looks like they're having liquidity problems.  So what happened?  Back in the day, they were the "cool" chain; B&N was busy seeming to overextend itself, and provided a much chillier, more generic experience.  Now, Borders feels like a chain on its way out.

In the end, I'm not invested in any of the chains...I do still prefer the small independent bookstore experience to a big box.  (If I want generic and commercial, I'd much rather order from Amazon, who will also sell me some camera lenses and a waffle maker, than drive down to the commercial strip for B&N or to the mall for Borders.)

But...what happened?  How'd Borders go wrong?

The Fate of Independent Book Stores

I spent the afternoon at a staff meeting for the book store I work in. It was at my boss's house and there was a nice spread: wine, shrimp, cookies. Some of us joked, Ha, ha, looks like a wake, is the store dead at last? But, to our surprise, it turns out the store is doing just fine. It's actually not in danger of closing, at all.

Wow! Even though a huge percentage of Americans read nothing but cereal boxes, TVGuide, and the Bible, even though hardcover books are overpriced, even though, thanks to the internet, you don't need to buy dictionaries or baby name books or travel guides anymore, even though Amazon has free shipping and the books show up in your mailbox, even though Barnes and Noble and Borders are just a couple miles away and have discounts, way more books, and acres of free parking... our little (but truly excellent) store is hanging in there. I almost can't believe it.

I think the reason it's surviving is because the people in our town really want it to. They want to live in a town with a real bookstore -- not just a book warehouse out on the highway. Independent bookstores are an organ of the town they're in: they're formed by the tastes of the town. Not everyone cares, of course. I've had friends argue strenuously in favor of the book warehouses, because of the obvious (lower prices and larger selection) but also because of their anonymity and uniformity. They want to get lost among the Dummies Guides and endless shelves of remainders, and they find the giant head of Jane Austen staring down at them to be vaguely reassuring. They dislike the way the owner of an independent store inevitably stamps the inventory with his or her personal taste. These friends also tend to believe that it's not their job to support a store, that the store should make them want to patronize it, and they should not have to sacrifice any kind of convenience just because a store happens to be independent rather than corporate-owned. They get a little bit pissed off if you imply otherwise.

I don't know. I hate chain stores. I hate entering a store in New York and feeling as if I could go out the door and find myself in Ohio. I hate the feeling of enormous psychic boredom I get when I look at those murals, or smell that Starbucky smell. I feel overwhelmed by the huge, spilling piles of books. Of course, I have a choice: I actually live in a town with a decent bookstore. When I lived in the rural south, I might have cried tears of bliss if a Borders showed up within an hour's drive of me.

As my boss, the store's owner, said, small bookstores have outlived their usefulness. But usefulness is not the only virtue.

Crazy Borders Survey?

So I was traveling with a friend yesterday (my bandmate in this electronica duo I'm in--we were going to a geek music festival) and he mentioned that he had received a strange email from Borders. You know, the bookstore chain. He had signed up for their Corporate Fealty Bonus Program, whatever it's called, and so got put on some kind of mailing list.

The email said something along the lines of, "Help Decide Which Books Are Published!" It contained a link to an online survey in which unpublished books were described, and their potential covers displayed, and with these meager details, the Borders customer was supposed to decide which of them he or she would like to be published. No text excerpts form the books were provided--just the covers and a summary. My bandmate said that there were a few current bestsellers and new books on the list, supposedly as control specimens, and that he was quite certain that the others were real unpublished books by real writers. He did a bit of research and learned that the writers were in fact genuine people, and the books described had not yet been published.

I don't think he was pulling my leg. If he is describing this accurately, it is truly horrifying, putting the usual chain-bookstore front-table payola to shame. Have any of you heard about this, or gotten this email? (My bandmate doesn't think he has the link anymore--and by the way he did NOT complete the survey.) Fill us in if you have.