Monday, January 11 2010

Books, Customer Service, and Marketing

So many words, so beautiful.

I love books. I read three or four books a week, own several thousand, and would have more books than would fit in my living space if I didn't need space for beds, kitchens and the cat's laboratory. Books and reading are the secret keys to the universe. Bruce Sterling said in his immensely important work on futurism, Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years, that successful people in the future would be those who could read and understand information, and re-purpose it to good use. That's essentially how I make my living--that and being charming, mostly. Reading is my primary method of dealing with my world, and prosecuting my job activities.

Which makes it all the worse that I have a horrible time buying books these days. My problem is chain bookstores that seem to think books and readers are impediments to commerce. What's got my long-johns in a lump today is my ongoing consumer experience with Canada's largest bookstore chain. I won't link to it or mention it, because if you can't say something nice, wait until you have something really corrosive to say, and I haven't thought of anything suitable just yet. It's run by the wife of a passing acquaintance of mine, and while I'm sure she's a lovely person to some people, she has no business in the noble business of the book business. Instead of quietly sepulchral temples of paper dust and somnolent introspection, shelves laden with tomes to excite the fever of reading in the most jaded bibliophile, her stores are jumped-up palaces of consumer excess, laden with impulse purchase gew-gaws, cheap knick-knacks, and soulless coffee stores that sell steamed milk and high fructose corn syrup to consumers dull enough to think that six bucks is a good price to pay for 'coffee'.

The worst part is when you go to the bathroom and it's all Salvador Dali in there

Ahem. I'll just wait a minute until the sedatives kick in. As marketing guru Seth Godin says in his book, All Marketers Are Liars, books are a weird consumer item, because there's no way to tell if you're going to like that book until you read that book, at which point you don't need to buy that book (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the gist). I'd never thought of it in any coherent sense unti I read that, but he' s perfectly right, and that's why I like to stand in a bookstore and read a chapter or three before I lay down my dough--and lay it down I do, because I need to hold books in my hand, feel them, tease the words out of them carefully, over time. I'm no closet Derridaist, but I do like to think about thinking about what I read, and that means owning the book over a long period.

But nowadays it seems some retail establishments want you to come in to their stores not to buy their primary merchandise but rather so they can sell you on ancillary items and use your time to market you things you may or may not need. It's like those 'free' web email services. Why are you using one? Because you need a fast, slick, public email address that you can access from any computer attached to the Internets. What do you get instead of a simple email service? Ads, and plenty of them, targeted at you from keywords culled from the content of your supposedly private email message, and your name sold to marketing companies. Treachery!

Here's a hint, Giant Abusive Bookstore, I didn't get in my car and drive to you shop so you could market your tacky junk to me: I came to buy books. I came with a wad of cash in my pocket. In terms of a sale, I am a sure thing, a pushover. I'm trying to cram my money in your hand as hard as I can. I am effectively a hopeless addict trying to score my intoxicant of choice, begging you to make a profit from me.

Wharrgarbl!

And you're rejecting me. How? Because instead of having the latest release of the bestselling author that I wanted, you've got four tables of stuffed animals, children's games, sugary treats, and compact discs. Grrr.

Worst yet, the come-ons are enough to make my hair burst into flames. 'I'm sorry sir, we don't have that in stock. But we can order it for you and have it delivered.' If I had wanted to order that book over the Internets, I would not have driven to your soulless emporium of not-book-sales in a strip mall outside of my town. I would have sat at home in my skivvies, eating spray cheese out of a can, surfing for books in the privacy of my sanctum sanctorum. Having an employee suggest to me that I should waste my time driving somewhere to have another human being order my book for me is the worst sort of patronising cover-up for your inability to stock your primary product.

I'm fully aware that a bookstore cannot conceivably stock the entire inventory of published books in any kind of usable retail space. But you'd expect them to carry, say, the top 200 NY Times bestsellers, yes? So would I, and thus my acrimony and disappointment at seeing overpriced boutique chocolates and kiddie paraphernalia in a spot where a book could lie in wait for my eager hands.

Well, I feel better. This won't influence Giant Abusive Bookstore because they are not, and never have been, in the business of selling books to readers. They are in the business of marketing goods to consumers. Nothing wrong with marketing, but as Joe Strummer said, 'Selling is what selling sells', and at the end of the day, customers are are not 'targets' and retail stores are not conduits for marketing, and I'm not going out of my way to be marketed to, I'm going out of my way to look for books.

And yes, I spent $150 anyway. Curses.

Posted by Tim the Grumpy AT 2:54PM

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