25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore
January 31st, 2012Funny and sad, all at once.
Via: Salon:
1. People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs.
2. While you’re drafting that business plan, cut your projected profits in half. People are getting rid of bookshelves.
3. If someone comes in and asks where to find the historical fiction, they’re not looking for classics, they want the romance section.
4. If someone comes in and says they read a little of everything, they also want the romance section.
Wow, I was denied access to this via my university internet. I had to use Tor. Incredible. The internet is toast.
I read a lot of books, people look at me as if I am using an illegal substance. Kinda sad because there is no one I can talk to. The truth is a lonely existence.
The sad thing is, it is true. Everyone that I know that reads, reads only fiction… nothing that expands their knowledge of history, philosophy, science, technology, or even anything with a practical application.
I feel the same as y’all. My bookshelf is filled with books and I notice most other people do not have that many books.
Why read fiction when truth is so much stranger? Aside from an occasional odd Russian novel or such, I don’t bother.
I remember one of the first dystopian books I read was We by Yevgeny Zamiatin, published in the 1920s, way before Huxley or Orwell. It still is my favorite. Got it on my shelf here.
This is also true for online sales. I tried selling books online a few years ago. It was really sad that all of the Feynman and other science or math related books generally only shipped to people with Chinese names. I did sell one to what appeared to be a non-Chinese woman buying a science book for a young female relative (niece?). I felt like I should include a note or something to encourage her to keep reading. It was really rather shocking and challenged a lot of my beliefs about Americans and their future.
Christian books are more popular, but the buyers are too cheap to pay enough to even cover shipping. All anyone really cares about are the romance and mystery/true crime books. The rest really do belong in the free basket. If someone authors a hardback book that makes a cogent case for anything that challenges the status quo you need to avoid it like the plague. When Loompanics shut down I saw the writing on the wall and let go of the dream.
It is quite humorous the way customers assume you’ve read all the books. I remember a customer for a vegan cookbook asking which recipes were good. I was tempted to explain to her that I wouldn’t know about any vegan recipes since I have an entire pig in the freezer, but decided not to scare her with the truth.
Aw, I really miss Loompanics. Still have a copy of their last catalog.