Tag Archives: Borders

27/07/2011

ABA #2: The Times They Are a-Changin’

By The Cultured Animal

As a very famous person once said, “the times they are a-changin.”

We are in an age of rapid technological change, most of which is not worth bothering to keep up with, because you can’t, not really. The book is a form of technology that has been with us for centuries, and many have compared this age of digital media as having a similar force of impact on reading, thinking and society in general as that following the arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, which facilitated the beginnings of mass proliferation of the book. Today, the ubiquity of the Internet means the ways in which we consume books is changing – not just in terms of how and where we buy them, but in what form.

One of the most tense panels at this year’s ABA conference featured competing representatives from the budding eBooks industry marketing their wares. Meanwhile, one of the most compelling speakers was Mark Higginson of Nielsen, whose audience pounced on his wealth of statistical information about consumers’ online book-buying patterns. The flurry of tweeting activity during the presentation indicated a hunger for tangible information in an industry faced with an uncertain future.

It’s certainly not just a matter of choosing between a hardback or paperback any more.

But if we’re hungry for new information about customers, they’re equally curious. Unfortunately, some very uninformed comments and queries are frequently thrown at the good people who stand behind bookshop counters. Plenty of it is well-meaning and borne from a desire to correct any ignorance. Some of it is downright rude, to the point where one’s very purpose in life is undermined. (Sort of like when my musically challenged friend bags out my favourite bands, not understanding that, as a musician, it kinda hurts my feelings.)

We understand that as representatives of the industry we are generally better versed in decoding what the hell is going on for the general public. But when faced with the same handful of recurrent questions, such as “What do you think about Borders closing?”, or “Did you know I can get this cheaper online?”, day after day, how does one quell the spirit of Bernard Black, who lurks dangerously close to the surface of one’s amiable front? How, indeed, to maintain one’s excellent customer service skills as well as one’s dignity (and sanity)?

The thing is, we might look smart (especially when wearing our horn-rimmed glasses), but as The Papa of Independent Bookselling and Publishing Henry Rosenbloom said: “While there’s no clear way forward, we’ve come to the conclusion that we know as little about it as anyone else.”

I'll be honest, I just wanted an excuse to post a photo of Dylan Moran here.

Well, if we can’t give a definitive answer to all that complicated stuff, we can at least try to deal with the yucky ‘feelings’ part of it.

Becky Anderson’s Guide to Dealing With Annoying Questions 101

In her keynote address to the conference, Becky Anderson (President of the American Bookseller’s Association, 5th generation heir to Anderson’s Bookshop, and general champion of independent and community-focused business) read to us a beautiful statement on behalf of Anderson’s, summarising their thoughts and feelings on the collapse of Borders and the state of the industry. She insisted that “first and foremost, we are not celebrating … the loss of so many jobs”, and maintained again and again her mantra: “we [independent bookshops] are still here.” Barwon Booksellers, an absolute treasure trove of second-hand books in Geelong, Victoria, sent out a heartfelt letter to its subscribers expressing similar sentiments.

It’s a good idea, and one which I urge all booksellers to follow. Either that or leave yourselves open to continued onslaughts of misinformed flak, to which you’ll be forced to respond personally each time until you sound like a broken 78. (Which would be ironic, because they’re obsolete.) You can frame your letter in Christmas lights and stick it on the shop door, so as to spare your beloved customers the embarrassment of asking any awkward questions from the get-go.

But let’s emphasise the beloved part. It may be a good idea to, er, bookend your eloquently crafted message with something along the lines of: Dear customers. WE LOVE YOU. We love you because you love us, and your custom is the reason we’re still here. We’re still here, because you’re still here. Thank  you for choosing to buy all your Christmas presents here. We hope you’re not disappointed we don’t also sell turkeys, but did you notice that Borders was kind of turning into a homewares store towards the end? One day it’s turkeys, the next – no more books! By the way – did we mention how much we love you?

And so on, and so forth.

Booksellers and customers alike, please feel free to share below your thoughts on any of these matters. Perhaps you’ve done something similar to Anderson’s or Barwon Booksellers. Maybe you’ve experienced a Bernard moment. I hope you at least got a laugh out of it, or a glass of wine.

Stay tuned for Pip Lincolne’s Guide to Online Social Deportment 101. We do like hands-on ladies.

Ciao for now xx

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Economy, Literature, Technology

23/05/2011

The Flipback: Revolutionising the Book Trade Some More

By The Cultured Animal

Yours Truly is a bit sick to death of all this talk on about The Death of the Book, The Death of the Bookshop, and The Death of Our Brains at the hands of Monsieur Internet. (Except, maybe she’s a woman. In fact, yes – let’s call her Señora Internet. Look, she’s even got a little hat!)

In his editorial for the latest issue of McSweeney’s, Dave Eggers puts paid to all that with some encouraging statistics about the current vitality of the book industry. And just to waggle it in our faces, the current issue is “a book designed to look like a book!”

Borders might have thrown in the towel, spat the dummy, or whatever other clichéd figures of speech you might want to attach to that Dodo-ified business; but all I can say is that our “local independent” seems to be doing rather well. As a direct result of said closure? Who knows. Probably not a bunch of puffed up, Internet-fearing catastrophists.

Bringing it Back

It was with some pleasure that I was introduced to an exciting new piece of technology this week. It’s called the Flipback, and if it sounds half like a Paperback, well, that’s because it is.

Printed on super-thin bible paper and bound with its spine unattached to the cover, the Flipback only requires one hand for reading and can lie open on its own (no more panicky searches for a bookmark). You read it sideways – or you would, if the writing wasn’t printed perpendicular to the usual way. This means it’s more similar visually to reading digital text, but the experience is altogether more tactile. The idea is to flip the pages with your thumb whilst holding it in one hand. Hey presto! (But perhaps it’s a little too tactile – I found myself needing to lick my thumb in order to turn the pages easily. Maybe it just takes practice. I hope they release a Flipbacks for Dummies for this difficult new technology). Meanwhile, you could be doing almost anything with The Other Hand. I’ll leave that one up to your imagination.


When that chock-full peak-hour train suddenly surges round a bend, and the geek sitting by the aisle flounders as his slippery iPad shoots off into a sea of high heels, who is triumphant? The old-fashioned book-lover, that’s who – one hand’s steady grip on the rail, nifty little Flipback wide open in the other. Additional perks include not having to hide it from thieves, and not having to experience that annoying moment when you realise the power point wasn’t switched on after all, and the batteries are still flat.

That’s because it’s still a book, albeit one that feeds into today’s obsession with multi-tasking and compactibility (it fits easily into your back pocket). Its size also makes it kind of pretty – from a distance, you might mistake one for a cassette (remember those?), and they’re just about as sturdy. They’d look rather cute all stacked up like Lego on a shop counter.

They’ve already sold over a million of these things in Holland, where they were conceived; it will be interesting to see how we take to them when they’re unleashed in Australia this August.

Rock Will Never Die

Well, it hasn’t yet. But speaking of cassettes … Okay, so the cassettes might not be a particularly good example. How about vinyl, then? I mean, if you’re looking for an antiquated technology from an industry that has been absolutely, positively, well and truly revolutionised by digital technology, then records are most definitely it. The music industry might not be making much dosh out of vinyl, yet still it prevails.

Once the musical medium of choice, vinyl has now been transposed to a niche market for nostalgic music-lovers, serial op-shoppers, professional (and un-professional) DJs, and smug rock’n'rollers who believe noise just sounds better on vinyl. Not only are all sorts of great bands still releasing versions of their new music on record, but audio manufacturers continue to produce turntables for your listening pleasure, replete with flash 21st century packaging and super-precise speakers. If the contemporary perks sound counter-intuitive, go get one of those old boxy things with the peeling brown faux-wood. People will think you’re cool just for having a turntable, especially all of your art snob friends.

Franc Kuzma’s Stabi XL turntable. Don’t confuse it with the coffee machine.
I Heart Art

Aside from the retro-nerd kicks you might get from owning a record collection, there’s also the crucial element of art and design appreciation. If you’re downloading music, especially from an unqualified source, you’re likely to not even see the original album artwork. If you do, you’re probably viewing it as a tiny little picture on a screen. Hardly the best medium for displaying a work of conceptual art.

Which brings us back to vinyl, whose sleeves sport a large surface area, rather good for displaying album artwork. You can then sit in your velour, op-shop lounge suite and ponder it whilst soaking up the sounds of a new album. The record sleeve’s papery feel is also a bit nicer than a plastic CD case – an opinion affirmed by plenty of high-brow indie artists who prefer to package their CDs in paper (often recycled, just to underline the extent of their cultural envelope-pushing) rather than the usual plastic.

Andy Warhol’s famous cover art for The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, complete with real zip. Tactile.

The continued love for vinyl shows an appreciation for the album as a complete, conceptual piece of art and a fulfillment of a band’s artistic vision, from the choice of song order (none of this shuffle bullcrap, thank you), to the cover artwork and design, and liner notes. It’s a preference for quality versus convenience. It’s not that there’s no positive place for Internet-sourced music; rather, there is a place for the old-school to continue alongside the new. Radiohead had the right idea when they realised their die-hard fans would still pay money for the hard stuff, even if they could get the online version for free.

Bon Iver’s forthcoming self-titled album will look super pretty on vinyl.
Dear Sir or Madam, Will You Read My Book?

If vinyl can do it, is it really so far-fetched to suggest something that has existed for about 10 times as long in one form or another might also hang in there for a little bit longer? Unless, of course, they invent a solar powered eReader. Now that might really be something worth ditching your Flipback for.

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Art, Literature, Music, Technology

13/04/2011

Navigating a Career in the Land of Plenty

By The Cultured Animal

Before the US housing bubble collapsed and sent economic markets reeling worldwide, GFC may well have stood for any number of things, including perhaps something very rude, if you think of words beginning with F and C. But now it’s part of our everyday vocabulary and has taken on the oblong shape of a political football. That’s an Australian football, by the way - here in the land of Oz we’ve been living in a relatively happy bubble.

The Lucky Country

I don’t mean to dismiss the hardship experienced by anyone here who may have consequently lost their job or been otherwise affected in the downturn. However, this week the Australian dollar hit another all-time high. If it gets any higher we’re gonna have to arrest it. This week it was also announced that unemployment levels have gone back to the lows they were before the downturn. Business as usual.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 37,800 new jobs appeared in our jobosphere last month. Perhaps that’s to accommodate the floods of Irish economic migrants landing on our shores. I should tell my Spanish friend to move here too – like most other young Spaniards, she can’t find even a crappy job, despite being university educated, experienced in a range of employment skills, and able to speak English. If only she could afford the airfare.

Spanish university students protesting last week about the country's high youth unemployment rates and government austerity measures (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki).

Meanwhile, the World Trade Organisation has come out and said Australia is a big fat pile of lazy when it comes to economic reform (it’s easy to become complacent when you’re raking in so much money just by digging up things like uranium from your backyard – oops, sorry Japan). So we’ve been advised to keep a tighter watch on things, lest a bust in our gigantic mining boom sees us sliding back into the dark ages of billy-cans and damper. To be honest, I feel like we’d be better to keep the focus on how to factor environmental sustainability into our economy, rather than this obsession with getting richer and richer in case poor old Mother England should ever try to catch up again. Ungrateful bastard child …

Besides, lazy my arse! We might be stereotyped as laid-back, no-worries types, but we’re bloody hard workers. My friend’s English wife has been quickly promoted from her temping job into a permanent role where she is now getting paid about twice what she would be earning back overseas. She’s also been given a laptop and mobile phone to take home with her. Welcome to Australia!

If anybody hailing from a less fortunate kingdom should ask why we’re doing so well, I’d advise you to conveniently forget to mention any such thing as a resources boom, and just tell them that their country is full of dole bludgers whose lax work ethics have created sloppy economies. Just look at Spain – their entire culture is founded on procrastination and three-hour lunch breaks! (I’m kidding, by the way. I think Spaniards really know how to live life properly. None of this Blackberry under your pillow business. It’s all wine and tapas in the sunshine, thank you. (Kidding again – actually, Spaniards work longer hours than many of their European counterparts)).

“The Workaholic” by Patrick Desmet

Competition is Good

Well, that’s what they say anyway, when they try to privatise national assets. But I digress.

I am currently in a bit of a career shake-up. I am incredibly blessed to work in a wonderful retail environment, with wonderful people, where I get to be immersed in my local community, immersed in books, listen to whatever CDs I want (plugging my band, yes!), and feel rewarded plenty enough with things like literature, film and chocolate – gratis. Oh yeah, and I have a really great boss.

But we live in a society that pushes us to achieve our potential (whatever that means), so I’m socially programmed to leave this lovely place eventually. The Great Genius inside me is whispering subliminally into my left ear, “You cannot live in a complacent Bookshop Limbo forever, lest you find yourself suddenly lusting after a sizely superannuation, a company car and a six-figure salary.” (That’s what it says, really!).

But perhaps it’s also the anxious little granny talking. She says, in her polite way, “Honey, I don’t even own my house, I’m gonna have to keep working till I’m a hundred. Why didn’t you become a lawyer, you douchebag?” Ridiculous, I know, to bang on about how prosperous and lucky are we who live in this country, and yet still harbour such feelings of fiscal insecurity. But then, we’re good at hypocrisy, us humans.

Now, I know the industry I’m seeking an entry into (editing and publishing, FYI) is highly competitive. And I’m pretty resigned to the fact that being a little bit creative can in some ways be a curse rather than a blessing when it comes to having a job that is both fulfilling and has a pay packet to match. But when I stick my head out and ask around about job prospects, routes into the industry or any other hopeful query to those who might be able to shed some light, I am pretty much always met with a negative response. It’s just so bloody competitive, you’ll have to work a million hours a week and live off baked beans – and even then you’ll probably never get the job you want. Give up now while you can still change your mind!

What's going to happen to all those bookish people who have lost their jobs at Angus & Robertson and Borders Australia stores? Into the bottleneck they plunge ...

Ugh. Pretty discouraging. But I wonder why this could be? Yes, it’s an attractive industry to pretty much anybody who fancies themselves a reader. But in a country with a booming economy and low unemployment, should it really be quite so competitive?

The Knowledge Nation

Remember Mr Measly – sorry, Beazley – and his “Knowledge Nation?” I think government has a lot to answer for in taking literacy a little bit too far. Trying to educate everyone is great, sure, but not everybody is necessarily destined for university. When I was at high school, the message was simple: if you don’t get an ENTER ranking that’s as high as Australia’s interest rates and subsequently go on to university, then you’re a failure, an outcast, and a waste of space. Good one – now we have a trades shortage. Some of those kids should have gone into apprenticeships (and then gone on to be paid a hell of a lot better than some crappy book-loving schmooze), but instead got nudged into uni (probably by their persistent private school pedagogues) and then sat at the back of the lecture theatre with their headphones in, just like they did in high school. They’ll probably have a mid-life crisis ten years prematurely when they realise they’re in the wrong job. All the while their existence adds to the frustrating bottle-neck in the entrance to the educated job market.

I have a second, still  more provocative, hypothesis. Are things also this competitive because women now make up close to 50% of our work force? I’m not for a second suggesting a reversion to the sexism of fifty-odd years ago. But, I do think it’s interesting to think about – that now there are so many more people going for the same jobs.

Everybody's favourite antiheroine: Mad Men's Betty Draper, a university graduate trapped in a (usually) immaculate housewife's body

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Economy, Politics

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.