Neatness doesn’t count: Customers prefer stacks on the floor to books on the shelf
Books: Martin Klesment/Alamy; Legs: Blend Images/Getty Images; McMurty: Misty Keasler for Bloomberg Businessweek - By Larry McMurtryThe first essential is to have good stock. The better the books, the more people will come. We were fortunate that when we started this business in 1971, we came into the secondhand book trade just as a lot of ancient families were dying out and selling grandpa’s books, so we were able to get a respectable stock very cheaply.
There are different kinds of bookstores. For example, there’s the high-end store, like the Heritage in Los Angeles used to be. They had one whole room in which no books were admitted unless they were over $5,000. It was a jungle, but it was an expensive jungle. When Brad Pitt finishes a movie and wants to give a director a present, it has to cost $30,000 or $40,000. They’d go to the Heritage. But there are very few places where there’s that surface money, quick money, excess money.
Now, suppose you’re in Berkeley, down the street from one of the country’s great universities. You’re not going to sell the $40,000 Huck Finn. You’re going to provide a high level of general literature and scholarly books in many fields. You are selling $25 books instead of $5,000 books, and you have to sell a lot of them.
Some people don’t like too much order in bookshops and want to feel like they’re finding something. You can have 300,000 books perfectly arranged on the shelf, and every time, people will walk in and want to look at the books stacked up on the floor. So if you really want to sell something, jumble it up and pitch it on the floor.
McMurtry is the author of Lonesome Dove and owns the bookstore Booked Up.
"The first essential is to have good stock. The better the books, the more people will come" -- a lesson the new owners of Whitcoulls have yet to learn.
ReplyDeleteStacking books all over the floor is ruddy terrible advice if your customers include wheelchair users.
ReplyDeleteAs a librarian I can't stand it if books are not in some kind of order - and how is the book shop owner/worker going to find particular books for customers if they aren't organised in some way. But yes everyone likes looking through a random pile if they think they are getting a bargain or something unusual.
ReplyDeleteBookbrainz
Because bookshops already have thousands of items, when you go into a store you tend to see everything yet see nothing. Adding clutter is not a good idea. The best retail stores of any category are clean, tidy and orderly with interesting displays – even The Warehouse have just (and not for the first time) woken up to this.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Ken