BOOKS WITHOUT BORDERS: A former employee chronicles the retailer's decline, and his time at the world's 'dumbest' bookstore chain.
We went to work for a company that seemingly cared about quality
literature and regional reading tastes, and gave its employees a
small-but-fair wage for full-time bookselling careers, with excellent
benefits. It sure didn't feel like selling out. Until suddenly, one day, it did feel like
selling out. Because it was. Our displays were bought and paid for by
publishers; where we used to present books that we loved and wanted to
champion, now mediocre crap was piled on every flat surface. The front
of the store, with all the kitchen magnets and board games and junk you
don't need took over large chunks of the expansive magazine and
local-interest sections. Orders came from the corporate headquarters in
Ann Arbor every Sunday to change out the displays. One time I had to
take down some of the store's most exciting up-and-coming fiction titles
(including a newly published book that was gathering word-of-mouth
buzz, thanks to our booksellers, called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) to put up a wall of Clash CDs. One month, for some reason, the cafe sold Ernest Hemingway–branded chai.
The diversity of the titles in stock dwindled as ever-larger shipments of diet books and lawyer thrillers arrived on Ann Arbor's orders. New employees didn't care about books and weren't particularly curious. The store didn't resemble the interests of our staff or customers anymore; our shelves represented the money that publishers were willing to shell out for real estate. Book lovers stopped buying from us; slithering, pre-offended armies of bargain hunters became our clientele.
I found the line about Ernest Hemingway-branded chai particularly amusing. Of course, I've proclaimed my love for online shopping numerous times (even going so far as to
list the books I've purchased recently – douchey, I know) and I have no plans to turn back yet. The one area of book evolution I simply refuse to touch would be the Kindle, which I don't abhor, but in which I simply see no appeal. A friend of mine today told me of a quote from Stephen Fry, who said, "Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators." Indeed, Mr. Fry, indeed.
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
