Book Trivia
March 14th, 2009
I’ve been disinclined to write my regular, long-ish posts for various reasons, but in the meanwhile, here is something I noticed a day ago, on a visit to the Landmark bookstore.Â
I was very impressed to note that Landmark now has a ‘War History’ section; impressed, to think that there are enough readers sufficiently interested in not just history, but war history, for Landmark to dedicate one section to it. And what do I find among the selection? Blood and Guts, A History of Surgery!
An interest in reading, not just literacy, should be a pre-requisite for being hired to work in a bookshop. :-/
Yes - but possibly, at the wages paid, its asking for too much!
A business that is so short-termist deserves to go out of business
The bookshops in London all employ knowledgeable staff in different sections. If the staff are good, they help shift more books and make the business more profitable and sustainable. I have seen the same in Zurich, Geneva and Paris. These shops are unique in that they still sell on full price and not on discounts like Amazon does.
Bookstores seem to miss the point that they need to make people buy. I used to like Crossword and spent many hours and many Rs in the one on Haji Ali in Bombay when I was a summer trainee. But in Bangalore, the one on Residency Road is a travesty of bookshops (and I told the lady who runs it!). I have never understood the point of Gangaram’s. That said on Ulsoor Road, there used to be a shop called R&B in the mid 1990s. Staff knew what they were selling but their attached cafe meant few bought any books. Food business does not have great margins so it went out of business. The Oxford Book Store in Leela Galleria is promising (although not a patch on their original Calcutta store on Park Street that opened in 1994). I am told there is a shop called Blossoms I must check out next time, so I will. Meanwhile, disappointment :-/
Blossoms is very much around, and worth a visit…
As for the larger bookstores, another way to look at it is that perhaps they know their audience well. Few people who visit may look for anything really out of the way, so they can afford to hire fairly poor quality people and pay them low. This also explains why few of them focus on books alone. Gangarams, Landmark etc increasingly “also sell books”!