Dennis Haritou: I was once at a lunch with a noted bookseller. Suddenly, the bookseller looked up from their salad and said: “Let’s face it, who has time to actually read very much nowadays?” This same bookseller had recently gotten larger baskets for their store. The thinking was that if you provided larger receptacles then it would encourage the customers to increase their purchases. The combined assumption was that even though the books would not be read, nonetheless book sales could be encouraged to rise. This is really a dubious strategy but I think it’s also like, the Achilles leg of book marketing. For in order to sustain the mass merchandising of books, which is what we have, consumers must be encouraged to buy books that they will never read.
Think about what’s in a typical chain bookstore. I have a rather strict personal definition of what a trade (non-text) book is: It’s a book that’s designed to be read…from cover to cover. And it’s a book that may plausibly be reviewed in a standard media venue like the New York Times Book Review or book blogs. By that definition an enormous chunk of what’s in large bookstores are not books. It’s book product, like cheese product in a supermarket that isn’t really cheese.
And these cynical thoughts led me to wonder about the book buyers for Oprah’s book club. Are they really reading Oprah’s selections or are they just buying the book as a memento so they can feel more engaged when they watch the book discussion? I would guess that 60% of the fans who buy the book for the show don’t read it. Of the remaining 40%, I’d say half finish it. Of those that complete the book, I’d say that 5% end up reading another book on their own initiative that Oprah hasn’t recommended. I have to guess at these figures because I don’t know. I haven’t seen statistics that would give me some reliable information about whether whether people are really reading or only just buying trade books. I suspect that there are no such studies. I also suspect that the book industry doesn’t want to know the answer to this question.
But there are some bright spots to be found in the mass merchandising of trade books. JR has brought up, for example, the wonderful contribution of airports and bus stations to literacy. Here is an environment in which the book buyer and the book reader are really likely to be the same person. It’s the enforced discipline of being in a restricted space for a given length of time and free from most conventional distractions that has encouraged a lot of bibliophiles. I have a long train commute and get half of my total reading done while in transit. It’s funny that such an unpromising venue encourages me to be literate.
So Jason, do you think that the Oprah book is actually read by most of her fans? What are the best environments to encourage literacy among regular Joe’s and Jane’s who are not in the book business and are not scholars or students? I think the book business is missing the boat big time, or missing the book big time, by caring so much about sales and not caring so much whether the book is read. “Have you read it?” is a better question than “Have you bought it?” Just because you bought it, that does not make you a book lover. It’s just a start.
Jason Rice: I think on the whole, DH you’re right, most people…80% don’t read the books she talks about, she does, but they just want to be apart of something larger than themselves. Suddenly they feel a warm spot where there was once a cool breeze of loneliness, and Ms. Winfrey has brought them comfort like a big cheese burger, or a plate of macaroni and cheese. Neither are necessarily good for you, but in the short term you feel great. Listen; The Corrections was read by a lot of people, House of Sand and Fog was bought by a lot of people, the two shall never meet. Ms. Winfrey does more for general ma and pa literacy than any handful of 11th grade English teachers could ever do. You see, sometimes people need to be inspired to read something, and usually it’s just a piece of entertainment, like a bowl of popcorn disguised as the new Jodi Piccoult book. She trades in general soap oprah themes, easy to sympathize with, love lost, sickness, flights to health with a tattered past, redemption, a sort of traveling bible salesmen selling people what makes them feel good. An explanation for when the lights go out. Ask someone who likes her writing what it is about the writing that they like, normally they can’t tell you, “oh it’s just so good, I loved the characters.” is a common response. You think I’m kidding? I have a friend in her twenties that I give the new Piccoult book to every year, and that’s what she says when I ask her about it. Nothing wrong with that, but it speaks volumes about the sliver of numbers that read books.
Ms. Winfrey should not be a taste maker. She shouldn’t be setting the standard of what to read. Readers should find that out for themselves. There are blind spots in the business. The chains aren’t one of them. Yes they have a great deal of real estate, but they know they can’t float their boat on just book sales. Which explains non-book product like Stir Fry sets, or games, or pencils and erasers, mostly the product relates narrowly to a book, but simply put, if it’s my store, I’d toss it out. Take a trip to Three Lives in Manhattan, you’ll see just books, like the old store on Broadway called, “Just Bulbs”; you knew what they sold.
This is where trade papers come in handy. They’re portable and like DH says can be read start to finish and have built in cache, it’s cool to be seen with a trade paperback (because everyone admires and envies “a reader”) and basically are the hot sister reprint of the novel. City of Thieves, a success in cloth, will do boffo numbers in trade. It’s easy to carry and costs less than filling your car with gas. But the cultural elite doesn’t shop retail, does shop airports, and that’s where the diversity lies. I do think that on the whole booksellers at the chains are usually there for the dough, and don’t read more than the latest Dungeons & Dragons or Sylvia Plath reprint, all good stuff if that’s what you’re into, but find me a reader of modern literature, not post war modern, but say like novels of the last twenty years. Sometimes it’s their college training and non-reader social spheres that determine what they select. Other times it’s advertising, or the amount of time they have to read a book. It’s strange to hear people I know, family members, close friends say things like, “I don’t read books.” It’s just not something I can compute.
But to answer your question DH, Do Booksellers Really Care…the answer is usually, “if it means I’ll get paid, and can take my break, yeah I’ll care.” I worked in book retail and booksellers aren’t what the title suggests, they’re usually there for the job, nothing wrong with that, but I wonder, where do real booksellers live and breath? I know a few buyers at key accounts who read like mad, and I talk to them about books. But where is the reading public, where do they buy their books? Is it at the airports and the supermarket checkout counter where they buy their hairspray and milk? Or maybe when I see people buying books in bookstores, superstores, they’re doing it to be cool? Armistad Maupin once said that it was cool to be seen holding a copy of Mason Dixon, but how many people actually read it? A guy I used to work with at Random House once said to me when I snobbishly turned my nose at Danielle Steel, “Jason, it doesn’t matter what people read, be it the newspaper, a supermarket mass market or a comic book, as long as they’re reading.” I guess there is a truth to that.
Dennis Haritou: Thanks very much, JR, for your incendiary comments. But stumbling off this darkling plain gasping for breath since the environment of the marketplace seems to provide so little oxygen, I encountered a whole series of beautiful valleys that have restored my spirits. These beautiful, verdant geographical features are called libraries. Chekhov wrote about how wonderful it would be if there were public libraries where anyone who wished could consult a book and exercise the freedom of the mind that we all want to cherish and promote. Well, in our society’s abundance and exercise of liberty, we have been given that book paradise. Let’s make sure we have every opportunity to use it. I think that the leadership of the media, the publishers and the major booksellers has let us down. It’s the pressure of the marketplace. I love the marketplace. “Market” is one of my ten favorite words and there is no civilization without it. But let’s not worship what we should only admire. I think if there is any leadership in the world of book lovers today then perhaps it should come from librarians. And it’s on that positive note that I want to close down this discussion for now. But let’s do some thinking about other positive role models for the reader. Any ideas?
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