Inspiration for this trip came from an editorial cartoon I saw Tuesday that depicted Santa trying desperately to stay just ahead of the looming maw of the biggest Grinch of all time, otherwise known as our mega-Scrooged economy. Forget the magic reindeer. We may need to go warp speed to outrun this beast.
As the countdown to Christmas Eve--the busiest shopping day of the year for many bookstores--continues apace, I've noticed a distinct uptick in the volume of promotional e-mails offering last-minute shopping incentives, including coupons, discounts, special events and more.
As Tiny Tim might have said, "Constant Contact bless us, every one."
E-mail is potential instant retail gratification, I suppose, but I'm also curious about bookstore websites, which have begun to seem oddly stolid and archaic in our age of texts and Tweets. Where are you? What are you doing now? These are the questions of our time, or at least of our moment.
Call me nostalgic. I miss the good old virtual holidays of, well, last year.
Speaking of nostalgia, I recently found an advertisement placed by the American Booksellers Association in the December, 1947 issue of Harper's magazine. Here's the text:
A New Free Service Offered by America's Foremost Booksellers
Give-A-Book Certificate
"The Gift That Can't Be Wrong!"
Here is how you can give a gift to anyone, anywhere--and be sure it will be right! Just send GIVE-A-BOOK CERTIFICATES, which your friends can exchange for just the books they really want!
GIVE-A-BOOK CERTIFICATES are on sale--and can be redeemed--at the book and department stores throughout America which display the ABA emblem shown here. Take advantage of this service today!
Hyperventilating italics and exclamation marks aside, this 60-year-old ad made me realize how often we still rely on traditional slogans and phrases. So I went looking for a few bookstore websites that might shake things up a just bit.
And I found some.
In addition to promoting its gift cards ("One size fits all!), Idlewild Books, New York, N.Y., suggests customized gift packs for the traveling reader: "Know where you're going, or looking for a gift for a traveler? Let us put together a custom-made Destination Kit of guides, novels and more! You tell us where you're going, your interests or travel style, and what you like to read and let us do the work!"
The Booksmith Holiday Catalog, which is showcased on the home page of the San Francisco, Calif., shop's website, offers "independently selected & thoughtfully curated" staff recommendations. "Our booksellers have spent months agonizing over the process of selecting only 70 out of 200,000 new books published this year for inclusion in this catalogue. The result is a carefully curated selection spanning a range of reading interests and prices."
The Booksmith's staff has also mastered the art of the six-word book review: "In the age of information overload, we believe in 'less is more.' That's all we have to say."
"Season's Readings!" are featured in Joseph-Beth Booksellers' "Holiday Store," which complements "hand selected top books for this holiday season" with a more personal online handselling option: "Looking for something but can't find it? Need a suggestion for that tough-to-please friend or family member? Just let us know by filling out the form at the end of your transaction and we'll locate it for you."
Powell's Books, Portland, Ore., highlights staff picks from its holiday catalogue, offering discounts on selected titles. Best of all, Powell's is sponsoring a contest that customers can enter by submitting their favorite words. The prize? A 20-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary, natch. If you scan through the nearly 700 entries sent thus far, you'll notice an energetic engagement with the task at hand, a wide-ranging vocabulary and a curious recurrence of the word "defenestrate" (see Nabokov, Vladimir).
So, I did see some good website stuff, and I probably missed your good website stuff, but my wide-ranging whirlwind tour was a little disappointing, I must admit. Maybe I've become, rather than outrun, the virtual Grinch; or maybe I'm still waiting for a visit--an e-mail? a text? a Tweet?--from those Dickensian Christmas ghosts.
'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the Web, not a creature (or not many) was stirring, not even a wireless mouse.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)