"There will always be books. There will always be conversations about books. The way that conversation happens is what will continue to evolve."--Rick Joyce, chief marketing director, Perseus Books Group, speaking at BookExpo America in New York City this week.
BEA is all about the conversations. Some of them occur formally in scheduled meetings, but most just happen naturally as we meet old friends or make new ones. So words always matter here, whether they are air-, print- or digitally-borne. For all of us in this business, the need to talk about books and the book trade ranks a very close second to our collective obsession with reading books.
You already know that.
I'm writing this while still in my New York hotel. The show has just ended. Over the next week, it will be dissected by experts worldwide analyzing the switch to midweek, the change to two floor days and an almost infinite number of other issues. For a few precious moments tonight, however, it's a pleasant blur of fresh memories. Call it BEA afterglow.
I'm still trying to filter the dozens of conversations I had during the past few days, but for now I'll share a first impression I found particularly striking. It has to do with my completely unscientific measurement of tone in the voices of the booksellers I spoke with, ranging from industry veterans like Paul Yamazaki of City Lights Books, San Francisco, Calif.--who is celebrating his 40th year with the store--to Sarah Carr, who opened Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C., with Jamie Fiocco and Land Arnold less than a year ago.
I heard it again and again in quick chats with great booksellers like Roger Doeren of Rainy Day Books, Fairway, Kan.; Neil Strandberg of the Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, Colo.; Susan Novotny of the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.; Betsy Burton of the King's English Bookstore, Salt Lake City, Utah; Susan Fox of Red Fox Books, Glens Falls, N.Y., and so many others.
That tone was a distinct blend of curiosity and fighting spirit, reflecting a passion to adapt and innovate rather than merely survive. It sounded good to me.
I was a bookseller during the golden age of whining that began, or at least flourished, during the rise of the chains and Amazon, and has gradually diminished over time as the bookstores that made it through that perilous gauntlet found ways to stay the course. The book business hasn't gotten any easier for indies. Times are tough. Our industry morphs hourly; the future is a bully threatening to punch indie booksellers in the mouth every day and stealing their lunch money.
But I heard something else in their tone of voice here. I heard the sound of booksellers talking primarily about their vision for the future, exploring possibilities, working hard to figure out what diverse pieces of the changing book environment--digital options, community partnerships, in-store POD sales, shop local movements, etc.--they might be able to thread together to make indie bookselling a business with a viable future; to make the bully use his own damn lunch money for a change.
Adaptation and innovation.
At an ABA Day of Education session called "The New Reality: Alternative Bookstore Models," Chris Morrow of the Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vt., offered the following concise bit of advice about innovation: "Anything you do like this is an experiment and you have to adjust as you go."
I'll write more about that session next week, but the tone of voice filled that room, too. Morrow, Chuck Robinson of Village Books, Bellingham, Wash.; and Carol Horne of the Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, Mass., were saying "This is the kind of stuff we're trying to make our businesses better. These solutions aren't everybody's answer. You'll figure that part out yourself for your bookstore, your community. Don't do what we do. Do what you do best and enhance it with some of the new opportunities available. Standing pat is no longer an option."
Meeting the challenge requires not just a willingness to experiment, but an eagerness to do so; maybe even a downright pleasure in punching the future, bully that it is, right in the nose.
And that's what I heard in the voices, the words, the casual conversations and formal observations of indie booksellers at BEA 2010.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)