Some days seem to have themes. Flows of customers come in looking for related things, often things that aren’t of interest before or after that day, and usually without obvious triggers or any known common reason for their search. A few days ago, we had a large number of people looking for literary criticism, which is usually a dead zone.
Today, we had a lot of people looking in Religion.
My first customer of the day was looking for a book on Humanistic Judaism. One right after that was interested in the history of Islam. Another was looking for books on Thomas Merton, yet another for the history of Biblical text, and one more for inspirations that would help her in constructing a new Cleveland-specific women’s haggadah. One harried woman was looking for a book on mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn that we didn’t have, but was pleased that I turned her on to Thich Nhat Hanh and Pema Chodron. And my last customer before lunch was looking for an audiobook for a friend who was in the hospital and was trying to reconcile her current Buddhism with her Christian roots.Another book by Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ, was the right book for her.
Since this is one of my areas of interest, the conversations kept veering off into points unrelated to their book searches. I kept in mind the challenge of connecting book recommendations to the conversations. Still, I found myself often recommending online resources or particular local libraries that specialized in their topics.
Though many of these pointed people out of the store and didn’t immediately result in purchases, I recognized that pointing them toward outside information wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ve discovered that folks to whom I give pointers to the outside often come back and become regular customers. Giving them the pointers converts their experience of the store from “that place that didn’t have what I wanted” to “that place that helped connect me with what I wanted.” And that we were willing to point them elsewhere gave them the sense that we weren’t just an Evil Faceless Corporate Beast only interested in their immediate money (though immediate money is good, too).
Since we’re one of the largest bookstores in the area, I have, on several occasions, gotten calls from people from other bookstores looking to see if we had what customers at their stores were looking for, and, if we did, sending their customers to us. I haven’t had chances, at my present store, to call them and send customers back to them, since I haven’t really had people looking for things in which I knew that the other stores specialized.
But in writing this, I realized that the one area where I wished I knew of other specialty stores was that of Christian books. (I know the Jewish bookstores already, and have sent people to them.) So I did a quick Web search, and found a list of area Christian bookstores. So I’ve printed it out, and intend to bring it to work in the morning.
Long before I thought I ever considered becoming a bookseller, I got this idea planted in my head by one of the few Christmas movies that I can stand, Miracle on 34th Street. As I recall, in that movie, workers at various New York City department stores started showing people the ads with specials from other stores to help their shopping. That made a big impression on me, and I’ve thought of this idea of bringing people back by sending them away as “The 34th Street Principle.” Looking around the Web shows several other people with the same thought, and it’s a truism in Web design. So it’s not brand new, but still something that I try to keep in mind and might be good for all booksellers to know.
Print this post
Post a Comment