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{ Monthly Archives } January 2009

FWD: From the Typewriter to the Bookstore

The hidden truth behind publishing, as told (with a straight face) by the folks at Mcmillan USA.

(Linked from Steven Hart, who got it from Andrew Sullivan.)

2009 01 17 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (1)

Many Are Chilled, But Few Are Frozen

It snowed inside our store a few days ago. Yes, inside.

2009 01 16 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (2)

Fwd: Bay Area indie bookstores beat the odds

A quick link to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a couple of bookstores in the city that are doing quite well. The apparent secret: being an active part of their communities, and knowing their clientele very well.
(Thanks to the Shelf Awareness newsletter, which every bookseller should read every day.)
Bay Area indie bookstores [...]

2009 01 15 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (0)

Can We Learn From the Collapse of Cody’s?

Business Week has an article analyzing the demise of Berkeley’s best-known bookstore, Cody’s. With another of the Bay Area’s notable bookstores, Stacey’s, announcing its closing a few days ago, the landscape of independent bookstores there, as elsewhere, is shrinking. There are still some great places open, such as Moe’s and Pegasus and Pendragon, but the [...]

2009 01 14 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (1)

Small Bibles with Large Print

We get a lot of people shopping for Bibles at our store. (I think we got more people reading Bibles at my previous store. At least once a day, someone — not the same person each time — would leave under one of our comfy chairs a Bible, some erotica, and a book on the [...]

2009 01 12 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (2)

O, that thou wert a fyre hydrant

It’s not often that I spot a new annoying customer behavior in the wild, but one I encountered today was worth noting.

2009 01 12 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (1)

Of Painted Moose and Camels, Cherry Pie, and the Trendiness of Vampires

A post from a couple of months ago on for.theloveofbooks.com takes off from an NPR story about the effect of Stephenie Meyer’s publishing juggernaut, the Twilight series, on the real small town in which the series is apparently set.  The blogger, brendan, remembers his time waiting tables in Denver when an earlier wave of vampire [...]

2009 01 11 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (0)

The 34th Street Principle

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 [...]

2009 01 06 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (0)

Sellepathy

Sellepathy (n.): The ability of a bookseller to figure out what the frak a customer actually wants based on spotty or erroneous information.
I was reminded of this (well, OK, I was reminded of the concept, but I just made up the word, and I’m not seeing it elsewhere on the Web, so you heard it [...]

2009 01 06 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (7)

The January Bug

Workers are coughing and sneezing and losing their voices right on schedule. The holidays have passed and the January bug is starting to make its rounds among the staff.
This happens every year. When I first became a bookseller, I thought that people might be taking advantage of the slightly slackened pace at work to get [...]

2009 01 05 joseph.zitt Uncategorized Comments (0)