02 April 2009

Borders Books becoming Glengarry Glen Ross?

n the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin plays Blake, a sort of hired gun brought in by Mitch and Murray, the unseen characters who are owners of a Chicago real estate agency, to force a group of agents to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation, and burglary—to sell undesirable real estate to unwilling prospective buyers.

As Blake tries to “motivate” the group, he tells them:

“We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”

It’s funny, it’s cruel and sadly, probably completely legal.

It seems Borders Books and Music is becoming a version of that David Mamet screenplay. The flagging book company, in a last desperate effort to remain meaningful, has put a gun to all of its employees heads in the field and is forcing them to sell a handful of titles selected by the buying department.

Essentially, we need to have sales on these titles and if not, you’ll be written up. Well, at least the GM’s of the stores will be. And like the proverbial rock rolling down a hill, if these sales trends are not met, the write-ups will escalate to managers and then supervisors. Eventually, people will be fired. So, while in the play and movie there are wonderful prizes for first and second place, at Borders all you’ll get is fired.

Part of the reason for this, I guess, is to get books like The Middle Place and City of Thieves (some of the current crop of titles) onto the New York Times Bestseller List, and so they can claim it was Borders staff (good, really) that help propel them. Thus, I’m guessing, customers will then assume Borders people know good stuff (which we do) and people will avoid Barnes & Noble (which they don’t, more on that later). As recent as this week, last months Borders Recommend, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, is sitting at #15 on the NYT fiction list. The Middle Place sits well at #2 on the Non Fiction Paperback list, though its sales have come because it was mentioned on the all powerful juggernaut that is Oprah.

I really don’t mind having to pimp these titles, cause some are pretty good. But with popular fiction taking over the world as it is, trying to convince customers to take a chance on new, untried author -in hardcover also - is akin to trying to sell ice to Eskimos. Or pork chop to a Hasidic Jew.

Still, on the other hand, Borders tends to choose titles that, should I say, tend to skew more liberal. My store, in Rancho Cucamonga, tends to be more conservative, more Christian based. Take last months Jodi Picoult book Handle with Care they wanted us sell like was going away in a day. The novel takes on a somewhat ethical notion that if you knew your unborn child was going to born with a disease that would mean a life-time of devotion to that child, would you terminate it? I tried to sell the title to two people over the weekend, but both said -once I described part of the story - that they were Christians and there is no ethical area for them. They would have the child. Why, as they asked me, should I read it (beyond the fact that most of Picoult’s fans seem to feel her novels are getting to formulaic: a child with a medical issue, parents with personal issues, and an angsty lawyer with a long backstory)?

I thought it was a good point. Still, had Borders chosen Love Dare - a book based on the film Fireproof - that one would’ve sold like crazy in my store. The point, I guess, is that instead of the whole company getting behind titles such as The Middle Place, City of Thieves, Star Wars: Outcast, and Long Lost by Harlan Coben, select one or two and then let the region or the stores themselves dictate the rest.

Hollywood has been using demographics to decide what films and TV shows to make, and realized young kids with way too much time and money on their hands will see almost anything. The book industry seems to think that the only way to appeal to those young people, is to “recommend” books that none of them will read.

Hate it or not, we need to redirect our efforts to appeal to younger people, and not older ones. Book surveys show reading for them is in a downturn and the industry and book stores seem little interest in appealing to them. Yes, older people have money, but they’re also set in their ways. They like to read what they like, and most are unwilling to take on a new author or quirky titles that they no nothing about.

For me though, this latest effort is nothing short of trying to close the barn doors after the horses have left. They’re putting loaded gun to every ones head and they seem not to care that firing their staff is no way to make sales. Sure, with this economy, there are plenty of people lining up for any job, but Borders has always been most peoples favorite place to shop; mainly (once upon a time) for its selection, but mostly for its knowledgeable staff.

I’ve heard it many times in the 12 years since I started working for them, that most customers love our stores. Here in SoCal, many come from the High Desert to shop in our store. They all say the same thing, yeah we have a Barnes & Noble up there, but we like yours better. Why? Because the staff is friendly and knowledgeable. Boom, easy sale.

So, what’s the point of firing us? Eventually, they'll have no one with experience there, and the odds are people will then really go to B&N. It’s not like the number one bookseller already has a leg up on us in the branding name game.

As just noted, I’ve worked for Borders for 12 years, yet even family members ask me to this day, how’s things working at Barnes & Noble? My own family gets confused. Why? What has B&N done that makes them the first bookstore people think about on the retail level? What is Borders failing at that, despite the love we get from people, they think we’re Barnes & Noble?

At the end of the day, most of Borders problems can be blamed on the old regimes of the middle to late 1990s. They’ve made huge financial mistakes and have stumbled one to many times in trying to make Borders a better brand name than Barnes & Noble. Right now, they’re treading on an ever thinning ice and are forcing its employees to engage (to their customers) in a number of what is probably some pretty unethical things. Plus our DM's are using threats and intimidation in forcing the staff to sell what is probably undesirable reads to unwilling readers.

Welcome to Glengarry Glen Ross, can I help you?

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