San Bernardino County has many conservative areas, including Rancho Cucamunga where I work. One of the odder things I’ve had to deal with since moving to this Borders 3 years ago, was dealing with a customer base that is hard to nail down. Borders in Oak Park, Illinois was pretty predictable.
When it came to politics, Oak Park was -and is - a liberal town. During presidential election years, any book released about either party did well, particularly liberal books. However, this tended to cause some problems with a few of the conservative people who lived within Oak Par,k Forest Park, River Forest and Cicero. If a bestseller or two happened to be a liberal book, we often got accused of being bias towards liberals. Then there was the conservatives that came in and turned the liberal books around so the cover was hidden.
I guess there thought should be that no matter if it’s a bestseller, we needed to display a conservative volume along side it. The problem was, there was never usually one that we could.
So, recently at my store, a customer complained about our political display with Obama and McCain. Now Obama has two memoirs which have been selling well for over two years, and McCain has put out one memoir which mostly covers his life and was published in the early 2000's. He recently put out a slim, mass market book on what he plans to do as president.
This lady complained -like I’ve heard in years past - that we’re putting more Obama titles out than McCain, more liberal titles than conservative, thus showing our bias. Though, to be honest, book stores are pretty well open to anything, but they're also quick to display the flavor of the week titles in the front.
Of course, in her desire to feel that conservatives are under attack from “liberal” books stores, she failed to notice that two other books with Obama on the cover are ones that attack him.
When it came to politics, Oak Park was -and is - a liberal town. During presidential election years, any book released about either party did well, particularly liberal books. However, this tended to cause some problems with a few of the conservative people who lived within Oak Par,k Forest Park, River Forest and Cicero. If a bestseller or two happened to be a liberal book, we often got accused of being bias towards liberals. Then there was the conservatives that came in and turned the liberal books around so the cover was hidden.
I guess there thought should be that no matter if it’s a bestseller, we needed to display a conservative volume along side it. The problem was, there was never usually one that we could.
So, recently at my store, a customer complained about our political display with Obama and McCain. Now Obama has two memoirs which have been selling well for over two years, and McCain has put out one memoir which mostly covers his life and was published in the early 2000's. He recently put out a slim, mass market book on what he plans to do as president.
This lady complained -like I’ve heard in years past - that we’re putting more Obama titles out than McCain, more liberal titles than conservative, thus showing our bias. Though, to be honest, book stores are pretty well open to anything, but they're also quick to display the flavor of the week titles in the front.
Of course, in her desire to feel that conservatives are under attack from “liberal” books stores, she failed to notice that two other books with Obama on the cover are ones that attack him.
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