I never made it into the new location, and as I no longer live in the town, it won’t affect me personally, but makes me sad that the Avenue Victor Hugo will not be there anymore.
For some time, the shop was on a path I frequently walked, and I had to avoid going in, because I spent $20 or so every time I went in, and I was broke. It was, simply, the best used-book store I ever frequented, and that’s saying a lot. The fact that their prices were probably too good to refuse isn’t a complaint of mine, but might have led to their ultimate demise. Oh, and they never came through on book searches; I left four or five notes over the years, and never once heard from them. Not that I cared, particularly. It was a great browsing store, and that’s what I liked.
Feh. I haven’t bought anything at an independent or used bookstore for ... um, a couple of weeks. I haven’t bought a new book at an independent store for, um, three months? A while, anyway. Now that I no longer work in a consumer paradise, I need to make an effort to shop. And shopping for books is one of my favorite things to do.
Anyway, if you drop by the Ave. for the farewell sale, give the old place a goodbye for me, even if it’s not the same place.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
AVH was never a favorite shop of mine (their stocking choices simply did not coincide with my interests), but I mourn the loss of shops like it nonetheless. The pointed and articulate rant by John Usher on their home page is good reading for a number of reasons — not the least of which is his excellent use of rhetoric to distort or obscure more complicated truths.
Part of my response to his rant is Amen, Amen, Amen. There is much that is unfortunate about corporate law which favors chain stores and conglomerates over small businesses, or about publishers who focus only on short-term profits and have no love of books. As a small publisher who loves books deeply and focuses on quality over profits, I suffer because of corporate law and greatly dislike competing with (and being lumped in with) the publishers described by John Usher. However, much of his rant is squarely at odds with the current state of American book publishing, and much is designed simply to misdirect blame away from small and independent bookstores.
John Usher blames publishers, but describes only the largest ones. There are, quite literally, thousands of small and mid-sized presses active in the United States today. Many of us care about our books, and we pay (in money, time, and attention) far more than due diligence to typography, binding, and editing. Small bookstores choose to participate in a broken distribution system which penalizes small presses and which diverts the vast bulk of profits to middlemen who have nothing to do with book publishing or book selling, they take advantage of return policies that are a primary and proximate cause of the blockbuster era, and they promote large press products like Harry Potter in place of or in front of, rather than alongside, books by smaller presses.
John Usher blames book buyers, and describes a world of benighted souls who shop in malls and care nothing for content. Yet outsized stand-alone bookstores, which are clearly winning the battle for customer base over small bookstores of both the independent and chain varieties, have as their primary advantage a wider choice of content. A Borders superstore is much more than a Waldenbooks paired with a Starbucks, and small bookstores have been perilously slow to understand that and to learn how to compete.
He continues on, issuing indictments against anyone and everyone, painting a picture that suggests a dwindling market in books, in readership, in literacy, and in education. A reader who trusts John Usher’s rhetoric might be surprised to hear that the book industry as a whole is growing in almost every aspect, and would be at an utter loss to understand why most of his scapegoats would be hurting small and independent bookstores in particular.
John Usher longs for a golden time past that never was, and is persuasive because we all can sympathize with such a longing. The world is not what it was, and people do not care the way they once did. That refrain is familiar and appealing, but is also often wrong.
The long list of groups to blame serves several rhetorical purposes. It creates the veneer of reasoned analysis; after all, such a list must be the result of true understanding — otherwise why would otherwise unexpected groups like teachers and book collectors be on the list at all? It makes it difficult to refute each group on the list in turn, and attempts to persuade through exhaustion. It persuades the reader who belongs to one or several of the mentioned groups that surely the other groups are reasonable to blame, if only to divert attention from himself. And most importantly, it dissuades the reader from adding yet another suspect to the list: the small and independent bookstores themselves.
As a cautionary note, John Usher’s crepuscule is worth reading. As an example of eloquence and finger-pointing, it is masterful. As funereal words upon the closing of Avenue Victor Hugo, it is poignant and moving. Just do not accept it as an honest or complete explanation.
Great comments, Michael!
I don’t have time to say much more right now, but wanted to note that I was a little surprised to see that Usher doesn’t mention the competition as a direct cause at all; he doesn’t list the chain megastores or the online booksellers among the reasons. Perhaps he takes those as read, and is trying to point out there’s more to the problem? I’m not sure. Or maybe he includes those in the category “Booksellers”? If so, he seems gentler toward them than I’d have expected.
As for diverting blame from the bookstores, I thought that by “Booksellers” he was talking about small independents as much as the big chains. But I could be wrong.
…One more thing, then I really gotta go: I think one factor that people tend to miss in these discussions is that the megastores are addressing the needs of the public. I don’t like ’em, I avoid buying from them, I mourn the death of the small independents—but I know a lot of people who go out of their way to go to Borders etc because they like what they get there—a wide variety of books (as Michael pointed out), with a friendly environment conducive to sitting and reading or sitting and working. Convenience is part of the equation (witness the rise of Amazon), but not all of it; a lot of people (even smart people who care about books) actively like what Borders et al have to offer.
The “Booksellers” paragraph is an odd one, and one of Usher’s weakest. I took him to mean large chains, because the romantic understanding of small independents is that they do promote quality and long-term interests. Perhaps he does intend to lump Avenue Victor Hugo in with the “Booksellers” group, in which case it is very surprising that he does not explicitly say so. The point of blaming oneself is generally either to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth or to deflect criticism that one is refusing to cast a judgmental eye inwards as well as outwards. In either case, the usual position in a list (even an unordered one) would be something like the following: “I blame A, B, C, D, and [finally/most importantly/not without blame] myself.” A more marked position would be: “I blame myself [in part/primarily], but I also blame A, B, C, and D.” It is rare in a persuasive essay or rant to say “I blame A, B, myself, C, and D.” That usually happens in a lengthy audit-style report prepared by or about a government department when the author is trying to bore the reader.
In blaming booksellers, Usher describes the demand created by marketing departments as artificial. What makes that demand artificial? Are readers tricked into buying bestsellers? The selling cycle of bestsellers suggests otherwise. Large-budget movies are now advertised so that they will open as big as possible, before word-of-mouth kills ticket sales. Books get an initial boost from advance advertising, but the bestseller cycle is much longer than with movies, and depends heavily on word-of-mouth. Is his complaint that readers buy books when they could otherwise spend their money on something else? Or that readers who have a certain book budget buy heavily advertised books instead of less advertised books? Neither would explain the death of small and independent bookstores.
He says that booksellers accept second-class treatment from publishers. Is that an actual comparison to how publishers treat some other group, or is it a vague description of a situation where publishers generally pay for shipping both directions of the booksellers’ product, offer extended and full financing to booksellers even when booksellers are consistently 90 days or more late in paying for their products, and accept unlimited returns of products that have been destroyed while in the booksellers’ possession? There is an argument to be made that small bookstores are treated worse by large publishers than are large chain bookstores. That is an important differentiation which could help account for the death of small and independent bookstores, if it were explained at all and not buried in a paragraph that mostly seems to complain about large chain bookstores.
He says that booksellers push what is “hot”. Is his complaint that booksellers sell books which customers want to buy? That is the essence of staying in business, and I would suggest that a bookstore which pushes what is “cold” will not find that a remedy for their fiscal ills.
He says that booksellers fail to develop the long-term interest of the reader, and fail to promote quality of content and excellence in book making. As a reader myself, I would agree that my long-term interest is not developed by booksellers. However, my long-term interest is solid and strong, as are the long-term interests of the many readers I count as friends. And while I may be disappointed in the quality of some of the books published, that does not stop me from buying books.
Bookselling has changed drastically in many ways in the past 20 years. The rise of chains, the rise of megastores, the rise of Amazon, the increase in the used market — these have all altered the landscape of bookselling in unforeseen ways. Yet the book purchasing habits of the typical American consumer have remained reasonably steady through all of that. To suggest that booksellers could do business differently in a way that would significantly increase the total dollars spent on books, and therefore stave off financial ruin, is to ignore the remarkable stability of readers’ demand for books. Could the bookselling landscape be changed to as to favor small independents like AVH, so that they receive a larger piece of the market? That is an interesting question, and quite unrelated to the one that John Usher appears to address.