Ben Kay runs an excellent advertising blog ITIABTWC.
Recently he was telling me how sad he was that Borders on Oxford Street had closed.
Ben said he missed it because he used to go there during lunchtimes.
He used to sit in the comfy armchairs and read books.
In fact, he read all of Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ there during his visits.
He didn’t buy it because it was too big and bulky to carry around.
So it was very convenient for him to read it in Borders every day.
Can anyone hazard a guess why Borders closed?
I’ve got an opinion.
I think they confused being a bookshop with being a library.
I think encouraging lots of people to sit around reading books is not how a bookshop makes money.
Selling books is.
A chain of bookstores is different from an individual bookstore.
In the richer, quieter, more exclusive areas, of Seattle or San Francisco or Hampstead, it may be enough to encourage people to visit your store and enjoy the experience.
These are rich people and, in the process, they’ll spend money.
But Oxford Street isn’t rich, quiet, or exclusive.
It’s mass market.
In fact, quite a lot of the visitors are down market.
If you offer them the choice of using something for free or buying it, guess which they’ll choose.
So Borders closed because it didn’t sell enough books.
On the other hand Foyles, just around the corner, sells lots of books.
There are no seats and you’re not allowed to sit on the floor.
You can read a book, but you have to do it standing up.
And you may do that for ten minutes, but not much longer.
Then you have to decide whether to buy it, or put it back.
Foyles has forced you to make a decision.
So they get fewer people reading books.
But they get more people actually buying.
Of course, being human we tend to let people put off the point of decision.
In case it’s a negative outcome.
But the truth is, a no is often better than a maybe.
Take a pitch or a job interview.
When we don’t win, or get the job, we console ourselves when the client tells us we came second.
But the truth is, if we finish second ten times out of ten we still end up with nothing.
Whereas if we finish last nine times out of ten, and first just once, we end up with a job, or a client, or a sale.
We don’t need everybody to not-dislike us.
We need some people to love us, even if means some people hate us.
We are so busy avoiding rejection we are afraid to force a decision.
As Bill Bernbach said, “If you stand for something you’ll find some of the people for you and some of the people against you.
If you stand for nothing you’ll find nobody for you and no one against you.”
By polarising people earlier we force them to choose.
Hire me or don’t hire me.
Give us your business or don’t.
Buy the book or don’t buy it.
Of course, there are times when you want people sitting around, and times when you don’t.
American museums understand this.
If you go to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, it’s $20 admission.
The European Sculpture Gallery is beautiful.
A long room with a skylight running the length of it, and a small cappuccino stand at one end.
And light, movable chairs everywhere.
You’re encouraged to take your time and study the art.
When we went, my wife, son and daughter and I pulled up the chairs, and sat and drew various sculptures.
Then we had a coffee.
Then, refreshed, we went back and drew some more.
It was so welcoming, that we went back several times while we were in New York.
Just like the people in Borders, we’d spend all day sitting around.
The difference was, we were paying $20 each.
We didn’t have to buy anything, they made their money by encouraging us to relax and enjoy ourselves, and come back.
That’s exactly the opposite of what Borders should be doing.
Because Borders don’t get paid by the visitor.
They sell a book, or they get nothing.
And that was Ben’s point.
Ben felt bad that Borders had closed.
He felt customers should have supported Borders by buying other things there.
Coffee, magazines, wrapping paper, greeting-cards.
But Starbucks ran the coffee shop.
And Paper Chase ran the wrapping paper and greeting-card concession.
The place where Borders made their money was the book section.
And they were giving that away for free.
There is a belief that all anyone has to do to be successful is get lots of people to feel good about your product or service or brand.
Then money will automatically follow.
I don’t think that’s always true.
I know it’s fashionable, but that doesn’t make it true.
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Great post, as always, but one correction:
The prices at the Met are always “suggested donations”
because it’s subsidized by the state.
You’ve got to go through the ticket booth first, so everyone pays something, but you can give them as much or as little as you want.
In fact, very few people (mostly the tourists) pay the actual admissions price — most just throw in a buck or two.
Not wanting to point any fingers here but as sure as eggs are eggs sometimes we have to put our hands up and admit we are as much complicit in failure as we are success.
Aside from the inept management from Borders in their inability to see the effect a proliferation of opportunists would have on their business, certain sections of society have to step up to the plate and not take advantage of someone’s goodwill and give something back. The trouble is too many people today see helping those less fortunate than themselves as an imposition. It’s the duty of those in regular employment to buy, and for want of a better term ‘not take the piss’. To some degree having a coffee would have helped out, as presumably Starbucks would have paid a percentage of profits to Borders. Obviously it wasn’t enough. Similarly some local pubs are on their last legs. The pub is the hub. It’s what makes or breaks an area. Where else does the community have a chance to meet and understand one another.
Some of us should know better. It really is a case of ‘use it or lose it’.
hi Dave,
I live in Saffron Walden which is a small market town close to Stansted Airport. It’s a wealthy area with high house prices thanks to the direct line to Liverpool St. Lots of young professional couples move here from London to have their kids.
There’s always a new shop opening that caters for this assumed demographic - maybe a specialist wine shop, or a delicatessen, a bistro or designer boutique. There are literally dozens of them. No one in them… They last a year or so and close. No sooner has one gone than another springs up in it’s place.
Conversely the two cheaper clothing stores, New Look and M&Co, are always busy. So is the fruit and veg market. Charity shops do a brisk trade too.
On a Saturday young families wonder about the town and maybe buy a few luxuries… but generally not a £300 lamp or an £80 shirt. Monday - Friday the town is left to hassled Mum’s with push chairs and old people.
I’m sure the boutique business owners can see this. So I assume their businesses must be about some kind of self expression rather than making a profit.
We’ve come to expect this triumph of hope over reason - I’m just surprised Borders was operating in this way.
Gareth, I refer you to Harvey Milk, “You gotta have hope.”
which is why i loved frank lloyd wright’s descending spiral design for the guggenheim in new york. the fastest art museum in the world!
In Singapore. Borders had the same dumb ‘library’ concept. Then each day, after they closed, the poor staff worked past mid-night to re-shelf the books because some ‘readers’ were moving the books all over the shop for their own convenience. Come to think of it, if Borders had to re-shelf til 2am, there must’ve been lots of ‘readers’ moving books around. Yet Borders persist with this lunacy.
Perhaps for that reason, many companies don’t free seminars or books. Because members of the public get them free, they see no value. Charge them a pound, and the attitude changes.
http://ex-blank-page.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-reply-to-daves-great-posts-92.html
Hi Dave,
Most people hate parting with money. They’d rather die.
Your story reveals the Met had a brilliant selling strategy.
Life after death. If you don’t pay-up, you die.
If you pay up you die…but you do end up in heaven.
That’s the benefit.
Funnily enough, I never go into Foyles without the intent of buying.
I know what book I’m looking for before I even walk in, and I go there
because I know if I can’t find it in Foyles, I probably cant find it in
any other bookshop in London. So it’s a yes or a no. Most people don’t
like to say no because it hurts, but going back to Ben’s Blog, and his
message of respect, I’d rather get a \No\ from someone I respect than
a (because I dont want to hurt your feelings) \Yes\.
No is very empowering because it indicates something needs correcting.
People don’t like that, because they always like to be right, but the truth
of the matter is an uncomfortable no is more productive. I can count the
times on the fingers of my hands I got a yes, and lost count of the times
people have said no. Every no leads to a yes, but most people lose heart
too quickly, when they are on the verge of a yes because they lose respect.
When you respect the people who say no, and you get a yes, it makes you
feel a million dollars, and that’s worth every no I’ve ever had.
It would not surprise me if Borders management were afraid to say no,
and in so doing, they lost customers who would happily have paid.
Hmmm…loads of good points there, and thanks for the mention.
I always find the joy of millions of Youtube hits etc. a bit suspicious. If I thin of my own state of mind when I come across most YT clips, the last thing I’m planning to do is have a long ‘conversation’ or ‘engagement’ beyond a few minutes’ boredom avoidance.
I guess it’s just a hell of a lot easier to measure number of hits than the degree to which the hitters care.
Hi John,
Your point is similar to Ben’s that, if we don’t show appreciation for what we’ve got, we’ll lose it.
I agree.
But we are in a commercial situation and we can’t depend on the goodwill of the public.
Borders, like us in advertising, needs to be dictating our market’s behaviour, or suffer the consequences.
If we accept ‘form follows function’ then the function has to be to sell books.
So what form will deliver that?
Well, certainly not encouraging people to make themselves comfortable and read without buying.
They started at the wrong end of the equation.
So they did ‘function follows form’.
The form was comfy chairs and encouraging people to read without buying.
So the function became a library.
But, as they didn’t have a library’s funding, they went out of business.
Did Borders think too small? Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.
There’s a Borders in Newcastle near where i live, and its managed to keep its self going buy allowing the only Starbucks for miles to take over most of the first floor, so you have to walk through all the books. But theres nothing to stop you from taking the book up to the Starbucks and read it there and then just return the book
Its always a shame when a bookshop closes. I hope something better has taken its place.
@Richard King
Having been to North America, Britain and Asia, it’s kind of surprising how business attitudes differ in different parts of the world.
Not many book shops in Asia have cafes. And even if they did, electronic sensors made it impossible to bring unpaid books into the cafe. (What happened was kids would bring books into cafes, spill ice cream or soup onto them and parents would refuse to pay for the damage.)
Don’t know if customers in Asia are allowed to bring upaid books/magazines into the cafe. I refrain from Borders because I think it’s sheer madness that people who genuinely want to buy books should weave between browsers who block shelves and aisles
I love your blog but you pin too much on only one side of the equation here. Having worked in several bookstores - (an independent in Chicago, a Borders in Atlanta and another chain in Atlanta), I’ve seen plenty of examples of people buying more books than they might have because the time they were allowed to sample. And there were many who browsed and bought something who might not otherwise would’ve bought anything at all. The people who go to bookstores with the intention to read a book and exit were never real customers to begin with.
Bookstores have been going out of business for years at an increasing rate, whether or not they let people read in the store. Borders in particular has had trouble since the early 90s when Kmart became the owner of the chain. What had once been a book chain built on inventory system tailored to the communities where each outlet was located became something else - though the “library” decor remained the same. Since then further buy-outs and bad decisions by its leaders have led the company into serious debt.
If Bookstores go, then what are we left with? A collection of random online quotes about quotes? A fruit salad of ideas without explanations? Quotes quoted out of context?
A mish-mash of literature whose predetermined panel decide whether it has the “X Factor” or not. There’s something peculiarly amazing about bookshops. Especially secondhand ones where most books are out of circulation. Reading the highly valid comments above, it makes me wonder whether they are already extinct. Books are full of ideas, and when we lose the ability to nurture and protect ideas, it’s like taking all the stitching out of a beautifully formed dress and creating a Cinderella world. As Jeremy Sinclair said: “There has to be a better way”.
It strikes me that bookshops should become libraries. Libraries are on their last legs in the UK. Many, if not most, will close over the next few years. So if you’re the book publishing industry, you have two challenges. First: getting kids hooked on reading while they can’t afford to buy, so they’ll become customers as adults. Second: reinforcing the emotive value of the book as a tactile object and immersive, private-in-public experience in the face of the trend towards digitisation. If I’m a book publisher, I want a showroom for my books. I don’t care where people buy the books from. They can all be sold via Amazon - it doesn’t matter to the publisher. But if people don’t have the opportunity to see, touch and interact with my product I reckon my sales will nosedive. Perhaps publishers should pay venues to become book showrooms. Those places could be libraries, or they could be bookshops. Or Starbucks. As a publisher, you expect to make your sales online. But your marketing needs to emphasise things like book covers, the smell and weight of the paper…the ‘brand’ of books and the experience of reading books. I’m not so upset about Borders on Oxford St. The one round the corner on Charing Cross Rd is still open, so I’m wary of reading too much into it all. Maybe the rents were too high? Or maybe people know to buy their books on Charng Cross Rd rather than Oxford St? The Waterstones further down Oxford St. is now a River Island or Uniqlo or sumsuch.
@Ricki
Your suggestion of bookshops becoming libraries astounds me.
I thought Dave had already proven that with his piece on Borders.
If we really want to keep libraries and reading alive, then surely what has to be done is to encourage people to read. And not have bookshops disguisng themselves as libraries.
Bookshops depend on sales.
For bookshops to become libraries so that grateful readers patronize them in the long run is overlooking one small problem.
How to keep these bookshops alive until the people who have no money now have the means to buy books?
Hi Rick,
It’s an interesting point, bookstores becoming book showrooms.
The question is how do you ‘monetise’ it?
Do you charge people admission, then let them stay and read as long as they like, like art galleries?
Or do you only have the first chapter of books on display?
And lots of laptops, so they can order the book online?
Personally I think you have to have different answers for different locations.
As Howard says, above, the ‘library’ concept (encouraging people to visit without forcing them to buy) works well in Atlanta and Chicago.
But as we’ve seen, it doesn’t work in busy Oxford Street.
Not for Virgin or Borders.
I guess that people will find anyway not to pay for things but still want to live their lifestyle. My Borders have removed their chairs now (well the last time I was there they have) I guess they have finally cottoned on to the fact people would rather read for free then to actually have the satisfaction of buying a book and breaking the spine by re reading it over and over again.
I wonder now that if these new ebooks are going to take over and then places like Borders will become just a room with a few computers that you can just downland the book? (well i like imagine)
Hi Richard,
It’s odd isn’t it.
My son ordered 20 Great Books for his iPhone and he reads them on the tube.
Rory Sutherland has taken to reading books on his Kindle.
Personally none of this works for me.
If there’s a lot of reading in a document I’m sent by email, I print it out and read it.
That way I can highlight, unserscore, make notes on it, etc.
Who knows how it’s all going to play out?
Radio didn’t kill books, nor did cinema, nor TV, nor videos.
I doubt if digital will.
More people read books now than at any time in history.
Hi Dave,
I think funding might come from a number of sources. First, publishers investing in marketing their products. In order for a ‘book showroom’ to carry your titles, you might need to pay them a fee. Second, public money which might otherwise have provided a more expensive library service. Third, a brokerage fee for books purchased online via in-store computers. Rather like Amazon affiliates. Fourth, over-the-counter book sales for when you absolutely must have that book right now. Like the new Rowling or Dan Brown. In-store events and signings should be an everyday feature. What if people paid £20 a head to attend a guest lecture or debate every night at the ‘book showroom’? It’s always struck me as rather inefficient that retail outlets are only making money for less than half of each day.
I quite like the ‘first chapters’ idea. I wonder if these could be given away on a membership basis - buy one book, take home three first chapters to try / lend?
As you say, it will be horses for courses in terms of localising the business model. I notice Starbucks are ‘unbranding’ in some areas and giving local managers autonomy to localise the customer experience. About time. In fact, it might be the start of a wider retail trend, as we had with, pop-up stores, Tesco Expresses, Lidls, Ikeas and Primarks.
I agree with you that Oxford Street was always a silly place for a bookshop. I also notice it’s a pretty poor place for coffee shops too. Your best bet is to duck into St. Christopher’s or off to Carnaby St.
I think thats its fantastic that you can get books on the go! i was talking to my friend who owns a bookshop the other day (the old school kind where theres that old dusty book smell) and we were talking about how he loves ebooks but he was saying that he loves getting in the old books that have people’s pencil writing in them because it made him feel that he can learn about people just by the little tid bits of scribbled thoughts.
I totally agreed with him on that one, that was untill a shelf collapsed and i was wacked on the head by a old copy of war and peace! i do think that books will be published till the end of time (unless its like that Doctor who story with the bad guys living in the shadows of the books)
Hi Richared,
People have very different relationships with books.
Chris Wilking was a copywriter at BMP, he wrote Smash Martians.
Now he writes novels and I think he’s won some literary awards.
Anyway, Chris loves to keep all his books pristine even after he’s read them.
I like my books to look like we’ve had a fight when I’ve finished.
Dog-eared pages, yellow highlighter throughout, lots of notes inside the front and back covers.
But then Chris mainly reads fiction and I read mainly non-fiction.
Maybe that explains it.
Hi Dave,
Interesting food for thought from everyone.
A publisher I worked for came up with some interesting findings when we looked into the growth of online and the supposed decline of books. Books have actually increased globally with the growth of online. Everyone uses books more because we are sharing more knowledge than ever before and books are great tools to refer to. I hate getting rid of books.
With a book you can flick forward, look back, retain ideas, mix, compare and contrast ideas with ideas in other books, you can earmark pages, and for studying and problem-solving they are brilliant. Try doing that on a computer? Almost impossible, because the mind can only concentrate on the thoughts at an operational level. If the mind has to administer those thoughts while it is trying to think creatively, one or the other shuts down but when we open and close books we’re doing something physical through our automatic memory which doesn’t drain our mind in the process of thinking. The action also helps reinforce memory.
Taking your ‘first chapters’ thought, maybe a book of latest first chapters in fiction or biographies etc. would work. That way people can compare and contrast authors, and find the one that suits them. They can also take them home and share them with friends (the greater market) The other thing is book vouchers. I love getting book vouchers because it removes the painful bit of the purchase decision for books, which for me is:-
“Am I investing in a load of rubbish or is this a great book?” scenario. If the rest of the book is as good as the first chapter, then it’s okay, but how many books reach these standards?
The other thing is narrow aisles and store layout are often overlooked. WHSmith in Holborn is innundated with lunchtime readers reading mags for free, then putting them back. I was one of them. However, a lot of them also buy the magazines. Why do WHS put all the best mags on the bottom shelf? When you bend to the bottom shelf, you automatically bump into someone behind you. It becomes really irritating, and there’s like, this social stigma in the UK of “once is forgivable” so the only way to have a comfortable read without butting everyone is either to use the Alexander technique every time you reach down, or simply buy it. It makes buying it the easier option. Whether the thirst for knowledge is greater than the thirst for a cup of tea is a difficult one, but they do seem to go hand in hand. Maybe it needs a book club coffee shop where the price of the next cup of tea gets taken off the price of the book if you buy it and vice-versa.
The question in my mind is should bookstores move into coffee shops or coffee shops move into bookstores, or should they remain totally separate? If I’m going to buy a book, surely having a cup of tea or coffee is 1. Draining my resources to buy the book, and 2. interrupting the flow of purchase decision-making process and complicating rather than simplifying.
Personally, I think book tokens are brilliant because they cut through all the crap and make you feel you’re getting something for nothing- and that’s always the best deal.
funny how you call it a library, as i was thinking of making it into a ‘university’, for my portfolio, of course.
You enroll in anything you want from french history to philosophy. it’s essentially a home course run by the book store; ’students’ receive a Borders reading list and when they’ve read (and purchased) every suggested book, as well as done a few online quizzes to test themselves along the way, they take an exam and are rewarded with an actual qualification.
with all of the unemployment it might be a good time to do it. on the other hand it might be an AWFUL idea. either way, it’s just an idea. i may regret this, but what do people think?
do your worst : )
Hi James,
There’s a sports clothing store in New York that has free yoga classes upstairs.
When you come to yoga, you need confortable excercise clothes.
Guess where you get them.
I think your idea is really good, but a university may be s step too far.
But free evening classes, debates, lectures, seminars, book clubs, could be good.
Then, as you say, books on the reading list are available downstairs.
Good idea, works for me, I’d go.
Hi James,
I can see the Alumni getting their backs up with University qualifications because they supplement their income out of publishing their books to their own students. Lectures with key speakers would be an attraction for me, and it would be a way students could integrate up-to-the-minute shared knowledge in their tutor-marked assignments.
If you had a debate, as Dave mentions, that would be a way of appeasing the Alumni by having a professional debating with an academic. That way there’s a two-way pay-off that opens the university gates (a little) but all it would take is a few academics to write textbooks with professionals and who knows? Many years ago some UK Art Colleges were slated badly for not being in touch with the modern creative world. Since then they have pulled their socks up by inviting professionals to lecture at their colleges, and the quality of students suddenly shot up as a direct response.
A great area for this would be sustainability, because often the university studies are either leading industry, or industry is leading the university. Take Stamford University and BP. The BP campus at Stamford was out of bounds to the other university Alumni, it caused an absolute outrage when it happened, but top stuff is top stuff, and \Who dares wins\. ESPRC UK is another area where research is moving in leaps and bounds for the British 1000mph land speed record car. Imagine a debate between the inventor of a car wasting tons of toxic fuel per second discussing the benefits for the green community? It is these kinds of projects that have launched the car industry out of the iron age and into a brilliant future.
Look forward to your first debate night.
Airbrushed imaging in advertising and Sussex University Alumni is quite a hot one at the moment. Even the ASA are being called to question by the Alumni.
Borders were, and still are to a certain degree, looking for a point of difference. They don’t want to become one of the crowd. They want to become one with the crowd.
If other brands fight them for market share, that is good. It’s proof that a clear dividing line exists.
I agree with that one, where else can i get a overpriced coffee and some recycled not paper and a book on ‘innovation and sustainability in design management’ all together? I’m a bit lazy to go mincing around the place for all these things that why i think borders works for me.
@ Kevin Gordon
I share you pain for magazines on shelves in W H Smiths, all of my mags that I like and on the near to top shelf so I have to jump up to get them, there by knocking over some mean businessmen who are eating sushi and reading private eye.
I think that they could be a better system in place for magazines or book, I would love it if there we Japanese style book vending machines, that would give u a quick blurb about the book and it would make books way more accessible specially if your at a isolated bus depot or a train station and you don’t have a iphone like us commoners don’t have. but alas one can dream.
great debate everyone.
one thing never to forget about a book: you look smart reading a book. reading a Kindle or iPhone book just makes you look… well, nerdy (to put it mildly).
as a business model for bookstores I think there’re two separate yet connected models: fiction and non-fiction. many non-fiction books take longer to read (cause you’re actually studying them) and this could work as a library. fiction must follow bookstore logic.
I really like first chapters idea cause you can display them on store windows, inviting more people to enter.
A no is not just better than a maybe it should be your goal.
Disqualify hard and save time and money.
I’ll accept a No or a Yes, I wont accept think it overs or maybes, if you agree then lets talk.
Alas, it seems all our ideas are for naught. Borders is no more. If only they’d travelled forward in time and read this blog…