I
was speaking with one of my favorite publishers the other day and he
said he was stuck in the warehouse seven days a week shipping books. I
told him that there are publishers who would kill for that problem, and
he replied,”It's just all this Black Friday stuff. It's just crazy!”
While
I still think there are far worse problems than filling orders around
the clock, I'm beginning to agree that the buzz surrounding Black Friday
has gone over the top. Two weeks ago I started getting emails offering
me “Black Friday Pricing Right Now”.
And
as I write this on the day before Thanksgiving there's a woman in a
Detroit suburb who has been living in a tent outside of a Best Buy store
since Sunday. She claimed in her interview that it was just a great
tradition.
Well,
apparently traditions come and traditions go. If that's her and her
family's tradition, God bless'em. You'd have to pay me multiple
thousands of dollars to endure her bizarre “tradition”. I doubt she
saved anything approaching that.
With
retailers opening their stores Thanksgiving afternoon to initiate Black
Friday pandemonium, it bothers me that there are shopping malls that
will impose fines on stores that don't open on Thanksgiving afternoon.
Which means the store must
be staffed. Which means employees will be required to break whatever
tradition their family has enjoyed over the years to go to work on
Thanksgiving. And it's probably for straight time because the employer
will juggle their hours to keep them under forty.
And I think that sucks.
Instead
of appreciating the sacrifice you're asking your employees to make,
you're ordering them to show-up on a day that at one time saw only
medical personnel and emergency responders on the job.
Many
people who accept those conditions do it out of loyalty to their
employer. A cashier I was chatting with at the grocer's yesterday said
she has no family in the area and volunteered to work Thanksgiving so
others could be with their families.
I'd
like to believe that happens universally but I know it doesn't. As an
aside she said she's worked many Black Fridays and after the initial
rush of night owls and early risers, shopping essentially stops for a
few hours and the employees outnumber the customers.
And
then all of this nonsense is followed three days later by Cyber Monday
when employees spend their time at work Googleing toys and trolling
Amazon for bargains.
Another fine holiday tradition.
I'm
not one to venerate traditions. I don't care how you refer to
Christmas, whether or not you watch the ball drop in Times Square on New
Years eve, or sacrifice meat-eating for Lent.
And I don't believe my traditions should be universal or even popular.
But
it makes me sad to hear that unbridled consumerism has supplanted the
time for family's to reflect on their lives together and find the
blessings so easily taken for granted. I just don't believe that the
thirty days between Thanksgiving and Christmas don't afford sufficient
opportunity to find the perfect gifts, or that corporations should be
able to impose fines on business owners simply because they prefer to
enjoy a family Thanksgiving Day and wish their employees the same
celebration.
My
friend is still hard at work filling orders this day before
Thanksgiving, but I've known him for many years. He won't be in the
warehouse on Thanksgiving Day. He appreciates the spiritual context of
his life.
Whatever
your family's tradition, I hope your Thanksgiving was as you hoped it
would be and your celebration was filled with love.
Most
Stolen Books
With free
Bibles available from a number of organizations, the fact that the
Bible is the most stolen book in a retail setting is odd, while
The Guinness
Book of Records is the
most stolen library book is stranger still.
Amazon
Vs. Hachette: Truce or Intermission?
While
both sides have proclaimed a cease-fire in their hostilities with
Amazon acquiescing to Hachette's agency pricing model for ebooks, it
appears that some
unresolved issues may remain.
Cookbooks
Defy Digital Trend
While
there's no shortage of recipes available online, it's
very difficult to present what we know as a cookbook online,
which seems to be a format well-suited to a conventional book form
presentation.
Amazon
Courts Authors En Route To Monopoly?
Amazon
clearly dominates the ebook market but has had less success with
conventional titles. Courting
authors with fat royalties may be the way to gain control of the
entire market, but authors need to remember that with less
competition from publishers those royalties will wither. It's called
a monopoly.
Bundled
Books
I've always
thought that instead of pitting printed books against ebooks,
bundling the two together adds little to their cost and would make
their purchase more attractive for people who read both formats in
some situations. Someone
agrees.
B&N
Back in Audio Books
Owing to
remarkable sales increases in audio books (thanks Boomers!) B&N
is re-entering the audio book sales market with an Android app.
B&N discontinued audible book support last summer.
Is
Increasing Illiteracy a Western Phenomenon?
A five story
bookstore in Taiwan is packed with customers, even at two in the
morning. It's
open 24 hours a day and has begun expanding throughout Asia, and
is even trying to establish stores in China.
Free
Fonts
I've always
felt that there are maybe twenty fonts that would be appropriate in
90% of all books for clarity and ease of reading. But display fonts?
You can never have enough.
Sky
Maul
For whatever
reason we've all been desperate enough to read the Sky Mall catalog
while traveling by air. This
parody reads smarter than the catalog itself.
An
Alternative to Sky Mall
In an attempt
to give fliers an alternative to Sky Mall (and perhaps sell a book
or two) Harper Collins has announced that excerpts
from its front list titles will be available via WiFi on Jet Blue
flights, along with the ability to purchase copies inflight.
Copyright
Law
While Google
Books has made the enforcement of copyright law nothing more than
“innocent until caught”, America's odious extensions of copyright
protection (in order to protect Disney's little mouse) encourages
many to disregard a law so broad as to invite abuse. Nevertheless,
copyright laws should have and could have relevance.
eBook
Product Placements
While
I'm sure this occurs in conventional books, getting
a $1.3 million boost for product placements in an ebook seems
overblown to me.
Oxford
Dictionaries' Word of the Year
I
worry that someone, somewhere anxiously awaits the Oxford
Dictionaries' annual selection for the Word of the Year. The
word is “vape”, a verb used for the act of smoking an
electronic cigarette.
Final
Thoughts
I would never
read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the
man who wrote it. Woodrow
Wilson
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