Sure, a lot of the "rules" of marketing have changed, thanks to the constant evolution of the internet and related technologies. But certain human fundamentals don't. One of them--the very first in the Mackay book--was being quite flagrantly violated tonight when my husband and I stopped into Barnes & Noble. To quote:
Marketing is not the art of selling. It's not the simple business of convincing someone to buy. It is the art of creating conditions by which the buyer convinces himself.Understand that when I walk into a bookstore, a sale is already half-made. I'm just a sucker that way. But when the music is blaring so loud that I can't concentrate on the chapter I'm trying to skim to get a feel for a book, I can't convince myself to buy it. When we walked out of the store, my husband remarked, "It's like walking out of a bar."
Now, I realize that bricks-and-mortar bookstores are under fierce competition from Amazon.com and probably their own online incarnations as well. They can only be expected to make up so much of that in overpriced coffee and pastries. But real-world bookstores let you browse a book before deciding to buy, something their virtual counterparts very often don't. That's a huge advantage, and turning a bookstore into something that feels more like a club completely negates it.
It's possible that I'm just missing something, namely the next evolution of the trade that began with Gutenberg and Manutius and the like--one that might be a no-brainer to those who put ink on paper for a living. It's not a romantic business, however much bibliophiles--such as my unabashed self--tend to idealize it. But to say that blogging and self-publishing are responsible for the death of the bookstore ignores part of the equation.
Simply put: A book is a more tangible connection with information than a website that may or may not be there tomorrow. Having that information in dead-tree format is an insurance policy against that information being scattered to the winds or lost entirely. But, unlike "free" information on the internet, books cost money. This requires us to make a buy vs. pass decision that cannot be made (first hand, anyway) without viewing a sample of the work to determine whether we can make a connection with it.
A bookstore--at its most elemental--exists to make that initial connection. Having coffee with that book while the connection is being made is a nice option to have, but is not central to the experience. And when the bookstore's attempt at "ambiance" completely subverts the match-making, the whole point of having books at what's essentially a coffee-bar is lost on me.
