Let's take my local shop as a bit of an example. When I moved to the town there were two outlets located in the town centre and the 'just outside town' shopping world (AKA Ventura). Both shops were comfortable to visit and, as the town's only purveyor of books, was 'the' place to buy books from. Both met the needs of the shoppers and the larger (Ventura) site was airy and comfortable to visit and mooch (could have done with a Costa but I'd been spoiled by my time at Fenland Polytechnic).
Then, as if someone had cast an awful and wicked spell upon the town the central store vanished and the larger shop became cluttered and claustrophobic to the point that I had to visit the big city (Birmingham) to find a 'proper' bookshop! There was so much on offer that it, much like Woolworth's, offered nothing. This week I popped in and found, amazingly, that WH Smith no longer sells much in the way of the DVD anymore. There was some limited, generally trash, DVDs but it is now obviously a spent force insofar as that area is concerned. Still, I had come for a few new reads and a couple of magazine and this is where perhaps the decline in sales is rooted.
I visited the 'reading room', the place where myriad number of cheapskate morons stand and read their periodical of choice. Trying to get past these wallies was an artform in itself for even when, dogcollar glowing and bestest mannered, I asked if they could move, I found I was greeted with a bunch of people who were apparently rendered deaf as well as immobile! I asked one of the assistants whether they might be of assistance but they were unwilling to incur the wrath of the reading room and said that it was company policy to 'leave them alone'! How bl**dy silly can you get? Still, I saved myself some money on frivolous reading matter and since it's not worth struggling with the same 'won't pay - will read' on the selling side I will take this as a sound policy decision and do likewise. Perhaps there's a way of converting issues read into something that builds dividends but I doubt it (and I've struggled with Parish Share you know).
So here's a tip for WH Smith: Try selling books and putting the buying customer ahead of the reading room fraternity. Don't bother to push the stationery and related lines (well, not when Hobbycraft is two doors away) but sell books, periodicals and DVDs (or is the removal of DVDs merely recognition that you'll never beat the local ASDA?) and the stuff that made WH Smith the place to visit. Don't go the way of Woollies and stock 'popular' lines in the hope that volume sales of alternative types will change the pattern.
Bottom line is that we have no bookseller but you in our town and you are failing us in the way that you manage your space and serve your clientele. O.K. I understand that for many of those who enter your shop anything over thirty pages is akin to War and Peace but unless you're willing to regain your identity I guess all that is left is Waterstones' and the internet with browsing taking place on the book programme and the like before we buy.
And for those who don't buy but like to read - shove off will you?
Soapbox away :-)
And a moment to remember an old friend :-(
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