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Book Worm

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Here’s a note from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden. And as usual, he needs last minute help with an assignment for some activity he’s in at Wendell Wilkie High School. But I don’t mind the last-minute, panicky attention. I’m flattered that he thought to ask.

Hey Mr. C.,

On Friday we got a assignment from Ms. Filcher – she’s the faculty advisor for our Young Moguls Club.

She gave us until this afternoon after school to come up with a business plan to save the publishing industry, which is going to disappear, if Barnes & Noble goes out of business.
Or so they say.

I remember going into Barnes & Noble when I was a little kid. We would head over to the children’s section and I had a great time pointing at stuff and begging mom and dad to buy me more than they had planned on. I was always able to come away with two or three extra books that I HAD to have – all because the folks thought it would help my education. Who woulda guessed I’d get stuck in 10th grade for, like, 20 years! Maybe it woulda turned out different if I’d read those books I went to so much trouble throwing fits to get, but reading a whole book takes time, and I just liked having ’em. They pile real nice and are a great material for building forts!

Anyhow, now I have to come up with a plan to save the publishing industry. I guess the thing about Barnes and Noble is that they’ve gone in whole hog to the e-book idea, selling their Nook e-reader in the store and trying to stay important in the book business all the way until some future time when there aren’t any, y’know, books.

Like, maybe, five years from now.

Anyway, I was hoping your blog people could tell me which one of my ideas I should present to Ms. Filcher when she asks for our plans. Here they are:

Plan 1: Barnes & Noble should give every high school sophomore in the U.S. a FREE Nook e-reader! Seriously, nobody in our generation is going to shell out money for this thing, ’cause we’ve all got computers and cell phones and our parents are on us to keep the costs down as it is. So give us free Nooks instead and who knows? Maybe we’ll use them. Or maybe we ‘ll sell them to our grandparents. Either way … Barnes & Noble would be helping the youth of today get a foothold in the economy of tomorrow!

Plan 2: Barnes & Noble should come out with a special e-reader for my age group with a name that really connects us to the kind of reading we do. I’m thinking they should call it the “Cram”.

Plan 3: Buy the company, fire everybody, sell the inventory, the fixtures and the stores, and run for president.

I’m pretty sure one of these answers will get me an “A”, but since Ms. Filcher is a lot closer to your age than mine, I was hoping you could help me decide!

I’m about the worst person in the world to ask for help with a business plan, but I have to admit I gave Bubby extra points for #3. So, how should he save the publishing industry?

Choose one of his options, or make up your own!

69 thoughts on “Book Worm”

  1. I think #2 is the best of the 3 options; I can actually imagine my 14-year-old nephew buying an e-book called Cram. 🙂

    They need to make a cozy reading area in their stores, and have a coffee shop nearby. Sell cloth book bags with their imprint on the front. Set up a discount table of remaindered books. Sell cards and sidelines that will draw in more customers. No wait, they’ve already done all that that!

    I want a fireplace to cozy up to, and someone to actually come around and serve the coffee, maybe with cookies and muffins, so I don’t have to get up out of the comfy chairs.

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  2. Hmm, where is everybody this morning?

    Unlike Dale, I’m not inclined to give extra points for the Mitt Romney approach to business, although it apparently can be very lucrative. Money isn’t everything.

    I love books! So much so, that in at least one respect, I have to confess that I’m a bit like Bubby: I own quite a few books I haven’t read. Not something that I’m proud of, but I’m guessing that half the books on my bookshelves fall in the “unread by me” category. So it seems to me that good marketing might be a good strategy for keeping books alive.

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  3. the e book thing is a quandry alright bubby
    i like the buy the company seel the fixtures and become amazon where there are no rent payments and let best buy and target sell the top 10 book of the week for 12 cents more than they pay for it and janet evonovich will be the new goddess of the written word. oprah can tell us what to check out of the library and we can wait to see what tom hanks and brad pitt will star in next and go buy those books right after the movie comes out. the wold doesnt read it watches tv and plays with cell phones. the give away of the readers is a good idea like the razor and the razor blades. can you believe how expensive razor blades are? like 3 bucks a piece for a blade that lasts maybe 2 weeks. geeze i remember when snickers bars were a nickle and the payphonon the corner could be made to work if you put a nickle in it and banged hard on the coin return as it was sliding through. can you believe how many razor blades are still in the wall form where your dad slid them through that little hole in the wall to let them become time capsules for the future demolition teams of the universe. whare are all these electronic leftovers going? they have toxic chemicals in the inner workings that make them be able to win at angry birds while receiving your facebook updates and filing your tax returns. barnes and noble. maybe jcpenny could buy them i hear target presidents like to buy up new stufff when they take over pieces of americana like jc penny. i think jc penny could open a corner of the store where they sell americana like jack purcell bumper tennis shoes and books from the 80’s and 90’s. they were still reading in the 80s and 90s right? they have those business plans that write themselves now where you have to choose from rapidly growing and incredibly growth before the sentance finishes itself. if you cant make a biz lan sound good with one of those you may want to go get a job in …. jc penny. good luck bubby. i think if you study how mit and newt would handle it that could be your answer. mit would buy the company fire all its employees and outsource the shipping of books they could have printed for them in poland and sri lanka at greatley reduced prices and on the other hand newt would like th company but have a hard time getting out of the back room without having an extra marital affair with the woman in charge of inventory. i dont know bubby maybe being in 10th grade is just where you need to stay. i wouldn’t be too anxious to try to pass this class. you may be propmoted and its a pretty scary world out there.

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      1. Cool tim!
        I was always fascinate by the pack of razor blades my Dad had; and how the knob on the bottom opened the top of the razor to replace the blade.
        I use a hand razor. I enjoy the lather and the process of shaving but I’ve learned it’s hard to whistle and shave without cutting yourself…

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  4. Good morning to all. Here is another option for Barnes and Noble to consider, Bubby. Convert the Barnes and Noble stores into Noble Barn stores. Instead of appealing to book worms they would start selling worms in their stores which would be oriented toward agriculture.

    They could put in a petting zoo featuring farm annimals, sell the supplies for raising chicken, and have a small hatchery to produce chicks that they would sell. They would also sell the supplies needed to raise the worms as well as selling worms. Of couse, they would have all kinds gardening supplies and equipment. Perhaps, they could have a corn maze made by using dried corn stalks to form the maze which would replace part of the area formerly devoted to book shelves.

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    2. i stopped iton egg plant yesterday in st paul . it is a store for the urban farmer with exactly what you describe jim. my son and i had 45 minutes to kill as i was taking him back to the dorm and then on to check out a 6 bedroom rental house for next years housing at st thomas, the egg plant had lots of seed saver kind of stuff and compost supplies and canning jars i was impressed with and in back there was the chicken coop info. my son was amazed that you could keep chickens in the city. he wanted to know what you would do when all those eggs turned into little chickens. i explained that if you keep the rooster out of the picture you just get eggs for breakfast every day. he thought that wa scool and was ready to order 12. i put him on hold for a while until he has a house. i don’t thingk the ra at the dorm would appreciate it but then again you never know… the rental house was a trip. beer bottles and guitars and unmade beds with dirty clothes in the corners of the rent a wreck homes. i had to laugh the 30 something landlords looked like they were ready for the next nervous breakdown. the st paul law says you can only have 4 people sign the lease but you obviously can fit 6 people in the basement bedroom and save on the rent right otter? toga!!! maybe selling college books online could save them. 800 dollars per semester for books even used books could save them and with people having to reinvent themselves every year or two maybe the networking and job creation areas of the store would get the needed growth. libraries are working shorter hours. there is amn opportunity here. maybe some chickens in the corner….

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      3. Yep. City tried to shut down the chicken part, but there was such an outcry from the customers, I believe they have a special permit. Cats too, of course, mourning doves and maybe a cockatoo? and there used to be guinea pigs…

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    4. Anybody hear ‘This American Life’ over the weekend? There was a very funny story on some guys raising chickens in the backyard… they should have read the book first.

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  5. I just read as much of the article (going to disappear) as I could without weeping… it’s back to rampant greed – why does Amazon have to have it all? What’s wrong with them having their Online Nche and letting Books exist with Publisher?

    I’m like PJ – love books sometimes just for having them in case I want to read them. An ebook will not do. I want to feel the thing, look at the cover, turn the pages, hold it lightly on my lap as I sip my tea.

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    1. In addition to all the books that I WANT to read, are all the books that I feel I OUGHT to read or SHOULD have read. I’m a slow reader, and I can’t possibly keep up with all the books published, but if books are indeed an endangered species, I’m glad to have an inventory on hand.

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    2. I understand that the market for for vinyl records is coming back because some people like to have their music on something they can handle. I think there are more people like you, BiR, who like handling books similar to the people who like handlling music. B and N stores might be able to convert to selling retro products, books on paper, records on vinyl, and maybe some retro clothing and furniture. They convert part of their store space into old hippy head shops.

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  6. Give me books! E books just don’t do it for me. We don’t have a book store in our town, and the nearest Barnes and Noble is 96 miles away. I need to see the books to decide what I am going to read, and a Nook just doesn’t allow for that. I really like Jim’s idea, by the way. I think the only solution would be to invent a device that looks and feels like a book, with real pages, that will change from one book to another at the push of a button.

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    1. Just last week we were in a B&N, and my roommate found a new book on the WPA and the various arts it supported (murals, architecture, theater, etc.) that I hadn’t heard about before. Without being able to walk through the store and browse the shelves, we might never have known the book existed. Serendipity does happen online as well, but it’s not the same as browsing a bookshelf or flipping through a card catalog (a pasttime some of my older friends remember with great fondness).

      When I worked in the bookselling biz, management used to talk about the bright future of “print on demand,” a plan in which there’d be one copy of everything on the shelf for browsing, and then you’d place your order and personal copies would be printed up and automatically bound. That would have been cool–physical books, but no warehousing and shipping of backstock. Too bad it hasn’t happened. After a day of staring at a computer screen, the last thing I want to do is read my book on another computer screen. Paper seems so much more restful to the eyes, doesn’t it?

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      1. I totally agree about paper being easier on the eyes – and also heard much excited discussion on the “print on demand” plan. Too bad that didn’t prove economically feasible,

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  7. Mr. Arthritis and I have talked this over, and he is feeling generous. I am being allowed to write a few lines here. The option that makes overwhelming sense to me is the Cram. I think it should have several features:
    1) at the push of a button, a voice would read the book. A kid could choose male or female, old or young. A dial on the side of the Cram would set speaking speed, and its highest setting would be mighty darn fast!
    2) there would be a “Joke” button so that any bored teen could hear a joke especially chosen to appeal to young folks.
    3) another button would play music, since boys in particular think they can’t concentrate without raucous music blaring.
    4) a special “test” button would bring up a voice that would challenge the reader to what their comprehension level might be. “Hey, dude, you been paying attention? All this stuff about the red-hot letter A is a big deal for your teacher, so you need a way of explaining it if you are to pass any test!”
    5) . . . well, you get the idea.

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  8. Start planting books on celebrities and make sure that the paparazzi catch them in the act of carrying (and possibly even reading) books. Imagine the sales that would ring up if Justin Bieber were splashed in People or Us Weekly (or Tiger Beat…is Tiger Beat still around?) with his nose in “Catcher in the Rye” or “Lord of the Flies.” It could be part of a celeb’s PR package – who is seen where reading what book. Lady Gaga with a copy of “A Room of One’s Own,” maybe one of the Kardashian’s with “The Fountainhead”…there could be a daily round-up on E! highlighting what the rich and famous are reading right now. A paperback could become the new Uggs. Oh the possibilities…

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    4. OT, but every time anyone mentions the Kardashians–which isn’t often in my circles–I hear “Cardassians”. Makes for interesting mental images…

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      3. One night on ’30 Rock’ Jack made a TV that had audio remote control. When he mumbled under his breath “stupid” the TV channel changed to the Kardashians…

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  9. Rise and Shine Bookish Baboons!

    Just in from the dog walk this morning. My first response to Bubby’s quandry is self-interest: Because I work across the street from a B and N, I often wander over there on my breaks and browse. So what will I do with myself when/if they close? Looking on line for an e-book does not hold the same break potential as Starbucks and B and N.

    I bought my husband a Nook for his birthday. He loves it, but reads more magazines, etc. on it. It makes sense to give kids e-readers–it would solve a lot of book budget problems for the schools. So I vote for #1 or #2.

    But chances are if it happens it will spawn all sorts of unintended consequences.

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  10. #2 has potential, especially if you integrate video games with the assigned reading material. You read for 20 minutes, then take a brief quiz on the material, and if you pass, you unlock the next level of the game. (My e-reader has a tiny joystick – it could work.)

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  11. Morning!
    B&N needs more excitement; they have to make going there an event to pull in the teenage / young adult crowd. Loud music, flashing lights. Enough Clique’s in dark corners so everyone can find a place to feel welcome. And no parents / authority people around to stifle creativity… And smoking; there should be one smoke filled room.
    Back behind the dingy green door only accessible from a secret outside entrance under a sign saying ‘Dr. Olson DDS’ would be the regular B&N with the coffee and fireplace and free internet… and the chicken section.

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    2. Midnight, one more night without sleeping…
      (Re: “behind the dingy green door “)
      We’ll see if any of the oldsters get this…

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      1. knock once, blah, blah blah blah comes creepin
        green door, what’s that secret you’re keepin??
        they got an old piano and they play it hot behind the green door
        don’t know what they’re doin but they laugh a lot behind the green door
        wish you’d let me in so i could find out what’s behind the green door.

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      5. Excellent, PJ. and Barb, I’m impressed you knew that many lyrics. Don’t know who did it originally, just remember it from Hit Parade…

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    3. Be, I think they should employ you, or some of your students, to design and manage the lighting in the stores and, also, design and build some settings that are similar to stage sets.

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  13. It does seem that the surviving independent bookstores have some kind of gimmick or specialty – roaming chickens, famous owners who can afford to help out financially, religioius books… So we just have to come up with the right combination… Books and Fill Dirt, or Books and…?

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  14. How sad! A world without books! It’s hard to imagine.

    I guess I see some potential in Option #2, Bubby, but the point of school is to absorb, not cram. Oh well, it’s a brave new world. Computers are getting so smart that we could consider completely eliminating schools along with books and just do some kind of sleep learning or a Vulcan mind-meld on all school-age children. All the knowledge available would be CRAMmed into a student’s head in one sleep learning or mind-meld session and then they’d receive regular updates for life. Schools, books and reading might all one day be completely unnecessary.

    Like, maybe, five years from now.

    Oh dear, this is getting too surreal, Bubby. Go read 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Go read them now. Go to Barnes and Noble and buy both books, Bubby. Go now while there is still time.

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