Bookstores Should Do a Better Job at Inventory

This is the season of writing awards, and I have been visiting my city's bookstores frequently, with the hope that I would find the titles I was looking for easily. But each I time I go, I talk with employees who have no idea what I am talking about when I mention that the Man Booker Prize just released its shortlist, where can I find the books? Or the just the other day, I was in a big bookstore in the Fair Oaks area of Sacramento, and I wanted to see all the authors on the Frank O'Connor Shortlist; again, a manager-type person I talked to had no idea what I was talking about--Frank who what?

In the same store, when I was standing in the magazine section, a store clerk brought a customer who wanted to be shown some academic journals, and the two kept arguing, the clerk saying this was the magazine area for psychology, and the customer was saying, no I am not looking for magazines. I said journals.

"Yes, they are in this section, the magazines."

"They are not called magazines!"

I had to intervene by telling the customer that the store did not carry academic journals like PMLA, or Social Consciousness, etc. I knew because at one time I used to be the Periodicals Clerk of a large bookstore chain. So then the clerk left and the customer and I, another customer, took our discussion to another level, pointing out that each time we had come to the store it never seemed to have what we wanted....

In a Barnes and Noble once, I suggested to a clerk that they should have a list of all the awards and books events, just as they carry lists of the New York Times Best Sellers and the San Francisco Chronicle Best Sellers. That way if a customer like me walks in and says, "Hey, where do you keep the Pen?Faulkner shortlists?" they should be able to say, "Follow me," but not take me to Faulkner's books only.

Some may say a reader should not be driven only by award-winning authors. Well, there are some awards I respect so much that I will read all the books on the shortlist. If I end up buying two or three such books, that's money going to the bottomline of the bookstore, not to mention a little percentage going to the author's royalties. If music store have special displays for Grammys, why shouldn't bookstores do the same? Or do they make their money only through the Bargain Book tables? Because they sure know how to display those remainders.

But wait a minute, haven't we heard that bookstores are going out of business? And we also know that Amazon is doing very well, right? Oh, it might be because Amazon not only sends me emails of books news, they also have suggested titles people like me may enjoy, so when I sign on my account, they have all these titles that look attractive. However, there are moment I want to walk into my Borders (well, mine, the one in my neigbhorhood, went out of business) and walk to a Frank O'Connor, or Orange Prize special display and find what I want. I will browse the books, but chances are, if I brought my discount coupon, I may actually buy one or two of the books.