Secretly Starbucks Owns This Blog

I’ve come to the opinion that secretly Starbucks actually rules the book world. No, not because there is a Starbucks on every corner or because I may have sold them my soul yesterday for a Venti Caramel Macchiato (which is sad because for much of my life I was a peaceful, tea-drinking person). My belief stems from there being a Starbucks in every Barnes and Noble, luring the bookish folks to grab a mocha before finding their book of choice, and a Seattle’s Best (owned by Starbucks) in every Borders taking over the café half of the business. Any day now I expect to see a Publisher’s Weekly article on the B&N-Borders merger headed by Howard Schultz and Jim Donald (who took the place of Orin Smith), bringing coffee and books together forever.

The logo for the new super chain would be the little fishy woman holding a book.

Were this to happen, indies would scream, the apocalypse would begin, I would get better health insurance and that book industry would never be the same because Starbucks is in the business of taking chances even if it doesn’t look like it on our level.

But this is not a blog about Starbucks.

In the May 22nd edition of Business Week, Stanley Holmes wrote an article called, “Into the Wild Blog Yonder,” about Boeing (and Boeing’s Vice President of Marketing, Randy Baseler) opening up to the internet community and criticism by starting a blog. They (Boeing and Randy) took some hits in the beginning (they didn’t allow comments right away), but soon they started offering information on the world of airplanes and airlines that hadn’t been available before and—more importantly—some accountability to the public by making themselves accessible. They also started using blogs internally so that workers could publicly (well, as public as a private, only-for-the-company’s-use forum can get) post their questions and reservations anonymously. Suddenly the lowliest low’s opinions could reach the tippity-top without going through a whole chain of managers. Did these blogs make a difference? Boeing thinks so, and it’s not the first to use this system, apparently Disney, McDonald’s and General Motors do as well.

But this is not a blog about Boeing, Disney, McDonald’s or General Motors.

This is a blog about books, and bookstores, and readers and authors. It’s not supported by my chain, or a reflection of it, which is why I blog anonymously. It’s not something I get paid to do (although believe you me, if I could figure out a way to make some ethically viable money off of it I would ‘cause I’m greedy like that, and, well, poor), but something I do because I love books and I love looking into the book world’s future and drawing conclusions. And my conclusion here? We, bookstores big and small, could learn from Starbucks and Boeing. Does this mean that I think that Stephen Riggio and Greg Josefowicz (have they found anyone to replace him yet?) should open themselves up to every Tom, Dick and Harry with access to the internet? No, they wouldn’t get anything done, but should these companies have a way to make themselves accountable via something more than the customer service hotline? Yes.

In the Boeing article Charlene Li, who’s an analyst for the Forrester Research Inc., said, “Companies are nervous about creating external blogs because they fear the negative comments. But negative comments do exist. A company is better off knowing about them.” If you know about them you can address them, you can deal with them, and you can reshape company policy if the issue is big enough. You won’t get blind-sided…or at least not as much.

Of course, as we’ve discussed before, the community on the internet is not always reflective of the community as a whole. But the internet community is where companies are trying to win the battles now, it’s where the news is getting picked up, sent out and disseminated. For a small scale Indie this may or may not make a difference. The most important thing is for an Indie to be part of their community, not necessarily subject to the whims of the whole nation like nationwide stores. But nationwide chains have stores in communities. They should acknowledge and conform to the wants and needs of their customers like Indies have the freedom to do. They should form relationships with the other stores in their area and work towards providing the best books available for their customer.

Customer loyalty comes from happy customers. Happy customers come from California Cheese giving them what they want with good service, no judgment and a smile. We can argue all day about deep discounts ruining business for Indies and pulling down Chain profit margins while they try to compete with Target, Walmart and Costco. We can point fingers and call each other whiney, or uncaring, or overwhelmed.

This won’t get anything done.

What will is to look ahead, take chances, embrace the different, the local, and the large and small scale.

Embrace our customers.

Embrace the publishers and writers that bring business to our stores.

And in the middle of all this embracing and book lovin’ build a community that keeps people coming back, keeps stores—Indie and Chain—open, and keeps us all reading.

And if we need to use the internet, public signings, fire-eaters, newspapers, and our voices to do that, then let’s do it.

So I ask you, dear reader, what would make your book buying experience better today?