Why Retail Models Don't Work in Libraries

The retail bookstore model is an excellent method of structuring a library.

In theory.

I can definitely get a full day’s work done without once straying into some internet rabbit hole about something like a 3D printed organization system for screws.

In theory.

But in execution, neither of these things seem to work.

Why?

Because I have random screws that I can’t throw away because I MIGHT NEED THEM!

For the first, more important, more relevant to this newsletter item, the theory about retail models in libraries doesn’t work Because Reasons. Reasons I’ll tell you about.

That’s why this is a newsletter. I don’t just bring up questions and then leave them. That’d be more like a questionletter than a newsletter. I don’t do that.

Where The Popularity of the Retail Model Came From

To be honest with you, I’m not 100% sure where this originated, but I can tell you a lot of libraries were looking at their retail cousins in the late 2000’s or early 2010’s with a lustful gaze that is VERY inappropriate for cousins.

Which seemed odd to me because with the economic collapse of 2008, retail bookstores had a ROUGH time. I think our Borders closed in 2011, and somehow our library was looking to retail models to help stay afloat.

Which brings me to my first guess: Desperation.

2008 was rough, y’all. I know this because I graduated from my MLS program in 2008, and by the time I got my diploma, all of the library systems in the area were in a hiring freeze.

Hard economic times are especially hard on libraries. When the economy is bad, the library’s budget tends to get cut early and often. AND, when the economy is bad, people use the library more to save a little dough. The library is an unusual situation that’s unlike business because increased patronage doesn’t directly correlate with increased budget.

Hard times are also hard on libraries because many of us find ourselves in competition with emergency services, roads, all the other things we’re ALWAYS competing with, but the gas is turned up a bit when the pie is smaller.

So the desperation may have also been about a need to advocate: We need to convince people to use us and that they’re getting what they want from the library.

Theory #2

…sometimes there’s a vibe in libraries that’s a little hard to say in a nice way, so I’ll say it, and then we can worry about softening or adjusting it:

Sometimes the library can feel like book sales on “easy mode.” Because it’s not like we need to send X books home today in order to keep the lights on.

Sometimes, when business-minded folks come into the library world, they struggle with this a bit. There’s no easy math for X inputs result in Y outputs.

And sometimes, this can tip over into some people feeling about the library the way they feel about the DMV: Well, it’s free, so what do you expect? (My least favorite phrase in libraries, by the way).

Whether this feeling is legitimate or not, and whether it’s coming from the staff or not, I think this sort of, “We’re government, we don’t have to try very hard,” attitude is one that some staff or some admin want to fight against. Which, you know, is fair.

And I think one way people think to fight against it is to use their capitalistic cousins, the bookstores, as a template.

The Biggest Difference, Right Off

People generally go into a bookstore for a book.

People go into a library for a much wider variety of things.

It’s funny in a way because you’d think library users would be a more book-centric audience than bookstore shoppers, but you’d be very, very wrong.

Because the library is used by a lot of people who never check out a single book. They use computers, internet, meeting spaces, or any number of other services.

Most bookstores don’t offer internet terminals or meeting rooms, and if they have a summer reading deal or storytime, it’s usually not as robust as what a library offers (although, hot tip, bookstores: storytime brings in the kids and the moms, and it’s a pretty decent way to motivate some sales).

And, yes, bookstores often sell music, movies, Legos, journals, all sorts of stuff, but the overall purpose of entering is the same: commerce. The items may be different, but the way they’re handled by the store is the same.

In a library, someone who is using a meeting room isn’t handled the same way as someone checking out an item. Different transactions, different levels of service.

The variety of services, both in type and in depth, makes the library a very different environment.

The Stock Difference

I think this is the biggest difference between a retail store and a retail-style library:

In a retail setting, how many copies of Dune do you buy when the movie is coming out?

As many as you can sell!

I feel like that had a joke setup and a non-joke punchline. Which is, I guess, just a line, no punch.

To put it more specifically and in terms a retail outlet would never use: You stock as many copies of Dune as you can sell once.

See, in a bookstore, you buy 100 copies of Dune, and you only have to sell each of those copies one time.

In a library, it doesn’t quite work that way.

If we bought a hundred copies, we’d sell them once, then get them returned, then have to sell them again, on and on through eternity, as long as the spice holds out(?) I’m not a Dunehead, I don’t know much about it other than the ill-advised popcorn bucket that makes me suspect the makers of Dune merch knew EXACTLY what they were doing. Why would anyone want to eat popcorn out of this? You’d get all those tentacles all greasy. C’mon, we know what this is about: viral marketing where someone goes “Whoops, didn’t realize we made a sex toy oh well!”

And that, my friends, that causes problems. Not the sexy popcorn buckets, damn it, the number of copies.

It means that when a book is super popular, it’s tough for the library to have copies, ready to go, on the shelf, during the peak popularity. Because the waves crest briefly, then crash down, and now we’ve spent a good chunk of budget on Dune, and we’ve got lots of extras with no place to go.

In a bookstore, you want copies of a super popular book on the shelf. Not having them means you’re missing an opportunity for additional sales.

In a library, if we have copies of a super popular book on the shelves, we have too many copies. What you really want is just enough copies to make the hold list very short, but not so many that you’ve got extras sitting around. With super popular books, extras are wasted money.

Returns of the Jedi

Retailers can almost always return their extra copies. If I overordered Dune, it’s pretty certain that I’ve ordered it from a distributor. If I end up with five huge boxes of Dunes, I can return those to the distributor, they return them to the publisher, and this means I don’t carry a financial burden from over-ordering.

This is a system set up by publishers so that it’s easier to convince a bookstore to take a larger number of copies of something. “Hey, if you don’t sell all of those Alice Cooper golf books, we’ll buy them back, so there’s zero financial risk on your part.”

Libraries don’t work that way.

The simplest answer for why this is: A retailer would not be able to return a copy of a book that had stamps on the edges, a barcode stuck to the book’s cover, and a plastic cover attached with heavy duty tape.

This means bookstores can be a little more fast, a little more loose, and, why not, a little more furious, when ordering. If they massively over-order something, it’s no biggie so long as they’ve got a good relationship with the publisher and keep track of timelines. Once their Dune copies stop moving, they can return them and replace them on display with the novelization of the new Fast & Furious.

It’s about family. And literacy.

Why Can’t You Just Put Extra Copies In Storage?

It’s not a horrible question. It’s fair to assume that Lord of the Rings will be popular for quite a long time, so why not order extra copies when the movies are out, then put some in storage. Then, as the copies on the shelves get worn out, you can replace the ones in circulation with near-new copies you’ve had in storage.

The problem is that storage ain’t free.

If you rented a storage locker temporarily because you came into a bunch of stuff you couldn’t accommodate, or because you moved and downsized, I get it. Sometimes you need to buy yourself a little time to figure out what to do with a disco ball.

For a moderately small unit where I live, you’re talking $50 a month.

And here’s where the math comes in: How many months of storage would it take before you’d spent more on storage than you would to buy the same books again brand new?

Now, consider that a library is a HUGE upscale, size-wise. You’re not going to make even a tiny dent in your collection with anything less than an absolutely enormous storage facility.

Consider that this can’t just be books crammed into a small space. This needs to be a catalogued collection of materials. You need to know what’s in there, what quantity, and you need to be able to retrieve it pretty easily.

Consider that your storage will probably need an employee to keep inventory, pull things, add things that are being put in storage, and to do the basic management of the physical space. Probably more than one employee.

Consider that your storage will probably need to be added as a location on your courier route, so that will add some cost.

What I’m saying is that a hundred copies of Dune will probably cost us something like $300 dollars to purchase, and we’ll spend many times that amount the first month they’re in storage.

Hand Selling

There ARE things I think libraries could learn from retail, and I think hand selling is one of them.

Hand selling is the practice of strongly recommending books to an individual, usually through one-on-one conversation.

This is a somewhat labor-intensive, but often effective, way to sell books.

Although it can be done badly. Our Borders tried to force cashiers to hand sell books, not a bad idea, but instead of hand selling something the customer might want, they were all pushing the same book at the same time, regardless of the customer.

They looked at me, guy in his early 20s buying probably a Chuck Palahniuk book, and were like, “I think you’d enjoy The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love: A Fallen Southern Belle's Look at Love, Life, Men, Marriage, and Being Prepared.”

Do you? Do you think I’d enjoy that?

In the library, hand selling is a surprisingly controversial thing.

One of the things library staff is trained to avoid is commenting on what someone is checking out. Because libraries value privacy so heavily, we’re taught that commenting on someone’s items may be a form of scrutinizing the person’s library use, and commenting on it might let someone else in line hear what that person is checking out.

I tend to think this is a very negative, unrealistic view of the hand selling practice, though, and I would like to see this change.

An example I use a lot: If someone brings up Shakespeare, and you happen to know that the local college is doing a production of The Merchant of Venice next week, I don’t see the harm in letting that person know. You’re not scrutinizing, you’re not asking them about their items, you’re volunteering information.

I also feel strongly that it’s a matter of using good judgment. If someone is bringing up a bunch of books related to divorce, do you recommend something without being asked? Hell to the no. But if they’re bringing up a few books by one of your favorite authors, is it okay to say that this author is your fave and to recommend some readalikes? I say absolutely.

Hand selling can seem like a high-input to low-gain way to move books, but the real benefit of effective hand selling is that people who receive good recommendations will come back for more, will tell their friends about the service they got, and will have an extremely high opinion of the library and its staff the next time they have to vote on a tax increase to fund the library.

Face Front!

I do think libraries would be smart to make A LOT more space for front-facing books, attractive displays, and more browse-able, visually-stimulating book storage.

This is something our retail buddies understand: browsing leads to buying.

When people come in, zip straight to the holds shelf, pick up their stuff, and leave, it’s a wonderful convenience. But we could push things further.

And I have to say, I went to a bookstore on a Friday evening a couple years back, and it was hoppin’! Is it cool to say “hoppin’” as long as you take the “g” off the end? Does that help an outdated term maintain its hipness?

It was full of people, couples browsing, families looking around, and I genuinely believe it’s because the bookstore is conducive to browsing.

In most libraries, browsing is not pleasant. In fact, it’s weird. If you’re in a row of stacks spaced exactly 36” apart, and they go up to about 7 feet, meeting a stranger is like coming across someone in an alley. Neither of you are doing anything wrong, but it just feels weird, right?

Am I suggesting lowering all the shelving, decimating the collection, and completely changing how your entire building is set up? No. What I’m suggesting is, as you move into the future and have a decision to make here and there about your library’s set up, consider whether you can make a choice that helps the building be more of a browser’s paradise, less of a storage facility.

The Hidden Power of Displays

One thing that’s hard to overcome in a library is the necessity to have a collection of depth and breadth.

In retail, if nobody who shops at your location has ever purchased a Charles Dickens book, you’d be insane to continue to stock them.

In a library, even if Charles Dickens isn’t tearing up the charts, you gotta have a couple titles on the shelves.

The problem with a collection that’s wide and deep is that it presents the browser with too many choices. And too many choices tends to prevent people from making a damn decision and taking something home.

You’ve done this before, the thing where you spend 45 minutes scrolling a streaming service without picking anything. The issue is that there’s TOO MUCH. How are there three movies that are basically “Showbiz Pizza character robots come to life, are evil?”

That’s why an increase in display space would be a huge benefit to most libraries, and it’s something we can learn to do right from retail.

You don’t need anything fancy, just a table with easily-changed signage.

You don’t have to do any kind of narrow subjects. Just put “Beach Reads” on the sign, throw out a bunch of stuff that’s fun to read.

When you make a display, you sort of say, “I’m helping you make a choice, THESE are books worth paying attention to.”

Subjects

This is a dirty concept in most libraries, filthier than those Dune popcorn buckets, but it’s worth considering.

You’ll notice that bookstores are not organized into two giant sections, fiction and non, and are instead organized into subjects or genres.

This is probably one of the best ways to increase browse-ability and to give people the chance to pick something up on a whim.

When I go to the library, my beloved Tom Spanbauer is shelved next to Nicholas Sparks. They are both fiction writers, their names are close alphabetically. But that’s all these books share in common. Most Nicholas Sparks readers aren’t going to enjoy Tom Spanbauer and vice versa.

This is normally where I’d make it clear I’m not judging Nicholas Sparks readers, and I’m not. However, I AM judging people who DON’T read Tom Spanbauer because you are all scum.

Tom Spanbauer should be next to Chuck Palahniuk, Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Gordon Lish, Katherine Dunn, and other authors who are similar. Because that’s a very good way to help me, a lover of Tom Spanbauer’s writing, discover new authors. And by “discover,” I mean “Spend money on.”

Nicholas Sparks should be next to Alice Sebold, Emily Giffin, and Kathryn Stockett.

This makes even more sense when you get into non-fiction. Do people want to browse 364.1523, or do they want to look over a table of True Crime?

Reason 1 for not doing this is that it does make things pretty complicated for the library. Figuring out the shelf space, what should be where, what should and shouldn’t be a genre, all of these things are a lot of work.

I pose that it might be worthwhile. Thinking of our collections this way, and thinking about our shelving as a dynamic system that needs yearly updates might be a lot of work, but it might be super helpful in drawing in readers.

Reason 2 is that it becomes more complicated to retrieve specific items. I say this drawback is bunk, though. A browse-y system does benefit people wandering more than it benefits people trying to go directly to an item, but the thing of it is, people going directly to a specific item are far more likely to be your power users, the people who know how a damn library works and can figure it out.

It’s not easy, I don’t want to make it seem like it’s remotely simple or something that every library can do tomorrow. But I want to plant the seed: is the future of your physical library browsing?

Can we move more books without doing more work?

Why Libraries And Retail Can Be Different Models

I think the best argument against libraries using a retail model is that retail and libraries serve different purposes, especially in collections, and that makes duplicating models a little silly.

If you need a book that’s, let’s face it, SUPER boring but informative, you’re a lot more likely to find it at the library.

If you need a book of literary short stories published in 1994, I like your odds at the library a lot better.

If you want to take a deep dive on a certain subject, like urban planning, the chances of finding a dozen options at the library are far, far greater.

The Worst Version of the Retail Model in Libraries

I tend to think the bad version of retail thinking in libraries usually comes from management/admin with a spreadsheet in hand.

It involves a TON of tracking. How many display books moved this month? How many last month? What can we do to replicate last month’s successes?

These are good things to track, but, guys, let’s do this in macro instead of micro, and let’s make it easier on ourselves.

• Do you have tracking that shows what people look up in your catalog most frequently? Are you disseminating that information to staff?

• You certainly know which authors and titles are checked out most often at which libraries. Are you leaning into those trends?

• Are you giving staff options for displays that hold more than 5 books at a time?

Don’t make staff keep tally sheets that show how 1 book of the 6 they had on display moved in a month. Don’t force people to track micro transactions. Look at the big picture first.

Dance With the One That Brung Ya

My biggest caution against going full retail is that in order to do it, you HAVE to change your collection, layout, and other factors.

You can’t just go with a retail mindset and then try to cram your existing collection into a retail model. Because your existing collection is not a retail collection.

You have to put money into it. You have to create opportunities for browsing and for person-to-person interaction between staff and patrons.

You have to change your service model. Because your current service model is a library service model, not a retail model.