Posted on 05/31/2002 2:11:56 PM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
Rebbeca Elliott has tears in her eyes. The 35-year-old general manager of the Pyramid Mall's new Borders is describing the benefits package the chain bookstore offers its full-time employees. This makes her misty. Borders employees receive full medical, dental, and optical coverage, short-term and long-term disability, book credit and discounts.
Elliott herself has in every way benefited from her affiliation with the multi-billion dollar international bookselling corporation. A corporation which was "started by hippies" in Ann Arbor Michigan 30 years ago. She is quick to detail the community outreach the company (which sponsored the Dali Lama's tour) does. And as she speaks she is again awed by the sense of "family" Borders has created. They recently gave the Nature Center some book cases. They'll be donating new and used books for good causes, they sponsor NPR, RIF, and the Hurston Wright foundation. They'll be hosting Bilingual story hour, lesbian and gay reading groups, the work of local artists, and they give 20 percent discounts for educators on classroom purchases.
"I'm an unabashed cheerleader for my company," Elliot says. "I'm not going to pretend I'm not."
Her devotion and enthusiasm are infectious, and her idealism concerning the corporation's success and egalitarian treatment of employees is representationally "Ithacan", full of the coexisting contradictions that drive this town; and an insistence on a kind of inclusiveness that has tolerant room for everything from the GreenStar check-out line to barrels of toxic waste buried beneath low income housing. The kind of inclusiveness that is comfortable with the concept of a "Human Corporation."
Because, after all, humans make up the corporation. Humans like Rebecca, who seems to be impossible to dislike, whose earnestness and personalizing of the issues sound like this: "You can't make people like you. People have this idea that the big bad wolf is coming in, and that's just not it. It's like labeling people before you even know them. Once people get to know us and where we come from they'll like us. We're basically happy people and there's a reason for it."
A vegetarian for 12 years, Elliot wears wire rimmed glasses, work boots, and jeans with holes in the knees. Her cell phone is clipped to her front pocket.
"Everything we do has to say Ithaca," she says. "The store will represent everyone in the community. We're not trying to go with a specific demographic."
Not Worried
The recent opening of Borders at the mall, and the projected November opening of Barnes and Noble at Tops Plaza appear at this point to be non-issues within the community. There has been no protest.
The opening of the Borders in Santa Cruz, Calif., saw widespread debate, demonstration, and boycott. Thirty-five hundred residents of the small community put their names on anti-Borders petitions. Some of the concern in California centered around aesthetics. Opponents believed the building itself would destroy the character of the area. This is not a concern in our community where the incoming chains will be located in a mall and a strip mall. Other concerns in Santa Cruz centered around business practices. The closing of the well-known independent Crown Books seemed to confirm the fears of the opposition.
Ithaca, however, has seen less concern from local booksellers than was predicted. The chain stores will largely be competing with one another, leaving downtown to its usual traffic, and loyal client base. And of course the existence of Amazon.com renders nearly every argument mute. The campus bookstores may see a greater loss in sales than downtown stores, as the student demographic tends to be more heavily acclimated to mall culture.
Jim Sulkowski, the district manager of Barnes and Noble, which plans on opening their local store this November, says he's never seen an independent close as a result of their coming in. "It just hasn't been our experience," Sulkowski says. "We live in harmony with the independent bookstores just like Borders does, and I don't anticipate anything changing."
Elliott believes the existence of Borders helps the independents. "If they go out of business it won't be because of us," she says. "We form partnerships with the other bookstores. We recommend that people go to them. We bring in a lot of people who don't normally go to bookstores and once we get them started they begin to frequent other stores."
In just under a six-year period the number of independent bookstores has fallen from 4,500 to 3,300 nationally. Within the same period chains have nearly doubled. But this is a national issue. And like so many national issues our community seems to find itself the exception.
Non-issues are on the rise in Ithaca. However there is no truth to the rumor that Ithaca is a dreamworld, a monastic colony of intellectual and moral do-gooders, allegedly separated from the rest of the nation by something no one would be tactless enough to call "privilege."
The opening of Borders and Barnes and Noble will at last give Ithacans a CHOICE. Something that the educated, Caucasian, middle to upper-middle class demographic, that comprises the majority of the book-buying population, has always lacked. Before Borders, if you were unable to find what you wanted at say, Borealis Books, it may have taken up to three whole days to receive it from Amazon.com. In fact it may have taken a week.
I remember when I was 16 and worked at Triangle Bookstore in Collegetown. Sometimes it took as long as two weeks for a person to get the book they wanted. It is, of course, unfathomable and absurd in this day and age to think of a person waiting that long. Imagine waiting more than 15 minutes at McDonalds. It just doesn't and shouldn't, happen. Not in a free society.
James Curran, owner of Ithaca Books, says his store will be positively affected by the Borders/Barnes & Noble openings. "The more books the better," says Curran. "The most successful used bookstores are in areas that are jam packed with new books. We see it as a win/win situation to have more books in the community. Ithaca has been underrepresented in new books. More competition creates price shopping, which we love, and greater knowledge of books.
"We interpret things in a positive light," says Curran. "I think downtown has really improved and more books, more retail will further improve things. Borders and Barnes & Noble coming into the new book sector could cause a shake out and it's just going to have to be that way. There should be more exchange of customers and a more positive competitive relationship among bookstores."
Joe Wetmore, owner of Autumn Leaves and perennial town board candidate doesn't see the chain bookstores having any significant effect on downtown. "They're not going to compete with downtown," Wetmore says. "Certainly they've looked at the independents and they'll be trying to siphon off as much of their customer base as they can. They'll be going after the same clientele as K-mart and Wegmans and Tops. The Ithaca Community doesn't realize that those are the major sellers of books in this country. They only have 100 titles but they sell thousands and thousands of them."
Setting the Standard
Wetmore believes it will effect the community in terms of limiting the new titles available to customers. "They don't buy for the community. They buy their nationwide standard, they have a model and after their opening splash they revert back to the usual books by major selling authors. Every store is stocked the same way," Wetmore says. "Every store gets the same number of the same titles based on the size of the store and the population of the area. They wont skew to fit the intellectual interests of the community."
But Rebecca Elliot says otherwise. "We always carry poetry at Borders, even though it doesn't sell. We think it's important. We carry a lot of small presses and obscure texts," she says. "After a year or two our title base will develop into what people in the community are buying."
"That's not what happens in their other stores," Wetmore says of Elliot's claim, "So this will be the first time it ever does. If it does."
But perhaps the reason Borders has such a popular title base in each of their stores is because they are not "snobs".
"We used to be snobs," says Elliot, who in the small amount of spare time she has lately, is reading a historical romance by Dianna Gabaldon. "But any time you're trying to be snobbish or exclusive it's a bad thing. I'd rather be around someone who is excited than someone who can quote Shakespeare."
But with less and less people around who can actually quote Shakespeare...well, we may not have much of a choice.
"No one can predict for certain what effect Borders and Barnes & Noble will have on the independent bookstores," says Jack Goldman, owner of the long-standing and well-respected Bookery I and II. "It's too early to see."
Located in the historic Dewitt Mall, Goldman's stores have come to represent the character of the intellectual interests of the community. Goldman also publishes one of the only existing independent newspapers in the area, sponsors readings like the recent Michael Moore event at the State Theatre, and supports WEOS' Democracy Now.
"We co-existed very well with chains in the past," says Goldman. "There was a good division of labor and no one was trying to dominate the book market. It's not that they're bad people [at Borders and Barnes & Noble.] I'm sure they're very nice. But they're a large corporation, publicly traded, and have to play by corporate rules. They will design their inventory so that every inch of shelf space brings in maximum sales. And eventually you may see only what their accountant wants on the shelves."
Goldman's statement touches upon what critics of Borders feel to be the primary concern nationally, the creation of a monoculture, and the fear that chain bookstores have begun to dictate what gets published based solely on the bottom line.
Bill Petrocelli, publisher of an online publication for independent bookstores is quoted as saying, "Big publishers tell us off the record that Borders pre-screens books." Meaning that publishers show prospective manuscripts to chains in order to lower their risk of taking on a "difficult" manuscript. Petrocelli claims that stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders practice a kind of censorship through refusing manuscripts before they have been published.
Essentially this forces publishers to reject works regardless of their merit because they won't be carried in the majority of communities nationwide that are dependent solely on chains for their sources of literature. Writers like the now best-selling Barbara Kingslover (The Bean Trees) made their careers through building a following in the independents that carried them, and were only later picked up by corporate chains. Kingslover has come out against the growth of bookstore chains calling it a "first amendment issue."
"If you look at publishers from even the 1900s they had two parts of their house," says Joe Wetmore. "The money making end and the end they were proud of. James Joyces' Ulysses was published because it was thought to be a great work of literature by the publisher, not because it was expected to make money. The publisher was simply proud to have it on his list. Now it's the bottom line. They're not interested in low-selling titles, in something that would sell twenty or thirty thousand copies. If independents are taken out of the mix and turned into minor players Borders and Barnes & Noble are able to turn around and tell publishers what to publish."
Borders' arrival on the scene is a non-issue, unlikely to effect our local bookstores. Borders is a multi-billion dollar corporation that deals with sales and distribution of intellectual material. It is run by people. Very nice ones.
"The main issue," says Jack Goldman, "Is when it comes to books it's not like any other product. When you start narrowing the number of people involved in what gets sold and what gets published, and what we are able to read I find it a dismal prospect."
Or as Rebecca Elliott puts it, "We like to see Borders culture as a bacteria. We want it to spread."
I never realized that Borders was such a liberal company. Time to stop shopping there.
Non-issues are on the rise in Ithaca. However there is no truth to the rumor that Ithaca is a dreamworld, a monastic colony of intellectual and moral do-gooders, allegedly separated from the rest of the nation by something no one would be tactless enough to call "privilege."
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. This is exactly why "Ithaca is the City of Evil."
You can't, on one hand, brag about being "the most enlightened City in America", and then claim to be "just folks."
In fact, other parts of this very article belie the author's claim:
Located in the historic Dewitt Mall, Goldman's stores have come to represent the character of the intellectual interests of the community. Goldman also publishes one of the only existing independent newspapers in the area, sponsors readings like the recent Michael Moore event at the State Theatre, and supports WEOS' Democracy Now.
Maybe I'm alone on this, but the "character of... the community" sure sounds like "a dreamworld, a monastic colony of intellectual and moral do-gooders, allegedly separated from the rest of the nation" to me.
Or as Rebecca Elliott puts it, "We like to see Borders culture as a bacteria. We want it to spread."
How typical of a liberal, speaking of the liberal culture.
Yes, we are going with all demographic's deviant enough to fit under, and into, the big circus tent that is Ithaca, The City of Evil.
Of course not...
Seems to me Borders substantially increases diversity in what's available, so I don't see what the fuss is. There are now more books available than ever.
The bookstores in Ithica sound like Midnight Special in Santa Monica, which sells pretty much exclusively leftist books and publications. I'm willing to bet you'll find a lot more conservative books in Borders than you would in the other bookstores in Ithica.
So on balance, I would argue that you should welcome Borders et al, since the number of available titles will increase dramatically.
D
Duh.......A business exists to make money. That's what happened to Crown, a bookstore that I liked very much. They simply didn't pay enough attention to profits, and went under.
I knew the end was near when the Corner Bookstore went out. Sigh...
That was the very first promotion Borders had when they opened their store in Bangor, Maine back in the mid-nineties...in Burlington, Vermont; Barnes and Noble rack gay magazines like Out and the Advocate at the eye level of young children, right out front. I don't do business with either of them.
I think of liberal culture as bacteria too. Got any Lysol?
When needed for liberals, it's referred to as Liesol.
What an elitist fool. Our local Barnes and Noble stocks something like 150,000 titles. It's also probably the most popular non-alcohol serving hangout in the area. The parking lot is full on a Saturday night. It's also my favorite place to hang out when I have an hour to kill.
I remember our local indy bookstore had a sign in the periodical section that said "This is not a library" to discourage browsing. Thankfully, it went out of business.
What rot. I go to Borders because I find intellectual diversity there. That is their selling point. If that diversity goes away, I go away (and they know it). Amazon always has what I want; I don't need to schlep to a bookstore for that. The genius of Borders is browsing a gigantic rack of offbeat books, and stumbling across something I didn't know existed, but can't do without. That's how they pry more dollars loose from my pocket, not by devoting extra shelf space to the next Danielle Steele novel.
Socialists like this guy simply don't understand Adam Smith's theory of the "invisible hand", which lies at the root of what makes capitalism the best system.
What will bring in "maximum sales"? What will the accountant want on the shelves? The answer: the books people want, when they want them, at a price they find attractive! Consider the alternative: a government bureaucracy deciding what books people "need" and how much is a "fair" price. Case in point: the now-extinct Soviet Union, which sunk under a morass of shortages and shoddy merchandise, thanks to the "brilliance" of central planning.
No, Hillary and her friends, it DOESN'T take a village to have a sucessful economy. It takes free markets, with lots of people competing to make maximum profits, and supplying desired goods and services in an attractive and affordable manner!
There's a niche for everything. Someone could fill a niche and make some money selling to folks who don't want the lowest common denominator. But it's darn hard. Just because B&N and Borders are out there does NOT mean I'm buying more books if they're selling dreck. Just like I'm not buying more clothes if I can't stand whatever fad is selling at the moment. Or going to the movies to see Porky's XXII.
Sigh. Thank goodness for the internet. With any luck people will soon be able to bypass publishers, then we'll be able to see an example of capitalism helping the folks who don't run with the herd. We're a market, too.
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