Nothing like building it up
Here goes. I’ve been given the chance to take on the best people I can find, make a bug list of all the things that ‘bugged me’ about the book industry and then attempt to solve them with a new site.
This started in September and we’re powering towards publishing the site on the 19th March, at least to the trade in a closed beta.
The site is in effect a result of my and the team’s collective experience, which covers pretty much every chain, and some independent, booksellers in the country.
We’re now four weeks off launch.
Try concentrating on the basics. In Chertsey, for example:
1. An MBS section without M Scott Peck is a joke.
2. No point in stocking series authors (Cornwall, O’Brian etc) unless you stock every title.
3. Stocking all of Coelho except The Alchemist, which outsells the others by a factor of 10, is ridiculous.
4. Saw lots of other examples of ingorance/incompetence. There is no point in the clever clever stuff if you can’t fix the basics.
5. Staff eating their lunch should not be serving customers at the same time.
6. Staff who have never heard of Michel de Montaigne should be in another job.
7. Staff who do not know how Samedaybooks works should be properly trained.
8. Scruffy notices apologising for closing early due to staff shortages reflect appallingly on the business.