Competition puts booksellers’ service to forefront

By LINDA HERRICK

Urban myths abound about bookstore gaffes. Trouble is, they're not all myths. Jung Chan's memoir of communist China, Wild Swans, was shelved in the wildlife section. A customer asking for a copy of Pepys' Diary was told, "Next year's diaries aren't in yet"; and Donna Leon's Venice-set crime novels were filed in the travel department.

An inquiry as to when Martin Amis' autobiography would be available resulted in the query, "Who wrote that?" from the frowning person on the information desk. Another customer asked, "Where can I find the work of Annie Proulx?" P-r-o-o ... the assistant laboriously tapped on her computer.

Whitcoulls publicity manager Doris Mousdale giggles as she recalls another classic.

"A lady came in and said, 'I want that Embroidery of Racing book.' I said, 'There's no such book.' It turned out to be Tapestry of the Turf."

That was an example of the shop-floor employee solving the problem, which was simply a case of a customer suffering an attack of the vagues. Too often, though, it's hard to have confidence in a bookshop assistant who gapes at any query more sophisticated than where to find the latest Wilbur Smith.

But with the arrival of Borders, with its huge, 3500 sq m floor space and 140,000-plus books, surely the major mid-city competitors - Dymocks in the Atrium on Elliott, Whitcoulls Corner store and Unity Books in High St - have been made to up their ante? Which means, among other things, improving staff knowledge of the product they are selling.

Dymocks fiction buyer Gail Woodward points out a harsh commercial reality.

"Retail is not a hugely well-paid area, so you are always struggling to get well-informed, enthusiastic staff who read books. Young people can go straight into computer jobs now where they'll start at $20 an hour. Retail is not $20 an hour. You do everything you can to inspire your staff and hope you're attracting people but you will get people who make mistakes."

Woodward goes on to point out that far from frightening the horses, the arrival of Borders has been a good thing for the trade - and the consumers.

"When Borders opened we noticed fewer lunchtime browsers in our shop. I was surprised some people trekked up there. The good thing is, if people can't get something at Whitcoulls, they have Dymocks in between Whitcoulls and Borders, and vice-versa. It has added another dimension and the extra competition is really good for all of us."

Another advantage, says Woodward, is that Borders' immediate access to new titles from its Australian warehouses has had a knock-on effect for Dymocks, too.

"We had to ensure all new releases were out on the floor as fast as possible. When you're working in an environment where a retailer is importing stock directly from Australia, we were suddenly operating in a market where our release dates were different. So we did what we could to ensure new releases were in our store.

"The New Zealand publishers lobbied their head offices to say, 'Look, we've got to be up there with our release-date policy and not a month behind Australia. We have to have the books here on the same date. We can't have customers coming in and saying, 'I've seen this book at Borders and you haven't got it.'"

It's a brave new world for Whitcoulls as well, says Mousdale.

"Borders didn't worry us. Their arrival made us sit up and pay attention but it doesn't worry us because we've been going for 120 years, and over 120 years anyone's been free to come into the market. It's good for the business; it's like fashion - if you go into the malls there are all these fashion shops side by side. It lifts people's game."

Tiny, independent Unity Books, on the other hand, was hurt when Borders opened, say managers Jo McColl and Carolyn Alexander.

"The first three months when Borders opened, we noticed it, it would be stupid to say we didn't. I know some of the other shops are still denying it's had much effect but that's impossible. But then we had an extremely good Christmas. I don't know whether that means Borders is bringing more people into town but we see it as a really good thing for Queen St, which has been such a sad retail centre for so long," says McColl.

"My attitude when Borders opened was that there was nothing we could do. No matter how much money we could have spent on marketing, we still couldn't take away the fact everyone was going to go to Borders to have a look - and we haven't got any money for marketing.

"We had to settle in and think, 'What do we do really well and let's make sure we continue to do that'."

So what does Unity - with its retail space barely larger than the average lounge and just two full-time and six part-time staff - do well?

McColl doesn't hesitate. "Customer service, one-on-one, knowledge of stock. We are not computer-controlled, we are people-controlled. All our staff have specialty areas of interest - sci-fi, crime, literary theory, American fiction, Booker Prizewinners, New Zealand fiction - and they keep us up to speed with what's going on. All the staff at Unity are huge readers and massively interested in books; it would be inconceivable that we would hire anyone who would not have a huge book interest."

Dymocks, which employs 10 full-timers and 15 casuals and part-timers, runs ongoing training sessions to try to improve staff knowledge.

"We have a staff meeting once a week where everyone will say what they've been reading," explains Woodward, "and on Saturday morning we will quickly run through what's been reviewed in the Herald that day. We also keep an eye on what's reviewed on Kim Hill each day - these have a huge impact on inquiries."

At Whitcoulls Corner store, which employs 80 people, half of whom are part-time, weekly meetings are held where various staff each talk about a book for five minutes. Whitcoulls also produces a monthly 30-minute product-knowledge video highlighting new releases and information on books related to media events. For example, when Great Expectations, the movie, screened on Sky, Great Expectations, the book, was displayed prominently.

Unity doesn't bother with formal training because, says McColl, they don't need to. "We talk to each other a lot about books. It's not very structured but we like it."

Never forget, says Mousdale, that Whitcoulls is a big, nationwide, multi-media retailer. She likens the 63-store chain - owned by American company US Office Products - to a supermarket: "The Wilbur Smiths and Jeffrey Archers are our baked beans and the people like Arundhati Roy are our delicatessen."

McColl of Unity says no, they are the deli of Auckland's book scene, while Dymocks' Gail Woodward says, "We would call ourselves a boutique department store. We are not small like Unity but we are not like a supermarket."

Run the backlist test

Deli or supermarket, whatever: the discerning shopper expects a wide range of products. Dedicated readers demand depth - backlists of writers' work - in their book store.

There's a simple DIY backlist test: make a list of five writers you know to have a body of work, visit each shop and check it out. The results are not necessarily surprising.

Because of his forthcoming autobiography, Experience, I tried Martin Amis, who has 11 novels and short-story collections under his controversial belt. Dymocks stocked five; Whitcoulls one; Unity 10, plus one non-fiction book (The Moronic Inferno); Borders had all of them plus one non-fiction (Visiting Mrs Nabokov).

With the upcoming movie version of American Psycho, why not try Amis' old pal Bret Easton Ellis, who's written five books? Whitcoulls stocked one, Unity all five, Dymocks five, Borders four - but no copy of his latest, Glamorama.

Michael Ondaatje's new book, Anil's Ghost, is just out, his sixth. Borders had all six, Dymocks has several on special display, Whitcoulls at time of checking had only The English Patient (although they now have Anil's Ghost), Unity all six.

But let's not get too highbrow. Why not try Donna Leon, whose Commissario Brunetti series is literary crime at its best? Her latest, Friends in High Places (not out here yet), will be the ninth. Unity had none, Whitcoulls two in Author A-Z, with one of the same titles also in Crime; Dymocks stocks all eight; Borders seven.

A personal favourite, Michael Frayn's brilliant 1999 Booker Prize-nominated Headlong, barely gets a nod, let alone his enormous body of back work. Whitcoulls and Dymocks don't have it; Borders does; Unity says it has been one of its biggest-sellers over the past year.

Get the picture? How important is back stock?

"It's credibility to have a good back stock," says Unity's Carolyn Alexander.

"It is important, not only for new literature, it is also important in popular fiction," echoes Woodward from Dymocks. "For example, we have two shelves of Wilbur Smith. In classic literature you have backlists and you keep it there, but sometimes you get caught out."