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Tony Weller interview part two
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Here is the second part of my recent interview with Tony Weller of Sam Weller's Bookstore. Go HERE for part one.
As always, if you talk to Tony, visit or patronize his store, or attend an event there, or elsewhere—PLEASE mention that you saw it here. Thank you..jpg)
Tony: ...So the publishers were not only in great financial trouble because of this, but the cover price started to go up as it was expected to effectively offset those losses in manufacturing.
What this did was put a lot of publishers in financial trouble. So they sold out to the only buyers they could find, who tended to not be of the same mindset as the traditional publishers. Typically, a publisher was somebody who liked books and maybe cared about books. What we saw was when a publisher went on the auction block, the buyers tended to be Time Warner, Bertlesman, Pierson — these big media conglomerate companies whose focus was diverse. They weren't just book publishers. They had magazines, newspapers, websites, television stations, radio stations.
This kind of dumbed down the industry. Where in the past you had a guy who loved literature and knew about books and really tried hard to publish good books, now you have accountants and publicists making the decisions that were once made by presumably literary people. I don't know exactly what the number is, but I'm certain that at least half of the publishers in the United States changed hands in the 1990's, and usually went to large corporations who were mot exclusively focused on books.
So, they put their clever people on this dilemma because they quickly learned that books made less money than these other media, and of course they all said, "best-sellers!'
Now, another thing that exacerbated the problem was in the old days if you were a writer who published one book, and people loved it, on your second book some publisher contacted you and said, "John, I'm going to give you $100,000 for your next book. This is going to help you live while you write it, but I get your next book." You signed a contract thinking, $100,000 in a year! That's unheard of. This is wonderful. Well, suddenly these advance offers started to balloon into millions of dollars, and the other thing that happened was they seemed to focus on the media darlings. So while in the past it might have been a literary writer who got the big advances, now suddenly the big advances are going to Newt Gingrich or Hillary Clinton or some girl that dated O.J. Simpson — you know, the big media things. Which was, in my mind, book people .jpg)
looking across the fence into what was the appropriate turf of newspapers and magazines.
But at the point that they give a $4million advance to some politician who hasn't yet written their book, how many books have to be sold before the publisher gets that money back? In some cases, more than they will sell.
A lot of things followed this and of course it all ended up driving up the price. I want to leave you with one quote before the next question and that is, a publisher — and I forget which publisher — said within the last decade that, "Once upon a time the best-sellers enabled us to sell good mid-list books," which is the term routinely used for the good books which sell enough, but not millions. By the Millennium, publishers were saying, "The mis-list books enable us to buy best-sellers," which they need because the real profit center for many publishing companies moved from being the sale of merchandise to the sale of stock. The merchandise is an ad for stock. The store is an ad for stock.
John: I see. I never knew that. Tell me, what have you done to keep more customers coming into your bookstore?
Tony: To just look at the last decade, since we didn't have as many retail neighbors to continue bringing people to our neighborhood, it became apparent to us that for all of the things we do damn well here, we had lost just too many people to the chain stores and Internet shopping. We decided we just wanted to make this more of a cultural place to visit. For at least a decade, maybe 15 years, before we brought The Coffee Garden in, I had tried to sow the seeds of such an event. I think it was about 1984-85 that I first approached Alan at the Coffee Garden and said, "If you ever want a second coffee shop, please let it be in my bookstore." I didn't really have the money to fund it. It was just a good will — a hope. In 2002, we finally achieved that. It's been a lovely marriage.
We also brought in Scrub Oak Book Bindery, which operates upstairs from us. They do fine binding and book restoration. That isn't something that's obvious to most visitors. Since we do sell rare books, this was good for that side of the trade because it brought in people who have valuable antiquities in the book realm; they would come to this building to get their restoration work done. That has also been a very cozy marriage.
I have approached numerous other businesses, because we have a lot of space in the building, in hopes that I could parcel out parts of the building to different entities, but I'm afraid none of the other efforts have been successful.
It's a tough neighborhood. I love this place, and one of my fears in planning to relocate is that five years from now it will again be what I remember. I've been waiting 20 years for this neighborhood to come back to life, and I just can't wait any longer.
In our new location, we're hoping to continue our philosophy. Right now I have in my back pocket the names and ideas of seven or eight local businesses, some of whom I reached out to, but more of whom actually reached out to us saying, "When you move, i want to go with you." Either they don't like their current neighborhood, they don't like their landlord, or they think their business would be improved if they were cozied up with us.
John: That's got to feel good.
Tony: It does. I love that because it it dovetails with our ideas of what a bookstore needs to become in this post-Millennium era. I'm very excited even though there's levels of complexity in arranging these agreements of space sharing that are fairly substantial. I set my sights high. I'm just hoping when we find the right property that just half of these people who have expressed the sentiment to come on board with us will follow through. Most of them, unfortunately, don't have any more money than we do. They're all local businesses.
John: What factors have most contributeds to your success, the ability to tough it out here on Main Street?
Tony: Property ownership. My parents had the foresight to buy a 50% share of this building back in the early 1980's. That has kept my facility overhead much lower than people who move into the neighborhood with a lease. That has helped a lot.
I think the magnitude of the store has helped, even though in some degress it's been a chain around my ankle. The size of the store means my payroll is substantial, and just the cost of inventory is overwhelming. But what we saw as we watched our colleagues falter all through the 1990's — and we were connected through the new book industry [as well as] through the antiquarian world — is that the mid-size stores who only sold new books were some of the first to go. The big chain stores just overwhelmed them in pricing and selection. We had selection. We couldn't match the pricing, but at least we had selection, and that was augmented by used and rare books. That gave people another reason to come to Sam Weller's.
The smaller stores which had strong and well established specialties seemed to hold up better. If you had some kind of expertise that the chains just couldn't match and your store was small enough that your overhead wasn't just overwhelming...many of those did better than the mid-size stores that were just generalists.
John: There's a lot of talk and media coverage of the move. Can we talk about that?
Tony: We made the decision in February, but we didn't announce it to the public until mid-March. Our building id up for sale. We've received two offers, but the price tag isn't right; it's less than we want. Considering the over all environment and the fact that we're rather eager to get this move accomplished, I think that in the end we will have to come down from our asking price. Likewise, the buildings we're looking at — those people will have to come down from their asking prices also. This is not an easy time to sell real estate.
I was told by our realtor the only buyers right now seem to be users and occupants, and I'm thinking, That's the way it ought to be all the time! I think when property is used speculatively and with short-term interest, I think this subverts the interests of community. I think short-term interest subverts most human needs, whether it is short-term interst in relationsships, with jobs, or in property. I just think when a guy buys a house to live in it it's far better for the neighborhood than when a guy buys a house to sell it. I'm really into deep commitments to community.
John: Any favorite sites? Can you say?
Tony: I think it would not be good for me to because.... I'll say that in the last two months I've seen almost 20 properties that conform to most of the traits that we are seeking. At this moment there are four that I have not just scratched off the list. i mean I've seen a lot that are just wrong, but I still have four I am still thinking about very seriously. They all have different traits and merits that I have carefully measured.
John: you're not going to be able to stay on Main Street though?.jpg)
Tony: Well that's not for certain. There might be a property on Main Street that conforms to my needs. None of the four that I am talking about are on Main Street, although I looked at four properties yeasterday and one of them was on main Street. It just didn't seem to meet with my approval.
John: So you're not ruling it out?
Tony: no. I'm not anti-Main Street. I'm not so sure it's that different than West Temple or State Street. It's prettier. We got Traxx and that's an assett. I hope that assett will resonate for our potential buyers because I probably have the best Traxx stop in the city. It's the only stop you can stand at and get on a train going anywhere. There's no other stop that will take you either to the university, Sandy, toward Gateway and the inter-modal hub. Yeah, we have the best Traxx stop right out front.
We do want to stay downtown and I hate to say it; I like to believe it isn't boasting when it's accurate: we are loved by tourists. We have people from Paris, London, New York, San Francisco come by here and they say, "Wow. We didn't expect we'd find a store this good in Salt Lake." I hear it from cities much bigger and classier than Salt Lake. They say, "We don't have a store like this in our town. how come it's here?" I say, "I don't know. We're stubborn?" I don't know what it is but....So I really don't want to lose that. Everything that is on my list is probably within 2/3 of a mile from our presnt location.
John: No thoughts of selling out to City Creek or Gateway or any place like that?
Tony: No. I'm pretty stubbornly attached to the principle of property ownership. It's been my salvation right here. If my parents had not bought half of this building I probably would have been forced to move in 1195-96 just because of rising retal rates. That pretty much precludes any mall because mall people want a lease. I'm not opposed to being adjacent to those developments if I can purchase a piece of property and occupy it. i like stability. I am 47 and have worked here since I was a teenager. I would like to think that I will move this store once in my lifetime. When I move, I'm moving to a place I want to stay. I just don't think a lease lends itself to that. I know a lot of good bookstores who've been bankrupted by a landlord's whim. I just don't want to find myself in that position.
John: I'm pretty much out of questions. What else would you like to add?
Tony: I guess that I'm just grateful for the people who recognize our plight and take the long view of community. I guess if it finds its way into your article I want to encourage people to think carefully about how they spend their money. I've been involved with Local First and the Vest Pocket Coalition. I'm absolutely convinced of the merits of local economies.
When you lose local businesses you not only lose those businesses; you [also] lose the business of the professionals who support them. If I hire someone to design a web site, if I hire an attorney or an accountant I'm hiring a Utah person. Barnes & Noble and Starbucks are not hiring Utah people to do this work.
John: And ther's the character.
Tony: And there's the character; there's the diversity; there's not having all your eggs in one basket. During the fatwah and Salman Rushdie it was independent bookstores who supplied The Satanic Verses to people who wanted to read it. I'm not saying we're more noble or less cowardly than the corporations, but when a terrorist could contact Barnes & Noble's headquarters and have that book removed from hundreds of stores with one threat...it is just so much harder to take an equal number of independent stores and threaten them all one at a time to get the same message across.
I also value diversity; that no two people have the same intuition and judgement. If you look at the inventory choices made by us, by King's English up on the hill, we're going to make slightly different judgements and therby increase the diversity of books that are available in our community. When purchasing is sone centrally by some person who buys for 100 or 500 stores the books they miss don't arrive in any of those stores. They also know less about the individual cultures for which they're buying. The marketplace in Salt Lake is different than the marketplace Provo or Ogden or Boise or Pocatello or Las Vegas. I think that having somebody who lives in the community make those decisions not only supports diversity, it gives us a better focus on the local community.
I'm also aware of several studies that have been done about the flow of money that is spent in local business. To cite the most conservative result that anybody has come up with, apparently the retention rate of revenue in a community when you spend it at a local business is about 70% greater than when you spend it at a national corporation, where a large portion of that revenue goes to Wall Street to pay investors who are non-productive wage earners.
I've been convinced by David Korten [author of Agenda for a New Economy: from phantom wealth to real wealth] — he's a brilliant man; I love David Korten — that there is no way that you can remove revenue from any system without contributing labor or service to that system unless you're exploiting someone else. I'm pretty convinced that if you collect money and you ain't workin', somebody else is doing it for you I don't think this works for our culture or for the interst of the working person. I'm a blue collar book seller. I work! I don't just own this place; I come here and I work!
John: Well, it shows. Lastly, just some advice for other independent book sellers that are struggling in this economy and business atmosphere.
Tony: Boy, that's tough. i can just reiterate the advice that Fred Rosenstock, the great Denver book dealer, gave my dad over 50 years ago. My father, when he wa a young man, went to Rosenstock, an older book seller, and said, "Fred, what can I do to be a good book seller and to guarantee the survival of my bookstore?" Fred said, "Buy a building."
I don't mean to diminish the value of book intuition, but I think that poeple who read and read well and have an affection for the book will always have an edge over those who don't.
I'll tell you what is the Achilles' heel for most book sellers is — business sense. People think, Oh, I love books. I'm going to open a bookstore. If they don't understand accounting and basic business principles they're probably going to struggle. I know you get a lot of right-brained people in the book world. I'm thinking, You know, I hate it too, but you probably ought to read some business books and study a little bit of accounting. I know that was for many years my weak point. I loved math as a kid; I just didn't love it as much as I love books. It's a crucial component of any business. you can't just love books and run a bookstore. You've got to have some business sense.
As much as I feel good that we've survived over the years I don't know if I have any deep wisdom to share with others. It's a tough industry. I laud everyone who wants to jump into it. I've shared generously everything that I know with book sellers who have asked me, as long as they aren't moving in on Salt Lake. i've had chats with young idealistic people who want to open bookstores. I'll tell them everything I think I understand. I wish them good luck because I'd like to see the book industry dominated by single store operations with the proprietor standing in the store selling books.
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[Books have] carried culture for a millennium or better. I think they're very important and they're stable. Sometimes when I do book presentations, which I get asked to do a few times a year, I have a list of different ones that I'm able to do, and one of them is The Survival of the Book. I like to take the oldest book I can find that's written in English and a floppy computer disk from the 1970's; I just hold them up side by side. you know, I can look at that 400-year-old book and if it's written in English, or maybe in French, I can get information out of it. you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who has the right hardware or software to get information off from that old floppy disk.
When it comes to durablility, survivability, I mean you hear about fascist countries, how the narrow-minded fascist nations of the world are very agressive in controlling Internet access. But you know pamphleteering during the American Revolution wa one of the ways that the uppity Americans were able to push back the British crown and eventually establish their own nation. It's hard to control little pieces of paper moving around. .jpg)
One of my computer techies here — he doesn't work here any more — I asked him, because I was getting tired of forgetting all my log-ins and passwords, "I'm getting overwhelmed with all these. How can I do it?" He said, "Well, truthfully, if you just write them on a scrap of paper and hide it somewhere, it's a lot safer than anything you put in your computer. The person who's going to steal those passwords is going to be a hacker. It's not going to be a guy who breaks into your store and searches you desk."
John: How funny. For all it's "magical powers" computer technology — it's very fragile. The book is stronger.
Tony: They're both good tools. I've often said, "Just because you buy a hamer doesn't mean you throw awy the screwdriver." They're different tools and they each have their appropriate function. I believe we are the generation who gets to figure out the proper balance between computers and books.
I want to thank Tony Weller once again for his time, and for his patience in waiting for me to have the time to post thios interview with him.
Check out the Sam Weller's newsletter, Book Talk. Learn about an upcoming event at the bookstore HERE.
read more by this examiner HERE and HERE.
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