A Book-buyer by any other name...

3:19 PM, 6 October 2016

by Marcus Greville

Talk to booksellers and you’ll hear about customer interactions that range from the transformative to the grotesque; there are stories that will curl your toes, rupture laughing organs, or bring a tear to your eye. Most booksellers have favourite customers, customers that make them hide, and customers that make them laugh or, occasionally, cry. 

Is it possible to talk about the ‘average customer’? Or to look up some sort of index that provides concrete information on designated subgroups of personalities that will reap the most positive community and/or financial benefits? Failing that, could we just focus on the nice customers? Or the wealthy ones? Or the interesting ones? I had a chat to some of my most experienced friends in bookselling, as well as interrogating my own 20 years of experience, to bring you some wisdom on this subject. 

The Internet provides much on the subject of customer engagement, but parsing the options is troublesome: much is anodyne twaddle with only some applicable gold. For instance, there are four types of retail customers: the Take Charge, the Deal Seeker, the Sociable Type, and the Emotional Connection Buyer. No, wait, there are seven types: the Showroomer, the Wanderer, the On-a-Mission… or was that nine types: the Indecisive, the Needs Based, the Impulse Buyer… It all seems one short step from colour-coding people as they walk through the door so we know how best to ‘adapt and convert the sale’. 

Books are different from other retail purchases

People buying books require a deft hand. If someone wants a recommendation, they have to have a personal exchange with the bookseller: revealing their likes and dislikes, their politics or beliefs. It’s not as simple as finding a refrigerator with the correct dimensions, it’s far more intimate. So one may talk about an Assertive Customer, or a Chatty Customer, but getting the right book into the right hand requires digging to the next level, being observant and reflexive enough to communicate with their personality type. You have to discover an aspect of them that relates to a particular writer or subject, regardless of how we ourselves feel about it.

And what if that customer is insulting? Or sexist? Or condescending? Or an a**hole? We’ve all met customers that are aware we can’t talk back to them if they’re insulting or cruel, customers that will happily be provocative, but once we’re provoked will pull rank and want to ‘talk to the manager’ or flex their negative social media muscles. There are inherent behavioural constraints that exist for retailers, ones of politeness and determined serenity that can rarely be breached. The same cannot be said for customers. It is only when a customer becomes abusive or overtly aggressive that retailers can take a harder line, yet it’s a thin line that doesn’t guarantee a lack of blowback.

Negative situations with customers are hard, but it’s important to realise that it is the lot of retail existence; we represent the ideals and ethos of the bookshops we work for, as well as the financial interests of that shop. It’s unpleasant, but we just have to take it on the chin and vent later.

Thankfully such events are pretty rare. What is by far the norm are customers we know, be it through long patronage or a common love of those magic words and pages. For every difficult customer, there are multitudes of small engagements, moments of levity, recurring visitations and the forging of real relationships. Within the walls of our bookshops are truly wonderful stories concerning customers and books and booksellers, all found in a small initial moment of trust and bonding.

Loyal & Wandering Customers

A common binary breakdown of customers is the Loyal Customers and the Wandering Customers. Loyal Customers are a smaller group but usually spend twice as much as any other kind of customer. Wandering Customers represent a larger group but spend less per capita. 

So the advice goes like this: dedicate more resources to Loyalists, grow them and make them happy (loyalty programs, newsletters, etc.) while merchandising the store to better attract sales from the Wanderers. All very logical – it’s capitalism after all – but this analytical thinking comes from retail areas selling specific products that do specific and describable jobs. Books and bookshops are subjective, effortlessly experiential. Reading is a lifestyle, and we get to be chaperones between the strenuous world outside our walls and the universes held within. A more open mind and heart are required of us.

So next time you’re re-shelving a book that’s undergone a weird customer relocation program, or are gazing forlornly at a cracked spine after a browser has departed, or you’re waiting ten minutes past closing for a customer to make a choice, or you’re upset and angry over being treated with disdain or cruelty; at that time, please remember that kid whose eyes lit up when they found out Patrick Ness and Malorie Blackman exist, remember those hundreds of copies of amazing books you helped into the souls of people who trusted you, remember that customer who you now take reading advice from. Because we are actually building communities – they’re not necessarily ours, but we’re helping to build them nonetheless. We’re helping people through hard times by being sensitive to the book they’re embarrassed they need to buy. We’re being kind to the person who just wants to talk for a bit after they’ve bought their book.

Customers are legion in type and intent. And we make money off them. So we take the bad stuff on the chin and exult in the things that populate the slightly odd but excellent overlap between their world and ours, because there’s no such thing as average.

By Marcus Greville, Bookseller, Unity Books Wellington

* Please note that the opinions expressed within this article are those of the author and his cohorrs.