Yesterday I visited my favourite Canadian bookstore, McNally Robinson. First it is a beautiful store. We had lunch in the cafe then perused the selections. I noticed a table display for Cormorant Books, a small Canadian publisher, and another display for McClelland & Stewart’s 100 Year Celebration, and a Penguin Books display. Last year in London James and I saw the 70 years of Penguin book design display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. At the time I couldn’t carry around anything extra so I didn’t buy the book on the exhibit, but there it was yesterday in McNally so I’m now the owner of a copy of Penguin By Design: A Cover Story 1935-2005 by Phil Baines. It’s a history of the jacket design of Penguin paperbacks. The display also had a cool section of 70 titles in the Pocket Penguin series. I bought a copy of Otherwise Pandemonium by Nick Hornby. It’s a really cute little book. About 60 pages. $4.00.
What McNally did well was create an atmosphere for browsing. I didn’t intend to buy either of these books. I actually went in to buy Water for Elephants, which is a Harper Collins book I’ve been looking for. I didn’t end up buying it because I read the first page and wasn’t terribly impressed. The displays of the other books though and the face out selections let me rediscover one book I’d been interested in before and newly discover a series of books that I think is really cool.
Speaking of browsing I have some comments on Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail and what he’s missing about the in-store browsing experience, even if the selection is smaller than an online retailer. And, I have a side thought on why it’s important for book publishers to look not just at what types of books are being published and promoted in stores but where people are actually browsing in store. But, that will have to wait for another day.