Each
year during the holiday season certain rituals tend to appear – major movies
and music albums are released, families gather to exchange gifts, people eat a
lot more than usual, the weather turns from a cool fall to a cold winter, and
bookstores bubble over with books and shoppers.
Right
around the time things begin to heat up – a week and a half before Black Friday
and two weeks leading up to Cyber Monday – I visited a bookstore I was pleased to see shelves stuffed with new books and display counters
with piles of gifty items. Things were
beginning to sell, but many consumers are just inventorying what’s out
there. They’ll begin to pull their
wallet out around Thanksgiving Day and it will get used over and over again
until early January, right through the return-and-exchange and
cash-in-gift-card period.
It’s
amazing how many wonderful books and gift items there are. I wanted to buy at least a dozen things, but
refrained from going crazy. I did buy two inexpensive books - $6.95 specials –
The Little Book of Answers by Doug Lennox and Trivia For The Toilet by Gavin
Webster. Both will come in handy for some planned road trips. Americans love books like these – books of
quotes and wisdom, explanations to popular phrases and questions, or pieces of
facts and stats about things we’re curious about.
There
were many coffee table books on display, including some great photography
books, 50-year retrospectives, or books about major celebrities like Frank
Sinatra. There were classics repackaged
in beautifully bound cases and perennial bestsellers on display. There were also fancy journals, bookends,
decorative statues, toys, and other items for sale.
Instead
of buying all of this stuff, I just need to discipline myself to keep visiting
the store and treating it like the living room of a friend’s house – enjoy it
while you play with it, but then go home without it.
But
plenty of people – including me- plan to drop hundreds of dollars on books,
gift cards, and related items that are found in the bookstore. Some people love being in a fancy home
furnishings store, a car showroom, at a design clothing trunk sale, or a jewelry
store, trying things on and comparing different looks – but usually leaving
empty-handed. But at the bookstore, not
only do you become someone else with every book you examine, you get to take
home plenty of stuff without going into debt.
The way some women buy shoes, I like to buy books. But books last a lot longer!
What
will you buy this holiday season – for yourself or others? Go to the bookstore and try the world on –
and come home with a piece of it. Keep
repeating this process until January 6th.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog
are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter
@theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more
important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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