Japanese Bookshop Stocks Only One Book at a Time

When playing a board game, like Terra Mystica, where there are choices I can make, and there are random elements that change from game to game, there's two routes I could go - The first is to play out the plan I've thought about so many times previously, to align the choices I make with that plan as faithfully as the random elements allow. The second, is to completely ditch whatever was in my plan, look at the random elements for this game, and play accordingly. I call the second strategy "Play to the board". The first strategy often means I'll do fine in the game, but will lose out to the player who benefited from the random elements of the game this round. The second strategy provide no such guarantees, but is the only strategy that allows great wins.

In life, people can pick one of three strategies. The first is they can fantasise about what kind of car they want, what kind of job they'd like, what kind of girlfriend they'd have, and then try their best to make these "achievements", often falling short because the world is not fantasy. The second, they observe what kind of random elements the world exhibiting, e.g. "Oh these days accountants make lots of money", "These days Software Engineers have high salaries" and directly translate to mean "I am going to learn programming, even if I don't like it", and then they are playing to other people's fantasy rather than accepting their own strengths or weaknesses. Or thirdly, they can "play to the board" and make the best of what life gives them, at each moment in time.

The bookshop-keeper here, is eking out every single edge he can out of books to operate his shop. Where 30 years ago operating a successful physical bookshop might mean having a large selection available at any time, and frequent events to draw crowds, today, in competition with digital books, operating a successful physical bookshop might mean emphasising the advantages of the physical book, the romanticism attached to physical objects. I get the feeling he is the type who sees what the world is like today, and because he's got experience bookshop-keeper, not a software engineer or tech startup founder, he goes with the flow with what he's got.

Where in a board game, the game board is the entirety of the world, and can be considered by itself, in the real world, our own selves are part of the board - and I can't always do it, but I aspire to do what I can to play with what I've got, like the man depicted in this article.

I've imagined this repeatedly. When you can buy any book you want online, physical bookstores become, in practice, galleries—and their clerks become salesmen.

In such times, there's not much point to having a big store stuffed to the gunnels with anonymous tomes that the clerks don't even know they have, let alone know anything about. Bookstores have none of the things that the book-buyer wants (discoverability, recommendation or "match-making", knowledgeability); and, especially in the case of used book stores, the online copy is probably in better condition, too.

When you treat books, instead, like pieces in a commercial art gallery—curated and exhibited for effect, with well-trained staff who can tell you all about them, or guide you to a book that fits your desires, or call/email you when a book you might like comes in—you get something from the physical store you don't get online. And, therefore, you actually might buy your copy from the store—maybe even at premium—because you aren't just paying for the book, but for the whole experience that led to you buying the book.

I suppose that would depend on how much he sold each book for. ;-)

2100 books over 6 months = 350 books per month, or 12.5 per day. Assume the books are $30 - $50, so $375 - $675. Assume a 70% cost of goods sold = $112.5 - $187.5 revenue per day. Tough to make a living unless he can push those numbers a bit. Interesting idea. Hope he can do it.

You're basically describing the unbundling problem. People aren't accustomed to (and therefore generally unwilling to) pay for news, travel-related advice, recipes, et al. but they were historically willing to pay for such when they were bundled into a physical publication or where the advice was covered by a commission on some other service (like purchasing airline tickets).