I’ve found myself unmotivated to read lately, and I think it’s because I haven’t come across a book I wanted to dive into head first. I sped through Etgar Keret’s collection of short stories, The Nimrod Flipout, a few weeks ago, and it was good, but short stories don’t keep my reading fortified like novels do.

The annoying thing about coming up book-dry is that it often happens when my reading’s the most voracious. Before I fully realized there wasn’t a book that was calling my name, I sort of saw it coming. I was reading one book, and before I got through it I had picked up and begun three or four others, searching more and more desperately for the next one that would grab me.

Before I knew it, the only book I wanted to read was the Bible. Not that that’s a bad thing; I made it a goal this year to read it all the way through since I never have before. But when you are a reader, and have the itch to read, and feel the pull by the Good Book only, the itch starts to become an irritation.

So I took home a copy of T. C. Boyle’s new book this week because we have signed firsts, and it sat in my Lemuria bag till last night, when I decided that something had to be done about this — let’s call it what it is — book slump. I felt like I wasn’t a reader anymore, and there’s only so much internet reading I can do before I begin to feel my brain is dangerously close to melting.

When I read a description of When the Killing’s Done (from Boyle’s website), “The novel takes up some of the environmental themes of earlier novels,” and that the inspiration for the novel was “a rather testy turf war fought between animal rights activists and the biologists of the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy over the elimination of non-native species of plants and animals,” I cringed — not another “issues” novel. But y’all, it did what many books before it couldn’t; as I began reading, each word pulled me to the next, and then paragraphs, and pages, and now I’m forty pages in! The story and characters are great, but what I really love is Boyle’s writing style. His sentences approach run-on, but they’re the sort that you lose yourself in, until you realize that you’re not making yourself read this book simply because you have to uphold your “reader image.” You love it! And it loves you back. That’s requited book love.

I was walking through the Fiction Room and saw a book that I was unfamiliar with, but the cover just drew me to it.  I did a little investigating online and decided that while We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen was not the genre I usually read, it was to be my next book.

This novel was published in Europe first and has been hailed an instant classic there.  We, the Drowned is a seafaring novel that takes us through a 100-year history of the port town of Marstal through the eyes of the Madsen family starting with the infamous Laurids, who is known as “single-handedly starting a war” to his son, Albert, who follows in his father’s footsteps by not only becoming a sailor but by sailing around the world in search of Laurids after he disappears.

It is also the tale of the women who are left behind constantly wondering if their husbands and/or sons will return home after sailing the storm ravaged seas from Newfoundland to Samoa to Tasmania to Russia, and if they do return, what stories they will have of their travels.

While reading I really could picture everything and everyone in the town of Marstel and very much enjoyed the stories about cannibals, shrunken heads, prophetic dreams, treasures, forbidden passions, tragedies and survivals.  I felt like I was sailing around the world and worried at home with the various Marstallers.  This is a perfect book if you are looking for a “stay-cation” for Spring Break.

The New Rules of Retail is the most important book I’ve read on small business retailing since Paul Hawken’s Growing a Business nearly 25 years ago. A couple of other booksellers at Lemuria have also read New Rules. We all feel this book provides crucial insight as independent bookstores reposition in the book industry. To be a successful small business, you must understand the changes in your competitors. I believe New Rules sees the future.

Lewis and Dart begin by defining the three waves in the history of American retail.

Wave 1 (1850-1950): Marked by the power of the producer—producers distributed their products when and how they chose—“Build it and they will come.” Producers struggled to keep up with demand. Catalogs are delivered to the rural customer. Customers also begin to move from rural to urban areas. Sears & Roebuck targeted rural populations who had limited access to stores.

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Wave 2 (1950-up to our present time): Marked by the evolution of category killers. From malls to big box stores, their strategy was to offer everything in one product category at discount prices. The markets became saturated and consumers were empowered with the superfluous selection. Sellers had to find a way to add value to differentiate it from their competitors. “Capitalism unbound.” Amazon’s distribution centers provide for an unfathomable variety of products.

Wave 3 (present time, early stages): Final shift from producer power to consumer power. Access to more and cheaper goods leads to quicker and easier access. Powered with information from the Internet, consumers have total power over what they buy and how much they pay for it. Consumers also begin to think about quantity versus quality. Who thought you could sell shoes online? Zappos does with unparalleled customer service.

The Great Recession has helped to cause a paradigm shift in terms of how customers value goods and services. This new understanding of value by the consumer proposes that price no longer equals value and that value is no longer determined by a price. This means that the customer is going through an epic transformation. The days of trying to get the customer to come to you are over; you have be in your customer’s world.

Customers are now beginning to redefine their consumer values. In doing so, they are self-actualizing their buying habits as they redefine what it means to be happy and satisfied. Buying habits show that customers are looking for experiences as opposed to accumulating more stuff. The experience—a neurological connection—must be unique and it also must be something that the customer has co-created with the seller.

Nobody understands value better than the customer. Talking to or at customers is fading as a neurological connection from retailer to actualized customer is growing. As a result, advertising and marketing are in a major transition stage.

Sweeping retail changes are just beginning. Entire industry structures are being reinvented and transformed. With customer actualization, the control of the value change is much more challenging.

The revolutionary transformation of retailing is just beginning. Here are just a few Lewis and Dart’s major predictions for Wave 3:

1. Fifty percent of retailers and brands will disappear because the business models cannot be changed.

2. The ultimate collapse of traditional retail/whole sale business model is now clearly visible.

3. Major box stores will roll out smaller localized neighborhood stores.

4. Amazon will open brick and mortar showrooms.

5. Box retail stores will become hybrid enclosed mini-malls. In the case of Barnes & Noble, I predict that real books may evolve to a second or third inventory tier.

I suggest that an independent book seller who wants to still be open in five years should read and study The New Rules of Retail. Lewis and Dart have helped Lemuria begin to restructure and redefine our community presence.

I feel that for every small retail business person, reading New Rules is a must. Use the work of Lewis and Dart to look inwardly at yourself and outwardly at your competition. A challenging message comes across loud and clear.

Collapse or Convert.

The New Rules of Retail: Competing in the World’s Toughest Marketplace by Robin Lewis & Michael Dart (Palgrave, 2010)

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

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For folks that grew up in the 80’s the America’s Most Wanted TV show was part of life. The Fox network was new and starting in 1988 we watched America’s Most Wanted most every Saturday night. We were also a generation that grew up with the fear of crime: kidnappings, murder, etc. We saw it on TV and in the case of AMW it was and is real, very real. We may have been the first generation that wasn’t let out of our parents’ sights.

To me John Walsh, the host of AMW, was just another TV host. My parents had introduced me to Dragnet years earlier and I saw a similarity in the shows – Walsh’s deadpan presentation. I didn’t know at the time where his passion came from. Maybe my parents told me, but I don’t think I knew until much later that Walsh’s crusade for bringing criminals to justice had a very personal origin. In 1981 John and Reve Walsh’s 6 year old son was kidnapped and murdered.

For me this story represents so much of why our childhood was the way it was and is an origin story for our own parenting paranoia. Now in Bringing Adam Home Les Standiford chronicles the crime and the police case surrounding the crime – telling the story of why it took until 2008 for the case to be officially closed. This story is one of police incompetence and mis-communication. It’s not a fun story, but an important story. Please consider coming to meet Les and Det. Sgt. Joe Matthews.

Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink

(Riverside, 2009)

Having been in small business for so long, I’m always facing issues of self-motivation: my drive to do my part in making a good bookstore; my drive to continue my book selling actualization while wanting to reaffirm the quality and customer service of my staff. To enhance my “mo,” I picked up Drive from my unread pile (which is too large) to explore.

Drive begins by reflecting on on the work of Abraham Maslow whose humanistic psychology was the beginning foundation of my earliest business concepts. Young, inexperienced, really stupid, and with no training, I started Lemuria, hoping one day to experience a degree of self-actualization from my work life.

Daniel H. Pink emphasizes creativity in the workplace. The role of management is to provide an environment that maximizes  the intrinsic reward, not just financial. Pink analyzes worker rewards, stressing the need for employees to have the freedom to be creative. Work pleasure is not just solely determined by the dollar. Work fulfillment can be enlightening.

All of us want to meet our basic needs as we make decisions about financial goals. After certain monetary needs are met, however, we need to ask ourselves: How much is enough? How is our individual fulfillment going to be obtained?

Pink applies Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow concepts to the work environment. Being = creative flow provides maximum creation. A situation forming the maximum creative fire emerges and burns, thus providing an elevated work high.

Work is hard with so many monotonous demands put on time and energy. For me, self-motivation can be routine. However, when the lines of creativity cross with the correct business perceptions, activating the success button, job gratification occurs beyond words. At this point, internal smiles emerge.

My life’s drive has been reinforced by reading Pink’s Drive. Readdressing your value system is healthy–not in a rigid way, but with a peace of mind. For me, that peace of mind comes from the quieter moments spent with a drink on my porch, reflecting on the gratifying benefit of providing services and a lifestyle to loved ones. In those moments work results in a happiness high.

Lemuria, our bookstore, is facing a challenging book-selling climate. It’s fun to think about all of the humanistic reasons that brought Lemuria into being. The future is now, a time for all Lemurians to explore the creative force within.

Lemuria’s actualization has currently plateaued. Reading Drive, however, has made me want to redefine our goals and find our next plateau. Reading Drive could help keep the Lemuria book-selling wagon on the trail.

I can suggest Drive to readers  who are looking for reaffirmation and have a desire to enhance their dedication to work and purpose.