So how can Wal-Mart help books–in line with Parts I and II of this series–rather than hurting literacy in ways I described earlier?
If the company wants to get into the print on demand business at the local level when the technology is ready, I can see positives, such as more book choices for small towns.
Yes, I do fear that Wal-Mart will censor the POD selections. Like many others, too, I also worry about nonbook-related issues at Wal-Mart such as wages and health insurance and anti-unionism, and the general threat to small-town businesses–which hurts indie bookstores since fewer people go to the central shopping districts. In my dream world, Wal-Mart wouldn’t exist.
That said, Wal-Mart is hardly going to fade away, so let me reach out to Bentonville with a few more thoughts on ways the company could promote reading.
First off, Wal-Mart-related charities should continue and expand support of literacy programs, including the public library-related variety–and also get behind the IndiE concept discussed in Part II. While Wal-Mart last year was the largest corporate cash contributor in the U.S., with $270 million-plus given to more than 4,000 communities, it is also among the world’s largest companies with FY 2006 sales exceeding $312 billion and a net income of more than $11 billion. Yes, public libraries and schools and pressing social needs in general should get priority over bookstores. Definitely. But as a threat to the survival of small-town bookstores–by siphoning off traffic from downtowns, if nothing else–Wal-Mart has a moral obligation to help indies to some extent.
Second, the little book areas in the big boxes could include posters and other pointers to local indies with more extensive selections.
Third, I can even see Wal-Mart letting indies set up kiosks during high-traffic periods; what better place for promotion of many local authors writing on popular topics?
Fourth, why can’t Wal-Mart show a little imagination and, for example, regularly display novels and other books alongside DVDs of the movie they’ve inspired? Or how about sports books near baseball gloves or basketball nets? Yes, I’d make the same suggestion for other chains. While this would be competition for independent stores, I’m hardly saying that Wal-Mart should give up on books or not smarten up its merchandising!
By chance, is someone from Wal-Mart reading this? I’d welcome a reply from Margaret A. McKenna, the new president of the Wal-Mart Foundation, while keeping in mind she does not control the actual retail side. Would she be interested in working with little bookstores in small towns, and what has she in mind on the libary front as well? Meanwhile let’s return to the basics with a question for the people overseeing the big boxes; is there any possibility of improving Wal-Mart’s horrible DVD-book ratio with a few more books? Can Wal-Mart make any commitments to growing the number of titles offered–and flesh out the promise with statistics and a timeline?
Even if that happens, however, Wal-Mart will never be a substitute for small-town indies tightly focused on books . As providers of different kinds of titles–do you really think a public library can stock and promote every book for everyone’s taste?–libraries and bookstores reinforce each other. Wal-Mart would do well to work with small-town indies to keep them in the equation.
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