Click and Mortar Books - Book Selling in the Internet Age was written by William and Jennifer Kinser, owners of The Book Hive.net a Click-n-Mortar Book store in New Hope, Minnesota. This book is a compilation of their experiences in planning, starting, and running The Book Hive. Their sales have consistently grown month-on-month on the web and in their store since its inception. William and Jennifer started The Book Hive after retiring early from their very successful, professional careers. William was a computer programmer and manager, running the Midwest region of Consultants for BEA Systems and overseeing more than 100 employees and some of the largest projects in the history of BEA. Jennifer was a Certified Public Accountant and worked in the Audit group at Deloitte and Touche on many national and international accounts. Avid readers, they have applied their background and love of books to The Book Hive business. Click-N-Mortar Books is their way of helping others achieve the same dream.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't waste your 24 bucks on this if you know anything at all about bookselling.,
By Randall Mark Trainer "Orthodox Christian" (Cedar Park, Texas) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Click and Mortar Books (Paperback)
The authors of Click and Mortar Books are probably nice people, and I wish them well with their bookstore, but they should have had the humility to realize that they were too inexperienced to write a book of this nature. I was simply flabbergasted to discover that their total experience in the book business (or retailing in general) was about 18 months prior to the publication of this book. Certainly, they know more than they did 18 months earlier, but enough to write a serious professional business book? I think not. It's like a pre-med sophomore writing a book on brain surgery.
I have owned and managed bookstores (new books) for about 25 years, and before that I was a department store buyer for six years. I shudder to think about any bookstore management book I could have written 20 years ago, much less 30 years ago. For somewhat over a year now, I have been trying to branch out into used books and online sales (very different from the traditional new book store). I need a lot more help than this book is able to give. It was written in portions, while they were starting their business. It remains to be seen whether their approach will result in a profitable business or not (as is normal at this stage of a new business). If you are looking for a mildly entertaining short story chronicalling someone's trial & error adventures as a seat-of-the-pants family business start-up, you will like this, though I doubt you would call it a book worth $23.95. If you are serious about starting or improving a click-and-mortar bookselling businss, and want lots of pertinent facts and proven wisdom, look elsewhere. This book is a good object lesson in amateur writing and self-publishing in three easy steps: 1. Identify a target market (like booksellers or prospective booksellers)who are willing to spend their money to get expert advice necessary for their businesses. 2. Dash off about 80 to 100 pages of random notes vaguely related to a topic you barely know about, not bothering about style, grammar or spelling. Use your word processor to double or triple the normal font size and throw in enough blank space and a few snapshots so that it will take up 256 pages, thus appearing to be a real book (at least until someone opens it). Forget typesetting or proof-reading. Print it as cheaply as possible. 3. Price it at $23.95 and sell it online to trusting souls who cannot examine it before purchasing it. Do not divulge in the ad that you are a beginner yourself. Then hope that inertia will prevent many of them from bothering to return it for a refund.
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