I cannot say how many times I get asked this question when tourists come to town. I wonder what it is about a thriving independent bookstore in a fairly busy little town that makes people think we don’t actually take credit cards.
\nIt’s all I can do sometimes to not say, “No, we don’t take credit cards, in fact, we only accept pieces of eight.” Really, practically every store on the planet takes credit cards. Someone once expressed surprise that I had a computer at the register. Just because our store is in a semi-rural area people make assumptions, and sometimes that makes me cranky.
\nIt’s that same mentality, which is vaguely antagonistic, that has people coming up to the register saying, “How much more will this cost me than at a big store?” There can be a boutique mentality for some people shopping at a smaller bookstore, where they automatically assume they’ll be paying more because the store is smaller and doesn’t have buyer power.
\nBut it’s really hard to charge more for a book: the price is printed right there on the book in at least two places. Small stores can still have very competitive pricing due to discounting – for example, we discount bestsellers, and sales and customer loyalty programs are often free at indie bookstores, so in the end, you wind up saving more than at the bigger stores.
\nI take a deep breath and happily smile back at customers who ask these questions and say, “I take all credit cards, save Diners Club.” Then I take my moment on the indie pulpit and extol the beauty and importance of an independent bookstores and why we’re important.
\nAnd then I handsell them a book or two they didn’t even know they wanted, and then I ask if them if they’ll be paying with Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I cannot say how many times I get asked this question when tourists come to town. I wonder what it is about a thriving independent bookstore in a fairly busy little town that makes people think we don’t actually take credit cards. It’s all I can do sometimes to not say, “No, we don’t take credit cards, in fact, we only accept pieces of eight.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}