From the Whistler

A few weeks back I came across an article my wife was reading for her Sociology class, on George Ritzer’s theories of the McDonalidization of our society. It got me to thinking about other industries that are being "McDonaldized", such as publishing. A chain business, be it a fast food restaurant, book store or real estate agency, has several attractions for customers: a controlled environment with standardized layouts and procedures; a recognizable name customers can trust; efficient and usually cheap service; and a product that meets customer expectations. Leaving out the darker side of large corporations and world trade issues, McDonaldization might not be a bad thing for fast food: I just want to eat my sandwich and go—it’s fuss-free and convenient. When we get to things like cafes or theaters or florists, however, it becomes apparent that we’re losing something from McDonaldization: ambience, originality, authenticity. In short, we long for something dreamed up by an individual, not drawn up in a corporate board room.

Now let’s consider book stores. On the surface a chain might not appear terribly different from an independent bookseller. After all, I can buy my John Updike novel at Bound to be Read or Barnes and Noble, and it will be the same book. What if I get tired of John Updike, though, and want to try a new author? I could browse the shelves in both stores, looking at the new releases by lesser-known writers. And here’s the difference: at any Barnes and Noble across the country, there would be the same books on the endcaps or in the New Fiction section, in fact pretty much the same books in the entire store. But the independent bookseller will always have a different selection—a book by a local author, or something published by a small press. If I’m interested in a local setting the owner might find me a novel like Call Me Kick!, which takes place in St. Paul. And the book store staff, much more involved in the literary scene than I, would be able to recommend the latest "must read", whether it be published by

Houghton Mifflin or local Graywolf Press. And if I really like the book I’ll recommend it to my friends or my book club, and they’ll recommend it to their friends, and so on. That’s one way books become best-sellers

In contrast, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Walden and the other chains decide what to put on their shelves at corporate headquarters. Big publishers predominate, and are the only ones able to afford to buy that crucial endcap space. The small and mid-size presses get squeezed out, and local presses get no special treatment. So the chain stores tend to sell books based on marketing, while the independent dealers sell them based on the quality of the writing. The end result of the McDonaldization of book stores, then, is that the great books get ignored in favor of mediocre books that happen to be published by large presses and fit marketing trends.

Now I’m not going to start jumping up and down claiming that we’re in an intellectual crisis here. Publishing has always been a rather exclusive club, and even a hundred years ago you had to have connections to get your book accepted for publication, no matter how good it was. But McDonaldization is accelerating the trend, and widening the gap between the fifty well-marketed authors and everyone else. It could, in fact, spawn the McDonaldization of writers themselves, leaving us with only a few "brand names" like Stephen King and John Grisham to choose from. Yikes.

Fortunately in the Twin Cities we have a number of excellent independent stores—Micawbers, Ruminator, Bound to be Read, Orr Books, Dreamhaven, Uncle Hugos and Uncle Edgars, and Birchbark Books to name a few—and so far they’ve been able to combat McDonaldization and even thrive. I’d recommend them to anyone on a quest for a good book. They may not have brand name recognition or standardized layout, and the clerks might not wear the same logo-sporting vests, but you’ll walk out with some decent reading. Oh, and, until the McDonaldization of literary journals begins, they’re the only book stores where you’ll find Whistling Shade.

- Joel Van Valin

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