A trip to the land of Ikea and the discovery of Ikea books ....
... Carmen and I went by the new Ikea store down in that pestilential swamp I call the unnamed port city. Very clever store scientifically designed to separate you from your money.
Many of the furniture displays with bookshelves were stocked with brand new books, many of them recent bestsellers. I was wondering how they kept them from being simply walked off with until I read some of the titles:
Liv für Liv, a detective novel
Samira och Samir, about two Iranian kids.
The books were all in Swedish. Who's going to shoplift any of those? I did notice a few copies of Tom Jones by Fielding, but who in the benighted swamplands of the unnamed port city is going to wade through a blocky 18th century classic of English lit? They're safe.
Consider the economics. It's brilliant. They buy up large quantities of first run books to stock all their stores, giving an enormous boost to the Swedish publishing industry and making it possible for it to survive with what otherwise would be tiny print runs by American standards. And Ikea enhances the Scandinavian aura of the cheap Chinese made knock offs they sell. Perfect.
But what do they stock on bookshelves in their Scandinavian stores?
I think they get those books from Hungarian publishers.
... Carmen and I went by the new Ikea store down in that pestilential swamp I call the unnamed port city. Very clever store scientifically designed to separate you from your money.
Many of the furniture displays with bookshelves were stocked with brand new books, many of them recent bestsellers. I was wondering how they kept them from being simply walked off with until I read some of the titles:
Liv für Liv, a detective novel
Samira och Samir, about two Iranian kids.
The books were all in Swedish. Who's going to shoplift any of those? I did notice a few copies of Tom Jones by Fielding, but who in the benighted swamplands of the unnamed port city is going to wade through a blocky 18th century classic of English lit? They're safe.
Consider the economics. It's brilliant. They buy up large quantities of first run books to stock all their stores, giving an enormous boost to the Swedish publishing industry and making it possible for it to survive with what otherwise would be tiny print runs by American standards. And Ikea enhances the Scandinavian aura of the cheap Chinese made knock offs they sell. Perfect.
But what do they stock on bookshelves in their Scandinavian stores?
I think they get those books from Hungarian publishers.
posted by Clemens | 9:16 PM
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