NYC shocker: Strand Bookstore seeks to increase profits

Via Book Patrol, here's an investigative report alleging that the Strand's current management "has worked harder than anyone to transform the Strand from an intellectual oasis to a profit-producing machine."  The core problem, they say, is Nancy Bass Wyden, who used to work at Exxon and is said to be imposing corporate business practices on the store:

Going from working for a giant oil company to running a giant independent book store is alone a recipe for disaster.

“They focus more on making money than on the enjoyment of running a bookstore,” said Trexler Chisholm, 26, who works in the rare books room on the third floor.

One of Bass Wyden's major initiatives was to ramp up the Strands books by the yard program, the "selling of books arranged decoratively on shelves to the rich and famous," which has nothing to do with books and everything to do with interior design. It just doesn't seem to be about the books anymore.

This is fascinating stuff on any number of levels. For example, many say the future of charity lies in remaking it in the image of for-profit business--in short, the very thing now decried at the Strand, which is, let's face it, is a commercial business.  If a culture clash erupts at a bookstore, how much more can we expect a stronger backlash in the nonprofit world?

There's also the reaction against the evolution of the book.  Folks familiar with the past generation of media theory know that the Strand's subtle shift to books-as-decoration reflects the book's evolving nature as a vehicle for conveying information.  Heck, McLuhan called this development almost fifty years ago; one person's selling out is another's cultural shift.

Maybe it would be nice to run the Strand as a so-called social business, with an emphasis on the social.  It could be an oasis in the commercial urban desert, a literary salon devoted to the love of books and treating all employees--and customers--as family.  Personally I'd enjoy that, at least for the year or so it would last before the Strand went bankrupt and was replaced by a bank.