Kathleen Kelly's Philosophy of Selling Books

The main theme of a film is always constructed by a lot of subthemes. These subthemes are often not related directly to the main theme, but there they are to provide the settings for the main theme to develop. Therefore, if you give an extra effort to break a film down into chunks - instead of just look at the big picture, ignoring the subthemes and subplots - and examine each chunk as an individual theme, you will be able to learn a lot of different things from a single movie. And it's often totally different from the main theme.

That's what I did the last time I watched Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail. Instead of putting myself in a sentimental state watching the funny romance of Joe Fox and Kathleen Kelly, I focused on their conflict in the book business - not that I thought romance is a cliche, it's just a try to see beyond the thing that average viewer will perceive.

The first valuable principle was formulated by Katheen when she first met Joe Fox in The Shop Around the Corner. "I started helping my mother here after school when I was six years old. I used to watch her, and it wasn't that she was selling books, it was that she was helping people become whoever they were going to turn out to be. When you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your life does."

Off course what Kathleen and her mom did was selling. They got money from books. But the selling was definitely not driven by the money, but by the passion to help people to be whoever they're going to be. Books are seen as equipments for people in their quest to find the self. I think this passion will lead anyone - especially editors - in the book business to make books based on the values they'll give to people's lives, instead of merely on whether it will be sold out or not. The same passion will lead salespeople to sell books that people really need, not books that the salespeople (pretend to) think people need.

Another valuable principle was stated when Kathleen's employees - George, Christina, and Birdie - were talking about their worries seeing the Fox Books store. Kathleen ensured them that they're going to be fine saying, "They're big, impersonal, and full of ignorant salespeople!" Those are at least two deadly sins of a big business: impersonality and ignorance.

In the small The Shop Around the Corner, kids can still sit down listening to the booklady reading a section from Roald Dahl's celebrated autobiography Boy, describing "The Great Mouse Plot of 1923". There were interactions - socially and emotionally - in it, compared to the deep couch and cappuccino offered by Fox Books store as a bribe. There won't be a scene in Fox Books store where a reader cried after reading a touching book and Cecilia Kelly offered a box of kleenex. Instead, individuals will only stroll around from shelf to shelf to find a title and then pay - the thing they can always do in any other places. At The Shop Around the Corner, emotional attachment doesn't only appear between buyer and books, but also between buyer and seller. Buying is not merely an economic activity, it's an experience.

Ignorance was beautifully pictured by the scene in children book section in Fox Books store where a lady were looking for a book and all she can remember was that it contains the word 'shoes'. And the salesman had no idea of what she was talking about. Kathleen who happened to be there explained crying that what she was looking for were the Shoes series of Noel Streatfeild that were out of print already. Kathleen then recommend the Ballet Shoes. In Fox Bookstore, there will be no George Papas explaining to Joe Fox about beautifully crafted hand-illustrations. Ignorance is all we will find when I go to to big bookstores nowadays.

At the end of the film we saw Fox Books store won, putting The Shop Around the Corner into bankruptcy. Yes, I fully understand that the success of a business - note that success nowadays is identical only to financial gain and survival - is determined by sophisticated terms such as marketing strategy and tactic, updated management technique, and so on. But when we talk about quality, I don't think that's enough. I am not blaming modern mega stores. Such a store gives more people chances to earn their living. But I have a vision of putting those principles together in a more humane business: passion to help people, personality, knowledgability, and marketing strategies and tactics. Only by that way I think you can make a growing business which at the same time gives people experience. But still a sad question popped up in my mind, "Is that what today's people really want - discount, cappuccino, gimmick, deep couch?" How sad...