About Nico


I'm a senior business analyst, writer, blogger and tarot consultant based in Toronto, Canada.


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5 Book Blogs You Should Be Reading

By Nico on Tuesday the 9th of March, 2010 at 4:14 pm

RSS IconThere are hundreds of literary blogs out there and I subscribe to several dozen of them, but recently I’ve pared down my RSS subscriptions again, and thought I’d share five of my favourites.

So I present to you, in no particular order:

1. Bookninja

George Murray posts several times a day, commenting on the latest in book news, reviews and miscellanea with snappy asides and acidic author bias. It’s lovely.

A few recent posts: “The literary Devil don’t want Toronto’s soul“, “Amazon and Apple bringing ebooks bar fight to Canada?“, “Sargent rallies the troops“.

Bonus: Free snark! (Read more…)

Seven reasons booksellers hate their customers

By Nico on Thursday the 25th of June, 2009 at 7:44 pm

Matt Blind has written a disturbingly accurate light and humourous piece on the different types of customers who visit bookstores.

Grazers

Grazers don’t need a book, or want a book, but they love coming in to the bookstore, and love lingering leisurely over all the tables, racks, endcaps, promotional displays, and front-of-store placements. If they can do this while a bookseller is attempting to replenish or reset the display, all the better.

The only redeeming feature of a grazer is that they can only accomplish their task with a cup of coffee in their hand — pardon, with a $4 half-soy-half-decaf-latte-with-a-shot-of-pretention — and while they clog the main aisle and generally pose a hazard to navigation, they are mostly harmless. They might try to casually engage you conversation, “How’s Business?”, but they don’t really care. Their primary goal is being in a bookstore for an hour each week so they can insert an off-hand, “oh I saw that the other day at Big Box Books” in later conversations, proving to their friends that they are topical and literate.

Bonus: They buy coffee. Margins on coffee are excellent.

From “Rethinking the Box: The Seven Types of Customer“

My store didn’t sell coffee (apparently we were missing out on a huge opportunity here)  but it certainly reads familiar. (Read more…)