Friday, October 10, 2008

The $5 book club

Russell Roberts has an idea for getting his newest book into the hands of people who "are either highly skeptical or influential (teachers)." He wants private donors to subsidize sales to that demographic. You join the book club, somebody you probably don't know gets to buy the book for $5. Such a deal.

We've had problems from teachers who think the rest of us for some vague reason owe them discounts. I've even had teachers threaten to tell their students not to shop at our bookstore if I didn't cut them a special deal. The school administrators, luckily for us, could see why we thought that was dirty pool, and with their help we've pretty much stopped getting extortion demands. So, anyway, I wish Roberts success in influencing teachers, but I hope he doesn't feed their entitlement mentality, if they have one...

1 comment:

Barb Szyszkiewicz said...

You're not serious about teachers, are you? How RUDE!
I always thought it was nice, when a store offered a discount, but I would never dream of trying to extort a store into doing so.
What makes teachers so special that they need a discount more than, say, librarians, dental assistants or baristas?