Our local Barnes & Noble store closed last month.
This is saddening and depressing to our family as the area we live in is highly commercial and low brow.
It’s the South, people.
Now there is a giant empty retail spot but don’t worry, The Habit burger was just built in the parking lot!
The library in our county is decent for kids and the book selection isn’t terrible other than doubling as a homeless shelter. The children’s staff is pleasant.
And, maybe it’s a Southern thing, but people are foreign to the idea of being quiet in the library. Talking in a loud voice on the phone doesn’t raise attention.
The staff appear scared and indifferent.
So we are sad that Barnes & Noble shut down.
But you know who isn’t shutting down?
Planet Fitness.
In our commercial area we have a location of the Planet Fitness chain of workout centers. Planet Fitness has over 2,700 locations in all 50 States, most operating 24/7.
Ours has a sign saying we are open 24/5 but a quick glance at the operating hours will prove that false, we are open 24/4.
The monthly membership fee is $10, recently raised to $15 for new members. For $20 a month you get access to all the clubs, free tanning, guest privileges, and free mechanical massages.
The low cost combined with marketing the gym as the “no judgement zone” means lots of people join, many of whom never come to the gym to workout. Since the monthly membership cost is drafted from a checking account instead of a credit card, cancellation takes a couple more steps and Planet Fitness avoids the credit card processing fees and charge back issues.
The cost of cancelling the gym membership is more than the cost of canceling the membership. Think about it; to cancel your gym membership is to admit that you are never going to get in shape and that you lied to yourself when you made that New Years resolution.
It’s less painful to give the money away for nothing. Simply being able to say you have a gym membership is worth the $10 a month.
And what else does that mean? It means that Planet Fitness can sell a ton of memberships per location before the gym gets over crowded. Their customers aren’t the kind of people who work out anyways!
This means people like my wife and I who do work out on regular basis are getting a great deal.
Even all the people pretending to workout are getting a great deal! I win, you win, we all win.
Yes we can all win with books just like fitness.
Your local Planet Books will take a large anchor unit in a strip mall and we will get it cheap. We aren’t talking about Class A property here like the Fresh Market. Rather think…. the old K-Mart.
To get started we will offer free memberships to people who will give Planet Books a bunch of books. This will fill the store catalog and give use a position to trade for other books.
Then we will set up a check-in system where people can check in their personal libraries to allow other people to use their books and vice versa.
This way people can open their home libraries and when someone wants to read a book, you take your book to Planet Books and leave it for that person.
Now you personally know someone who has read the book, and this person lives in your town. A connection is made that exceeds the $5 a month.
Planet Books will be a comfy space to hangout. I envision some thrift store couches, eclectic furniture from donations, and people bringing in lawn chars for events.
And there will be all kinds of informal and formal events in Planet Books.
There will also be an honor system coffee bar, cookies, whatever.
I imagine little old ladies will bring baked goods for the joy of sharing.
Since there will be a fee to join the club there will be no homeless people. It may be best to avoid signage at all as not to alert the homeless of Planet Book’s existence seeing the problems Barnes & Noble had with the homeless.
If the homeless start to show up, softies will find a way to let them in and cause a lot of infighting, so we must be wiser than serpents to avoid THAT issue.
But the real key to the success of Planet Fitness is getting that monthly fee from people who don’t use the gym. And that’s the same wave Planet Books needs to ride.
Since the monthly fee is worth it to say to yourself “I belong to a gym and I am going to get fit at sometime in the future and besides, it’s only $10 a month and that’s worth it to not admit to myself that I am a failure like I am at everything in life.”
we must tap into this human insecurity for the benefit of book lovers.
People like to claim that they read when they don’t. People buy books for people that they themselves have never read and the person they gave it to is never going to read (see Bibles, and marriage advice books).
So I can see people buying other people memberships for Christmas, graduations, etc.
Maybe they’ll do it for the window decal. You know there will be a window decal.
But the real money is in the New Year Resolution crowd; these people pay for the gym that they never use. We will seed the minds all around us that “everyone is ‘reading more books’ this year for their New Years resolution.”
1,000 book lovers plus 3,000 people who aren’t planning on showing up and you have a winner. That’s $20,000 a month to pay for a space, pay for a server, pay someone to oversee the project and pay for new books each month.
As the Planet Books network grows we can even have a transport network for the books to connect every ones libraries.
Are you going to Ohio for a training event? See if anyone in the Columbus Planet Books has requested a book from your Planet Books and fulfill their wish.
Do you want to see meet people who read books like you read all over the country? Planet Books makes it real. It’s a part of the culture.
Want the perfect spot to read all day and not worry about buying anything? That’s Planet Books.
Planet Books becomes the best cheap night out.
And the homeless will get the whole library to themselves.
It’s truly a win for everyone.