We lose money on every sale but we make it up on volume

I was walking across the town of Mendocino recently. Sandwiched between two paperbacks I had purchased at my local independent bookstore was a fresh copy of the San Francisco Chronicle.

It occurred to me, and not for the first time, that I was lugging around dinosaurs. Books printed on paper? See: Kindle and Ebooks. The Chron? Losing a million dollars a month, and still cutting back, so far back that soon there may be no newspaper at all.

Headline: “Chronicle faces cuts in staff, expenses.”

I worked for the Chron once, when I was still in high school, back in the previous century. I played Copy Boy. I never did see a Copy Girl. Copy Boys responded to shouts of “Boy!” from reporters out of paper and carbons (Remember carbons? Remember paper?) or copy editors (Remember copy editors?) who needed galleys taken somewhere, or columnists who wanted a fresh cup of coffee.

Late at night we gathered up icky sticky paste pots and cleaned them and refilled them in the bathroom. Then we cleaned the bathroom. We were the lowest of the low on the city room floor. But we could see everyone, hear everything, and best of all we were completely invisible.

We Copy Boys had a table all to ourselves. Stationed just behind us was Entertainment Editor Judy Stone, sister or daughter, I don’t remember, of the famous lefty writer “Izzy” I. F. Stone.

We could feel the city down there on 5th and Mission, across from the old Mint, at the edge of skid row and the Tenderloin. Sam Spade had just left the building, and you could smell his cologne in the elevator. Upstairs were the linotype machines, dinosaurs even then. Downstairs was a huge printing plant, and you could smell that, too. There were no computers, no cell phones, none of that.

In those days the De Young family owned the Chron, and Hearst ran The Examiner over on 3rd and Market, an afternoon rag, not a worthy competitor. As each edition of the EX hit the streets copies were delivered to Chronicle editors who scrutinized it for leads.

Ink, paper, sweat, a lot of running around, and a lot of energy. To a high school kid it felt like heaven in the real world. The memories still are sweet.

These days the already greatly-reduced Chronicle spends ten dollars on each copy of the Sunday paper and sells it for four. The Chron runs a great free web site but online it’s darned hard to figure out how to subscribe to the paper. Might as well read it for free online. Does anyone else remember the days when newsboys stood on corners selling papers to passing commuters or pedestrians? Get-chur pay-per...!!!

By the way, John Coate, the current General Manager of KZYX&Z had a lot to do with inventing the Chron’s online presence. And he did a great job.

The most important issue for newspapers is how to pay for reporters and the infrastructure that supports them. Subscriptions don’t cover it, class ads don’t cover it, and the web provides only a trickle of income.

I still love reading the paper even though I also read it online. Herb Caen is long gone, but now I read everything Jon Carroll writes, and Sports, and the editorials, and the geeky page, and other stuff, too.

I still get a big kick from headlines such as “Lincecum’s goal: doing even better this season” or “Toxics lurk beneath bay.” I think of Dashiell Hammett when I come across a headline like this: “Decomposed body found in deserted home.” “Wind farm blows into the delta” must have made some editor smile.

I have a message for Hearst, now owner of the Chron: Don’t give up. Don’t let it go. Too many memories, too many laughs, too many good things to just go away. Fix it. That’s right. Just fix it.

Now I’m going to pour a second cup of coffee and read the obituaries. Good times.

NOTES:

I don’t know Bill Roddy, but his America Hurrah web site is full of memories and photos. For one thing, he remembers being a Copy Boy on the 1941 Examiner.

Another Copy Boy memory, from an interview with journalist Tom Tugend:

"After I was discharged (from service in the Korean War), I got a job as a copy boy on the San Francisco Chronicle. That was one of the few ways to get in [to journalism]. If you made it, they made you a reporter. I was a copy boy for nine months. Herb Caen was there. Pierre Salinger. Other copy boys included a former philosophy professor and a socialite lawyer from New York. All odd balls. The most intelligent group of people I've known putting carbon sheets between sheets of paper and getting coffee for the reporters.

The entire interview

Like Not Totally Depressing

Book news from all over, not all of it totally depressing:

If you ran a prison library in, say, Erlestoke near Devizes, Wiltshire, England. If you ran that library, would you include books in there on how to escape from prison? Inmates at Her Majesty's Prison can read "Escape" by David McMillan, which describes how the author once broke out of Thailand's so-called 'Bangkok Hilton' prison.

Or they can check out a book about great escapes during World War II. And it's not just escapes. There are plenty of books on famous criminals, including "Pretty Boy" about an armed robber who among other things assaulted prison guards while jailed.

It's the Conservatives in England who have compiled this list of books to keep out of the hands of prisoners, and boy, are the New Labours in power going to get in trouble over this one.

Really, why allow prisoners to have books at all? They just hide blades in them, and learn about Parisian existentialism. It encourages them to think. That can't be good, can it? Luckily, inmates watch a lot of TV, where jail breaks are unknown and all crime is punished.

Same goes for school children and members of Congress. If they read, they won't get their homework done or show up to vote. Better off not reading at all.

In other news, online every-thing seller Amazon is about to release version two of its electronic book reader machine, the Kindle. You didn't know there was a version one? It's the coming thing: books on screens. You can take the Kindle camping, traveling, read it on the subway, at lunch, pretty much anywhere but in the shower and they're working on that. If you have fast Internet access, and who doesn't these days, you also can read newspapers and magazines on your Kindle.

Or you can take a book to all those places, no batteries are required. The Kindle sells for $359, order now. You can hold it in one hand! It's in black and white! One nice thing: It can read the text out loud to you in your choice of male or female voices.

This prediction from a bookselling friend of mine: "Within seven years something big is going to happen on the tech front of Ereaders making them wildly popular and chic. Ebooks will be easy to access and easy to purchase. The (book) chains will dump all of their storefronts and shift completely and exclusively to the Web. The number of brick-n-mortar bookstores will go down to 1/4 or 1/5 of the number of stores that exist today. Either that or the independent stores will no longer resemble bookstores. They'll be boutiques and books will comprise about 1/3 to ½ of the merchandise."

That's if publishers and booksellers survive that long. Retail sales at bookstores in December came in at one thousand fifty-one million dollars. That's huge! People are still buying books! However, that grand sales total reflects almost a five per cent drop in sales from two years ago.

For the year, yearly bookstore sales were down only one half of one percent from two years ago. That is actually very good news in light of recent economic and electronic developments.

The news from publishers is grim: HarperCollins has killed off the Collins part of the company and laid off a lot of people. Canadian booksellers have canceled, probably forever, their annual convention. Oxford University Press laid off 60 people and they all work for Cambridge University Press now, just kidding.

Down the highway in Sebastopol, tech books publisher O'Reilly laid off 30 workers. There's a pay freeze at Penguin, but that's OK, because they're penguins.

And while all this was going on, an early edition of Grimms' Fairy Tales sold for $11,000, and a first edition, probably signed, of "Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban" went for a cool $12,874.

I wonder how much my copy is worth?

NOTES:

Prison chiefs criticized for choice of books

"Escape: The True Story Of The Only Westerner Ever To Break Out Of Thailand's Bangkok Hilton" by David McMillan is available used and out of print in the range of approximately $8 to $67 from various international booksellers. Go to Addall books and search.

"Pretty Boy" by Roy Shaw. John Blake Publisher paperback $14.99. ISBN1857825519. Published in the UK and may not be easy to find in the USA. From the publisher: Roy Shaw is the ultimate hardman. He has cult status and commands a respect that few, even in the violent world he moves in, can equal. To him, violence is simply an accepted part of his profession. He doesn't exaggerate it, he can't excuse it and he refuses to apologize for it. His name may mean nothing to you--he's no actor, no showman, no wannabe celebrity. He does, however, live by a merciless code, and though he may not have cloven hooves and a tail, if he goes after someone, all hell comes with him.

Don't forget to tip...

Tipping, or more precisely, how much to tip, is a source of constant controversy among those Americans who actually can afford to eat in a restaurant once in a while.

When the check arrives I take a look at the total and figure out ten percent, double it, and if that feels too small, throw in another dollar or two. Or I don't. I am definitely inconsistent when it comes to tipping. I used to bartend, and I still remember how bad it felt to be shorted on a tip.

Other people will inspect the receipt, line by line. Subtract the sales tax and invoke The Eisenhower Rule: It was 10 per cent then and it's ten per cent now.

Taken all together, tips even out. Some diners over-tip, some under. Some tip out of guilt, others to show off. A few people hang on to cash like it was their own blood. All together, an average night in an average restaurant.

Wait staff has their opinions, too, and you'll certainly hear them in "Waiter Rant." Waiter Rant is the name of a new book by The Waiter. That's his name. He's anonymous because he's still working.

The rest of the title is "Thanks for the Tip – Confessions of a Cynical Waiter" and it's a great read, enlightening for anyone eating out and just as useful, probably, for someone considering entering the food trade.

Not long ago both of us here at home read another book on the trade, "Service Included: Four Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter" by Phoebe Damrosch. We learned a lot about tipping and about everything else it takes to run, or simply to eat in, a good restaurant. We started telling Damrosch stories to our friends.

Ms. Damrosch worked at Per Se in New York, sister restaurant to Napa Valley's French Laundry. Per Se is a fancy place, as high-level as they come. The waiters take dance lessons to learn how to stand gracefully, attend seminars on sea salts and virgin oils, learn to juggle complicated sets of plates and silver, and best of all, study the names of all features in Central Park visible from the restaurant's tables. In case a customer asks, and they never do.

The Waiter is a different kind of cat. Before he worked as a waiter he had a job restraining rich mental patients in a clinic for drug abusers. This prepared him for restaurant work.

At Amici's in New York, before his first shift, the headwaiter announced two waiters had suddenly quit.

"You mean there are only four of us taking care of two hundred people?" The Waiter asked.

"This place is a meat grinder, kid. You're meat. Get used to it."

He did, and The Waiter continues to work, anonymously, and collect stories.

The Waiter rants. Phoebe Damrosch explains. The closest she comes to a rant is naming two customers Mr and Mrs Bichalot. "Service Included" is a revelation. It takes way more moxie than I could muster to successfully set up a new multi-starred restaurant in the big city. The whole thing is rather amazing.

Some passages cover the same territory as Elizabeth Gilbert in her best-selling memoir, "Eat, Pray, Love." Damrosch's slow-developing love affair with a fellow worker is the weakest part of an otherwise enthralling book, although certainly the most heart-felt. The best parts are when she's working a busy weekend at the restaurant. Caviar is flying off the frozen mother-of-pearl spoons, the roasted turbot cheek is plating, and half of Table Four just went outside to check their Blackberrys.

Both of these writers have a lot to say about people who take advantage of all that service and skill but don't know how to act or how to tip. These two books provide a major service to diners: After all, getting along well with the people who feed us is a life-enhancing skill.

Both books are unstoppable entertainments. You may never willfully ignore, abuse, or undertip a waiter again. Never. Unless they deserve it. Or you're Mrs Bichalot, or the guy who... well, you'll have to read the books.

NOTES:

Oh, how I wish I had an hour-long show on this subject. There's so much more meat in these books than I can indicate here. Restaurants are to good stories as frogs are to ponds. They just naturally go together.

"Waiter Rant" by The Waiter. Ecco/HarperCollins hardcover $24.95. ISBN 9780061256684.

"Service Included" by Phoebe Damrosch. HarperCollins paperback $13.95. ISBN 9780061228155.

Eat, Pray, Love

Have you read "Waiting" by Debra Ginsberg, or "Turning the Tables" by Steven A. Shaw? More here

And now a word from another abused segment of the working class, the airline stewards.

A TIP (from "Service Included"): If you want to change the majority of the components in a dish, you might consider choosing something else.

ANOTHER TIP (from "Waiter Rant"): If you can't afford to leave a tip, you can't afford to eat in the restaurant. Stay home.