I love this story for many reasons but the big one is the lesson about "selling out your mission." It seems naive and quaint to say "The job of a bookstore is t

I love this story for many reasons but the big one is the lesson about "selling out your mission." It seems naive and quaint to say "The job of a bookstore is to sell books that people want." except that is really true. We used to have a bookstore called "A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books" that had the vibe described here. Here's the thing though, profit and loss people get made decision makers. And it is a super simple decision process "Do I take $10M from this publisher to push their book or do I try to find books people are willing to buy?" well the easy answer is take the money. But as this story points out, it is the wrong answer. Once you're taking money like this your interests are no longer aligned with your customer, they are aligned with the publishers you buy from. That said, the store I've been to most doesn't seem to have changed its layout from selling games/puzzles + coffee bar + bookstore. (something mentioned in the article as being phased out) but perhaps that will change as they get around to it. Now if someone would do this transformation for a grocery chain I would love to have one of those near me!