If you have made it past that headline, I thank you for your patience and understanding. Boomers can be annoying, even to other boomers. I know; I'm a BB myself. On the other hand, boomers are, and will continue to be, a driving force in the bookselling world for one big reason: They still read for pleasure.
I want to pose a couple of questions this week to independent booksellers:
- What are your thoughts about long-term marketing to BBs?
- By the year 2018, will boomers still be shopping in bricks-and-mortar bookstores or primarily online?
I'd really like to know what you think. Call it a conversation starter for 2008.
Our industry keeps mourning the loss of young readers, but I wonder whether we're taking "older" readers for granted. I worry about indie bookstores in this regard because, though painfully out of context, "something's happening here."
In a recent New York Times article, headlined "Six Decades at the Center of Attention, and Counting," Charles Duhigg wrote that, "with 37 million Americans over the age of 65, and 30 million more expected to cross that thin gray line in the next decade, the boomers and older consumers still represent billions of dollars in potential sales. So once again, companies are scrambling to update their slicing and dicing of the senior marketplace."
We already knew this, of course, but as Duhigg added, "what they are finding, advertising executives say, is that some old tactics don't work anymore. Older consumers don't want to be treated like teenagers; what's more, they don't want to believe they fall into any niche at all."
The knockout punch was delivered by Blaine Branchik, an associate professor of marketing at Quinnipiac University, who told the Times, "Seniors, particularly baby boomers, each believe they belong to a market segment made up of exactly one person. Many believe the only thing they have in common is that they are all so unique that they have nothing in common."
Boomers who turned 60 last week will not go gently into that good night. They will continue to reinvent themselves, individually as well as collectively. We will hear that 60 is the new 40 and 70 is the new 50, and eventually that 90 is the new 70.
Technology will play a key role in this one-person marketing strategy. As boomers age, many of the stereotypes about what might be called Electronics Deficiency Syndrome will vanish. On the road to hip dotage, a substantial percentage of aging boomers will be tech-savvy in ways their parents' generation never was.
As Matt Richtel pointed out in the Times last fall, "Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users. The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya's Mom, Boomj and Boomertown. They look like Facebook--with wrinkles. And they are seeking to capitalize on what investors say may be a profitable characteristic of older Internet users: they are less likely than youngsters to flit from one trendy site to the next."
Maybe BBs have always preferred their individuality on a global scale.
At sales floor level in the bookstore, I've notice a marked decline in the number of older customers boasting about their Luddite status or the innate brilliance of their android progeny with iPod ear implants and dexterous, texting fingertips. Boomers have never shown a tendency to surrender center stage, and it is hard to imagine that they won't carry at least some of their 'tude into old age.
According to Richtel "there are 78 million boomers--roughly three times the number of teenagers--and most of them are Internet users who learned computer skills in the workplace. Indeed, the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a market research firm."
But . . . boomers still read and they still buy books.
The dilemma here is whether, as they turn 65, 70, 75, they will continue to buy books from bricks-and-mortar bookshops or will point-and-click their purchases because the Internet is where they have found community and individuality.
Check your crystal balls and tell me what you see in the future. Boomer jokes also welcome.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)