Micro-biz in a can: Agorist bookshelf essentials
Among the things I’m personally doing is trying to come up with a list of “bookshelf essentials”. The basic idea is to come up with a small stock list for agorist book distributors in cities with local infoshops to offer on a consignment sale shelf at that infoshop, with sales receipts used to replenish that stock and profits split with the store collective in consideration of use of a small segment of their shelf space.
Of course, the local collective may not want you in their store. A lot of that possibility may hinge on your own ability to explain the fundamentally anti-capitalist nature of market anarchism. But let’s assume you’re not a jerk, that you’re very intelligent, that you’re friendly to your fellow radicals and that you have a pretty good grasp of how anarchist schools of thought are reconciled by free association in a stateless society. They may find it makes sense to allow you to spend your own money to increase the stock they have on hand generally and, hence, the wider selection of books they will be known to offer. Let’s assume you can get a small consignment shelf.
Well, what do you do with it? My initial thoughts on this…
The basics, as a matter of course:
1. New Libertarian Manifesto (cost: $12.95)
2. Agorist Class Theory (cost: $5.25)
The very essential:
3. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (cost: $27.00)
4. Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (cost: $20.99)
And a narrowly-focused (as well as very cheap!) supplemental one that overcomes a lot of the skepticism about the practicality of provision of law, security and defense in a stateless society:
5. Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy (cost: $5.00)
Two nice optional extras, that I will be reviewing shortly, can be worked into your stock plan at a later date. I won’t use their costs in my figures below and just mention them here for your reference and to emphasize that the basic plan can be changed to fit your own preferences and the amount of money you can dedicate to the project.
6. Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice (cost: $29.95)
7. But Who Will Build the Roads? Market Anarchy Explained (cost: $19.54)
Let’s assume you want to start with minimal stock and, hence, minimal capital investment and minimal risk. Suppose, just to pull the figures out of my ass, we want to stock our shelf at quantities of 4 units for books in the first tier above, two units for books in the second tier above and four units of the cheap third tier book. Simple arithmetic shows how much capital the agorist entrepreneur will need to put into stock.
$12.95 * 4 unit(s) = 51.80
$05.25 * 4 unit(s) = 21.00
$27.00 * 2 unit(s) = 52.00
$20.99 * 2 unit(s) = 41.98
$05.00 * 4 unit(s) = 20.00
Total stock investment?
51.80 + 21.00 + 52.00 + 41.98 + 20.00 = $186.78
So, basically your little consignment shelf represents a little under two hundred bucks, so far.
Of course, you’ll also have shipping costs and so forth, but I’m just trying to provide a rough sketch here. Maybe you should stock more quantities of the best books with less selection, or some other mix altogether. Don’t worry to much about profitability. The business becomes part of your activism and your activism becomes a part of the business. The books themselves are not the money-maker, but an essential part of the business as cadre-building effort. Even if the whole thing is a loss, attempting to at least try to make it pay for itself allows you to leverage more resources and extend your reach.
The thing is, marketing those books is not something to leave to the inanimate wooden shelf to do for you.
Develop at least two seminars, presentations or classes — whatever you want to call them. Develop your own custom material to take advantage of your own unique viewpoints and knowledge. The first seminar should be a free basic one and the second a modestly priced advanced seminar. The first one serves as an introduction and also provides the opportunity to plug the books for sale. The advanced seminar, potentially, serves as the real principal moneymaker and, perhaps more importantly, cements the customer relationship. Someone will have taken a first class, read perhaps one to three really astounding books and then came back to you for an advanced class that fills in some of the gaps and answers a lot of their questions.
Spring for free sodas at your basic seminars and fifty bucks worth of flyers to publicize a schedule of seminar dates. Total cash outlay so far: around $250.
If there are a few libertarians in your area who might support such an effort financially, and you yourself don’t have $250 to invest in it, get your business plan / project plan nailed down in a lot more detail and then put out your request for $500 in donations or whatever through Fundable. With Fundable, nobody pays until the pledge goal is achieved.
Feedback and suggestions?
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I think it would be better to focus on the stuff that’s available for free on the Internet, such as Kevin Carson’s writing and various blogs.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with buying a hard copy to support your favorite writers.
Okay. Thanks.
This is very, very, very good. And very needed. Thank you, Brad.
It’s got a very Crimethinc Infoshop-Starter look to it, and I dig that.
Of course, working with limited cash and the decided lack of aesthetics to be found (people, alas, DO judge books by their covers), at this point the infoshop I work at pretty much just has PDF printed copies of the first two. But this is a solid list to refer to and maybe pass around to friendly collectives.
I don’t know about seminars, per se. But here in the Twin Cities we’ve got a Free School network (EXCO) that runs a couple anarchist classes / study groups a semester, and I’ve been repeatedly urged to put together one on Individualist Anarchism and Market Anarchism. So I’m pulling together a bunch of articles/passages and considering teaching a course next semester. Any advice or suggestions?
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