Go look it up

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/11/2017 (2344 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the Friends episode The One with the Cuffs, Joey is at home in his and Chandler’s apartment, when he receives a visit from a door-to-door salesperson peddling encyclopedia.

Broke as he is, Joey laughs when his guest, played by Penn Gillette, informs him the asking price for a full set is $1,200. But after discovering a folded-up, $50 bill in the back pocket of his jeans, he strikes a deal, by agreeing to purchase a single volume — the one covering the letter V.

The next day, when everybody gathers for coffee at Central Perk, Joey tries to impress the gang by dropping tidbits about Vesuvius, volcanoes, vivisections… any word he can think of that begins with the 22nd letter of the alphabet.

Finally, after bringing up the Vietnam War, he is stymied when Monica immediately changes the subject to a television documentary about the Korean War, a conflict Joey knows zilch about.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that particular episode and though it sounds amusing, it isn’t likely to happen, since we don’t sell individual books. You have to buy all 22 volumes,” says Kerry Kuran, laughingly describing himself as an LSR — “that’s lowly sales rep” — for World Book, which, this year, is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its inaugural edition.

Last year around this time, we profiled Garry Peters, a Winnipegger who delivers milk, cheese and yogurt to households across the city in the wee hours of the night. While milkman definitely qualifies as a once-prevalent profession that’s seen better days, some might argue encyclopedia salesperson falls into that category, too.

According to Publishers Weekly, World Book, which is based in Chicago, once employed an international sales force of 40,000. Thanks to the internet, that number currently sits at around 100.

Kuran isn’t surprised by those figures. Since 2005, there’s only been a single soul in Manitoba, northwestern Ontario and Nunavut selling World Book Encyclopedia and “you’re looking at him,” he says, seated in a bustling, St. Mary’s Road coffee shop.

Like most people from his generation, Kuran, 60, has fond memories of being told to “go look it up,” when, as a kid, he’d ask his mother or father the length of a certain river, or the capital of some far-off nation.

“I remember my parents buying a set of encyclopedia in 1967, for Canada’s centennial,” he says, noting he would have been 10 at the time. “Going to school, we used those books a ton. I mean, that was our computer, right?”

Kuran had already been selling textbooks and reference material to school divisions and public libraries throughout the province, when he added World Book to his portfolio 12 years ago. Those types of clients account for the bulk of his sales, he says, but he still fields orders — about 10 every year — from private individuals, as well.

“Occasionally, I’ll hear from parents who don’t want their young children on the internet, for personal or religious reasons,” he says. “They’ll buy a set, but then I might not hear from them for three or four years, till they decide it’s time to buy a new, updated (set).”

Kuran feels World Book is a prime example of a company that has “changed with the times, and didn’t go the way of the dodo bird.” (Hey! According to World Book’s D volume, the last time a dodo was seen on the island of Mauritius was in 1662.)

“The online version, which is updated daily to strive for 100 per cent accuracy, easily accounts for three-quarters of my (World Book) sales to schools and libraries. There’s video, audio… it’s quite the resource,” he says.

Terri Wiest is a librarian at the city’s Millennium Library. One of Wiest’s responsibilities is ordering material for Winnipeg Public Library’s children’s and young adults’ collections, including World Book Encyclopedia.

Although the city’s libraries have an online subscription to four of World Book’s databases, Wiest feels it’s important to have physical copies of the tomes on library shelves, as well.

“We have one set of World Book at all of our branches and here (at Millennium Library) we’ve always had two — the current set, as well as the previous year’s,” she says, seated in her downtown office.

“They used to be for reference purposes only, but now customers are able to check them out of the library, and use them at home. There’s a certain amount of appeal to the physical copies, I find, plus, because World Book now does a spinescape with a lovely picture, they look really awesome on the shelf, as well.”

Wiest, who got her start as a reference librarian at Winnipeg Public Library’s Henderson branch, laughs when she recalls an occasion World Book came in handy, early in her career.

“Whenever a child came in with a school project, if I wasn’t sure where to start, I’d almost always reach for the World Books,” she says. “I remember this one kid who was doing a project on a liger, which I quickly learned was a cross between a lion and a tiger. Not too many books have been written about the liger, obviously, but when I opened the L-volume of World Book, sure enough, I found a small entry.”

Paul Kobasa is the vice-president of editorial and editor-in-chief at World Book’s Chicago headquarters. He says while it’s true World Book salespeople no longer trudge from door-to-door, suitcase in hand, in search of potential customers, they “haven’t hung up their sample bags,” completely.

“The company’s principal public face, complemented by its online presence (www.worldbook.com), is its salespeople who live and work and across Canada and the U.S., regularly calling on public libraries, school libraries and provincial and state departments of education,” he says when reached at his office.

“There were indeed thousands of World Book salespeople at any one time, many of them part-time workers, especially teachers taking advantage of their summer holidays,” he continues. “In those years, the home office was housed on two full floors of Chicago’s massive Merchandise Mart, where many clerical and accounting workers managed the record-keeping required of a vast, direct-sales operation.

“Because of the narrower market focus, there are no longer thousands (of salespeople), but the people in the field are supplemented by home-office staff who cover isolated parts of salespeople’s territories.”

Kobasa says World Book’s sales figures rose 10 per cent in 2017 versus the previous year, which he attributes to two factors: the company’s 100th anniversary edition and Donald J. Trump.

“Historically, there is almost always a bump in sales of the edition that includes the results of a U.S. presidential election so I expect that had as much to do with the volume of sales as the fact the edition marked 100 years since the first.”

Kobasa adds “pretty much everyone” who works for World Book hears remarks of surprise, from time to time, that the company still publishes a print edition every year.

“Or that the company even exists, in the Wikipedia world.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca