The Starbooks Genre

Considering Starbucks was founded in 1971 and only officially began to take over the world 20 years ago, there are a remarkable number of books about the company – enough for its own mini-genre of business-inspired literature, Starbooks, if you will.

Never mind that retailers like Harrod's (founded in 1834), Macy's (1854), and Bloomingdale's (1860) have been around for decades – the morning cup of joe is an essential part of our modern lifestyle and caffeine-fuelled authors have been smelling the coffee for the past 10 years. How we built Starbucks, how your business can be like Starbucks, how Starbucks changed my life, what it's like to work for Starbucks, and so on and so on.

Starbucks is once again in the news but for the wrong reasons. The company plans to close under-performing stores and will ONLY open 1,175 stores in 2008 – a drop of 34% from last year. Surrounded by eager imitators and cut-price competitors, Starbucks is reassessing its business – moving away from food and back to its core market of 'lifestyle' coffees, and experimenting with cheaper $1 sized offerings in its hometown of Seattle.

	Bestselling 'Starbooks' on AbeBooks.com over past 12 months How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary by Joseph A. Michelli Starbucks Passion for Coffee by Dave Olsen Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time by Howard Schultz Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture by Clark Taylor Grande Expectations: A Year in the Life of Starbucks by Karen Blumenthal Starbucks Pleasures of Summer: A Starbucks Coffee Cook Book by Starbucks My Sister's a Barista: How They Made Starbucks a Home Away from Home by John Simmons The Gospel According to Starbucks: Living with a Grande Passion by Leonard Sweet It's Not About the Coffee: Leadership Principles from a Life at Starbucks by Howard Behar

Despite slowing growth, the company's cultural mark has been stamped firmly on western culture. Quite simply, there are Starbucks stores everywhere. I go past five on the 10km drive to work without going anywhere near the downtown district of the smallish North American city that I call home. There are another four coffee shops from rival chains along the way. These stores are a drop in the frappuccino – Starbucks has more than 15,000 outlets in 42 countries.

Over the past 12 months, the bestselling 'Starbook' on AbeBooks has been How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill. It was only published in September 2007 but has sold solidly – I wonder how many coffee addicts woke up on Christmas morning to find a copy in their stocking?

Michael Gates Gill was the high level advertising executive whose life fell apart – his business, his marriage and health all failed. He turns to a run-of-the-mill Starbucks in New York and gets his life together serving coffee, learning life lessons along the way. Could the author have turned his life around working in McDonalds, or a Wal-Mart, or an independent bookstore, or any other kind of shop? Perhaps, but visiting Starbucks is ingrained in so many of our daily schedules that the book has clearly captured the imagination. How ironic that a clapped out corporate executive should find refuge in..... a corporation?

Universal has bought the book's rights and Tom Hanks is going to star in the movie version. Clearly, the book has become a PR gift for Starbucks which has been criticized for 1) squeezing out independent retailers by spreading like poison ivy, 2) ripping off third world coffee growers, 3) overcharging consumers for a cheaply sourced product, 4) exploiting its staff, 5) and becoming the poster child of the global economy. (Just go to Google and look for Starbucks' hate sites to get a feel for the online backlash.)

Howard Schultz is the chairman and CEO of Starbucks, and has a business book to his name - Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time was published in 1999. Although much has happened in the past nine years, the book details the company's international expansion of the 1990s – the period where Starbucks' outlets cropped up on every street corner from Auckland to Zurich and everywhere in between.

Another key Starbuck bigwig has written a book - It's Not About the Coffee: Leadership Principles from a Life at Starbucks by Howard Behar. Dave Olsen's Starbucks Passion for Coffee is a third book from an executive but this one goes into the mechanics of brewing coffee for connoisseurs and also includes recipes.

Only published in November 2007 in the US and just released in the UK, Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture by Taylor Clark is the most recent book to peer into the Starbucks' juggernaut. Clark is no fan – he argues that the coffee has gone bad and Starbucks has a drone culture for its staff but he still admires what the company has achieved in the blink of an eye.

Grande Expectations: A Year in the Life of Starbucks by financial journalist Karen Blumenthal looks at the company from Wall Street's perspective. Starbucks went public in 1992 when its portfolio of stores was in three figures – what a great investment that would have been?

But hang on – we shouldn't be surprised that Starbucks has inspired a mini-genre of books. The company's name comes from Captain Ahab's first mate in Moby Dick. You will also find Starbucks coffee shops inside bookstores. Readers love to read while sipping their Starbucks latte. The company has even ventured into bookselling with Mitch Albom's For One More Day and Ishmael Beah's Long Way Gone being offered for sale in its stores. They probably regret stocking Beah's book now after the Australian newspaper recently conducted a rigorous hatchet job on the memoir's accuracy.