Burns Ignoble

With every controversy comes those looking to profit from it, and, as we’re seeing with one Florida bookstore, the far-right culture war against “wokeness” is no exception.

Dave Imhoff is the general manager of the Tomes Bookstore location in Davenport, Florida. Recently, he’s begun a clever promotion in an attempt to bring in new business that has him under fire.

“Look, a lot of businesses are struggling right now,” says Imhoff, who is instantly defensive, “and if someone can find a way to bump their sales up a little to stay afloat, I don’t see why anyone would have a problem with it. So what if they’re not actually reading the books, it doesn’t matter as long as they’re buying them!”

Well if they’re not reading them then what are they doing with them? DIY projects? Staging open houses? Fixing wobbly furniture?

“We’re not exactly encouraging people to burn the books,” says Imhoff, “but if we think some customers might be into doing that kind of thing, we’ll maybe just nudge them in that direction.”

But in the direction towards what?

As it turns out, Imhoff’s brilliant plan to make his store profitable is to offer customers an entire section of books for far-right influencers and cranks to take home and burn, either for social media clout or just because they wanna burn something, and it’s not just conservative book burners who have taken notice.

“I actually thought it was a really cool idea,” says local barista and avid reader Tessa Sandovel, “like ‘burn these books!’, like it was a way to draw attention to the books they don’t want you to read. But then I came in and didn’t see any irony to it at all, it’s like they really want people to burn these books!”

“That’s uh, that’s just another layer to the promotion,” says Imhoff, who seems like he hadn’t considered that angle. “It works on many levels.”

“He says that,” adds Sandovel, “but the impulse add-on baskets of cigarette lighters kind of give away the game.”

“Hey, those cheap lighters are like 95% profit!” erupts Imhoff before catching himself.

“And look at this,” says Sandovel, picking up what looks like a small booklet on the Books for Burning table. “These are instructions on how to make a homemade flamethrower! This isn’t even a real book, this looks like something someone just printed off the internet!”

“Look, you gotta understand,” says Imhoff, a few beads of sweat forming on his forehead, “this is Florida. Florida! We’re a bookstore, in Florida! Do you have any idea how hard it is to sell books in this state? Nevermind everything that’s been going on with the economy the last couple of years, the written word isn’t exactly in high-demand down here! And listen, we can’t control what people do with the books after they buy them, that’s their prerogative. All I can tell you is that if we can find a way to actually get these people to buy books then we’re sure as hell going to exploit it! Wait, maybe ‘exploit’ isn’t the right word….”

No, too late, you said it.

We also spoke to a few staff members to find out exactly what it’s been like since the Books for Burning promotion was implemented.

“He won’t say it in front of you,” says store employee Zachary Thimm, “but he actually calls it ‘the ash heap’. Also the incidents of Karen activity have gone from every once in a while to several times a day. I used to love that I got to work in a bookstore, but I legitimately hate it here now.”

“He made us remerch half the store around the table,” says Meryl Tansey, another worker. “He wanted to make sure the books on guns and military history were both within eyesight of it.”

“It’s crazy that the sales of hentai have also skyrocketed along with the burner books,” adds assistant manager Geoff Hurd.

Regardless of the public outcry from area readers or dissatisfaction of some of the staff, the Books for Burning table has been a boon to the Davenport Tomes, which has only given Dave Imhoff more ideas.

“I was thinking of putting an area out back for customers to stage their burning videos for the socials,” he tells us, “but I don’t think it would be up to code. I don’t know, maybe we can set up something offsite, like an event you can bring the whole family to, provided you got the books at Tomes of course!”

Well, whatever his next big idea is, we can tell Dave Imhoff’s burning passion for marketing won’t be snuffed as he fans the flames of controversy for profit. We just hope he takes some time to cool off before he finds himself burnt out.

Update:

The Serving Times has recently been notified that employee Zachary Thimm was recently let go from Tomes Bookstore after stocking copies of Mein Kampf and The Art of the Deal on the Books for Burning table. Unfortunately for the store, the damage had already been done as several customers had posted pictures of the table on Facebook, Telegram, Truth Social, and X formally known as Twitter. Shortly after, the Davenport Tomes Bookstore was given the death sentence of being branded as “woke”, which any economist will tell you means they will now go broke.

Dave Imhoff is currently facing scrutiny from Tomes corporate headquarters due to the sudden drop in sales. There have also been rumors that this incident has led to a new Tomes location planned for The Villages to be put on hold indefinitely.

Tomes’s corporate office did not immediately respond to our request for comment sent at 11:23pm on a Friday so we’re running this article without one.