This afternoon, I took the time I would ordinarily use to gather some of our favorite stories and links from the week to install a quote on our office wall. It’s a quote that links us to, and reaffirms, our company’s culture and past.

Bookselling was and is … a cultural and political expression, an expression of progressive change, of challenge to oppressive authority, of a search for a community of values which can act as an underpinning of a better world. The true profit in bookselling
is the social profit; the bottom line, the measure of the impact
of the books on the community.
-A. David Schwartz (July 15, 1938 – June 7, 2004)

In a past life, we were the business book division of an independent, community bookstore called Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops. The quote above is from David Schwartz, our former owner, and (I believe) came from an interview he did with I Remember Milwaukee. Our community is slightly different now than it was when David uttered those words. Most of our interactions now take place online and on the phone. But, as we walk by the quote on the wall as we enter the office every morning, we’ll be reminded: We’re not here just to make money. We’re here to serve a community. We don’t come to work everyday just to sell business books. In whatever small way we can—through the books we sell and the ideas we spread online through our daily blog, ChangeThis, inBubbleWrap and the KeenThinker—we go to work everyday to try to improve the way business is done.