The early part of this year saw our town on the brink of another Civil War over the closure of a Highland Little Free Library, a cute street-side box which serves as a place for people to put books they don’t want anymore and grab something else they probably don’t want, while simultaneously giving themselves a quaint sense of community and artistic superiority. The controversy spanned days, and made its way to the top of local politics, even gaining national attention as other proper library hating hipsters across the country tried to gain cool points by putting boxes of dusty books in their own front yards.
The bloody controversy came to a merciful end as the Metropolitan Committee of Planning troops, largely slaughtered by outraged freeloaders, surrendered and granted a stay on the laws causing the conflict. This allowed the LFL to be reopened.
Two months on, it seems that all the press served Little Free Libraries quite well. According to numbers provided by Jaqueoff, Asoul & Nobody, the company has posted record numbers in the first quarter of 2015. Spurned by a massive spike in Pinterst pins, stocks soared. The massive increase in cash flow has allowed the Little Free Library Corporation (LFL Corp) to barely have to work at all seeing as how there is literally no overhead.
Financial analysts and public relations professionals across the country are flaunting LFL Corp’s massive profits as a perfect example of the old saying, “no press is bad press, unless by press you mean printed books, in which case you should just put them in a box in front of your house and make millions.”
Local economist Dr. Crash Anburn says that it’s really a financial Cinderella story. “I’m not sure that we will see something like this again. The geniuses as LFL Corp have really outdone themselves, with a little help from the MCP.”
While sitting just outside the Forbes 500 list, Dr. Anburn doesn’t think that will stay true for long. “Their upward trend will only continue as latecomers around the country cluelessly repost months old stories and reignite the outrage of those too simple to check the date on the story they are reading.”
LFL Corp CEO Richard Cranium said in a statement sent from his Fijian villa that the company’s success had nothing to do with the sheer luck of stumbling into utter controversy and tons of free press. “Man, that’s bulls***, man. This company was built upon the backs of hardworking writers and publishers who could never write anything worth keeping after a first read, and some very clever subliminal marketing” he said in a statement “So suck it, I’m rich!”
It will be interesting to watch the stock price of LFL Corp in the coming months as the trend surely fades from the favor of the ever-shunning hipster community, who are renouned for changing their minds more than their favorite craft beer.
Photo credit: John Phelan
This is not true.