Bookstores May Boycott New Amazon-Published Books 210
destinyland writes "Amazon has begun signing their own authors and then publishing the books themselves, leaving booksellers 'wary' as Amazon 'tries to have it all,' according to a Boston newspaper. The co-owner of an independent bookstore near Cambridge considered boycotting Amazon's new line of books, complaining, 'They are a huge competitor, and they don't collect sales tax, giving them an unfair advantage.' A children's bookstore noted that 'the pie is getting cut into fewer pieces. I'd be nervous if I were an adult book publisher.' Borders bookstore has already declared bankruptcy, leaving The Daily Show to joke that bookstores should simply become 'digital downloading' stations — or a 'living history' museum where future generations can learn what a 'magazine rack' was."
Re:entire system was geared against the author (Score:5, Interesting)
You are quite right!
Slashdot has spent a lot of mindshare on the evils of the Music biz, but not too far behind that the book industry was pretty nasty too.
However I will go out on a limb and say that Borders deserved to croak for missing the boat TWICE. Not only did they goof giving the online side to Amazon, but they missed the REASON Amazon was beating them - centralized selection. But come on gang, can we admit to ourselves how totally crappy it is to order a book on amazon and have to wait for it to be delivered?!
What Borders missed the chance for, and the media blanked the stories about, is Print On Demand. It's been carefully slammed as "eew, why would you do that?". But books are digital, right? All Borders (or Barnes & Noble - they should have had a vision meeting and worked on it *Together!*) had to do, was invest in a beautiful untouchable-quality POD system. "Can't find that obscure book that only did a 7,000 copy small press run? We'll print it for you in an hour!" (You do need the hour, getting a book that doesn't fall apart does need time for the pages to be cut and fit and glued right.)
The shelf selection would be a Lead-In sample, just to get people thinking of what they want. The POD could also fix gaps in series etc. On and on. And yes, the systems are here - Harvard University Bookstore has one. In my hand are three sample Google-Books editions of some very rare Buddhist books, one of which answered a theory question I had for five years. A year ago they had some cover art licensing gaps, so it has only a blue white text cover, but that's irrelevant. The book is REAL, and equal quality to standard paperbacks.
So THIS is the true casualty of the Intellectual Property bickering. But the forces that be missed the chance. POD is coming, and the first company to nail it will re-write publishing.
Re:Can't blame them (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can't blame them (Score:3, Interesting)
You do realise that when enough of book stores go down, demand for books will eventually follow? Bookstores create demand by letting people window shop, read, touch real books.
As amazon has proven, virtual shop will have something that is tailored for your preferences. Which for next generations means mostly games, videos and music. Creating supply creates demand in entertainment, and vice versa - reducing supply reduces demand as customers simply spend their entertainment budget elsewhere.
Now, publishers had this coming with extremely author-hostile policies they had for last couple of decades. But what the hell do independent book stores have to do with it?
The book is in the mail (Score:4, Interesting)
When on this subject, I always recall that great movie "You've Got Mail", where a small "Shop Around The Corner" is out-foxed by a big chain. "Can we save the Shop Around The Corner?" Asks Kathleen Kelley and the crowd goes wild. Of course, while offering verbal encouragement, the crowd continues to not offer its business. Is that evil? Uncharitable? Unwise? "I've heard Joe Fox compare books to olive oil", says Kathleen Kelley. Kathleen Kelley is a walking encyclopedia on the subject of children's books and can offer you advice on what to read with your kids. Kathleen Kelley hosts a reading hour to get kids interested in reading. Kathleen Kelley knows who you are and always offers service with a smile. Is it worth it?
The Shop Around The Corner employs four people: the owner, Kathleen Kelley, and two college students. Let's peg decent wages for them at, say, $100000, $60000, and 2x$20000. In New York, you can barely live on this. Let's add rent on the place at $20000/year, and other miscellaneous expenses of $20000/year on business license, electricity, insurance, whatever. That comes to $240000/year, $960/day. "Is that why it costs so much?" "That's why it's worth so much." The store is open, say, 12 hours a day, 8am-8pm. That's $80/hour, or $1.33/minute. How fast can you check out? Friendly service with a smile takes time.
Small shops can get away with higher markup. The books, after all, are already there, so there's an expectation of immediate satisfaction which can tolerate a higher price. Let's say $10 markup for hardcovers and $2 on paparbacks, which is just barely on the line between making a profit and losing your customers. If an average customer buys a hardcover and two paperbacks, each checkout nets you $14. You need to get a customer like that every 10 minutes to get the aforementioned income level. Now, if you've ever been to a small bookstore, you'd know that they are usually empty. I don't know if people hate books, or what, but I've never seen more than ten people in a store at once, and that's a crowd. That was twenty years ago. I imagine now things are even worse. I can not imagine how anyone can run a small bookstore profitably.
What exactly do you get at "Shop Around The Corner" that you do not get on Amazon? Customer service. If you are the kind who likes to chat, to ask advice, and to receive books from a real human being, that must be invaluable to you. Only, can't you get better social interaction by spending time with your friends? Ok, there's also advice about what to read. After all, Kathleen Kelley knows everything. Well, that's why we have friends who tell us what we might like, book clubs, review sites, and amazon lists and recommendations. Ok, but isn't it nice to pick up a real book, feel the binding, smell the pages, and flip through it to see if what's inside? A nice thing to have indeed, but is it really worth a $10 markup?
The bottom line is: you go to the bookstore to buy a book. You don't need to go there to socialize or to ask advice. You just need the book. Amazon gets you the book with minimum overhead, so you can spend that money you saved on something you like instead of on keeping Kathleen Kelley in business. Oh, by the way, the author of the book is surely more important to you than she is, and the authors get 40% royalties when they publish on Amazon, and maybe 10% elsewhere (if they haggle real hard). Isn't it better to reward the creators rather than useless, but nice, middlemen?
POD? Don't think so. (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as an owner of a literary agency as well as a fellow with many thousands of physical books in my library, IMHO POD had its market potential nuked by the same forces that are impacting normal print. That is (a) the ability to carry an entire library in a Kindle, iP[od|ad|hone], general purpose Android device, other dedicated readers like the Nook, your home computer, laptop, etc; (b) the ability to put a title you want to read in your hands in seconds, (c) the ability to read what would have been a heavy volume on a relatively light device. Print (not POD) also suffers from (d) the eBook and POD ability to get a book from "last word written/edited" to the sales channel in what is effectively zero time.
Good POD devices are expensive; and demand, like demand for any physical book, is dropping as more and more people hop on the eBook bandwagon. This makes payback for the POD device an uncertain proposition for the host business.
The entire book business is in flux. One reason authors are interested (and understandably so) in Amazon's all-in-one model is the horrible royalty conditions the legacy publishers have imposed upon eBooks. With a normal book, the tradition is an advance, then royalties. With an eBook, the approach so far has almost always been give the publisher the book, they'll charge all costs to its account, and when it pays them off, they'll come with a (very small) royalty. There are several consequences to this, one of which is critical. For an established author who isn't top tier (meaning, can't demand an up front royalty), income from the previous traditionally published book fades away in the normal fashion as buzz for it dies down, but income for a new eBook via the same route won't even start for a year or more -- and in the meantime, the publishers still expect the author to do a great deal of the marketing out of pocket. That's a very tough situation to find yourself in, particularly if you are trying to make it as a full time writer.
Re:Sauce for the goose... (Score:4, Interesting)
The summary attributed that quote to (an owner/employee) of "A children's bookstore...". I don't think he or she was speaking of the same type of "adult" books you (and some of the people who replied to your post) think she meant. I believe she meant "not children's books."
Of course, you may have been making a sarcastic comment, in which case, "never mind!" ;-)
On a personal note, I bought one of the first Nooks sold by Barnes and Noble. At the time, it was (IMHO) better than the Kindle. I still use it everyday.
The best feature? I can order a mystery novel sitting on my couch at 3:00AM and before I can exit the Nook Store and get over to My Library (on the Nook), the entire book is already there waiting for me. The original Nook has both WiFi and (free) 3G. Because books are not very large (even books that are compilations of other books) the download time in either case is about the same (at home, or places with WiFi hotspots, it always uses the WiFi). Otherwise, it uses 3G.
The second best feature: I have "low vision." Before my vision started to decline, I used to read about 40 books a year. Over the last 10 or so years, that went down to about 4 per year. Since I got the Nook, I'm making up for lost time. In the last two years, I've read about 80 books per year (all on the Nook). You see, my Nook (as with most eBook readers) lets me change the font size (as well as the font face) so I can actually read the book without straining too much. Can't do that with a paperback.
Finally, if you take your Nook into a B&N store, it will immediately connect to their in-house WiFi and display "coupons" for money off on coffee, accessories and even books. Friday is "free eBook day" (you don't have to be in the store to take advantage of this benefit -- just press a button on the touch screen and it's downloaded to your Nook).
Barnes and Nobel is still around because they have embraced the changes the Internet has wrought in the retail book selling market. The Nook was their gutsiest move yet, but they've done other creative things to stay competitive (like compete successfully with Amazon's pricing for books bought online and a $25USD per year Members program that is very similar to the $75USD per year Amazon Prime program). And, by the way, Barnes and Nobel had a "self-publishing" mechanism in place years ago (c. 2000). Still do, I believe.
Nope, I don't work for Barnes & Nobel. I'm a software developer. Just a very satisfied customer.
Re:Can't blame them (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly why I bought a Kindle. (And I haven't bought a print book since.) I was blessed with a borders two blocks away from my house, it was four floors, each floor was very large, and it was often open until midnight. The only thing better I could ask for is for the damn place to have some books. A few years ago the best science fiction authors got together and made a list of the 100 best SF books. I had read many of them, but many I hadn't. So I made my list of 25 books and went down to Borders and started looking. They didn't have one.
Not a single one of the 25 best SF books in the world. They had a few that I had read, but none that were on my list. Looking further entire legendary authors were unrepresented. Harry Harrison had nothing. From Piers Anthony to Vernor Vinge, nothing. Alfred Bester had nothing, Niven had one book. Ursula Le Guin, one book. The Herbert section was mostly the awful Dune books Frank Herbert's son has vomited out and had copies of half the originals.
And of these four floors, one floor was mostly music. (Who buys that in a store anymore either?) Kids books area was huge but it was 80% toys. The staff was smart and knowledgeable, but they'd often recommend books they didn't have in stock.
And on the other side of it, I've been an author. I know how badly publishers treat them. It makes the music industry look charitable. Glad to see authors getting their due.
Re:entire system was geared against the author (Score:4, Interesting)