Amazon Gets Blow-Back Over Plan To Sell Kindles At Small Bookshops 176
Rambo Tribble writes "No sooner had Amazon revealed their plan to offer independent book shops the Kindle for re-sale, along with a kick-back on e-book purchases, than the fur began to fly. It appears the shops view the plan as Amazon-assisted suicide. Given the apparent terms of the deal, it looks like they may have a point. Amazon may well have done themselves more harm than good with this ploy. One storeowner wrote, 'Hmmm, let's see. We sell Kindles for essentially no profit, the new Kindle customer is in our store where they can browse and discover books, the new Kindle customer can then check the price on Amazon and order the e-book. We make a little on their e-book purchases, but then lose them as a customer completely after two years. Doesn't sound like such a great partnership to me.'"
May as well get SOME money (Score:3, Insightful)
How is this worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this any worse for the small bookstores than their customers buying a Kindle from some other retailer, or direct from amazon.com? They'd still be browsing in the store, checking online prices, buying the e-books, and eventually ceasing to be a customer. The bookstore would simply have deprived itself of an opportunity to be the one selling the Kindles and getting a cut of e-book revenues in the meantime.
Do these bookstores really think that refusing to sell the devices themselves will slow adoption?
Soon, no more bookstores. (Score:2, Insightful)
At peak, Blockbuster alone had 9,000 video rental stores. The last day to rent a video from Blockbuster is tomorrow. All the stores are closing. When will the last DVD/Blu-Ray disk be made?
Bookstores are following the trend of video stores, about ten years behind. Borders went bust two years ago. Barnes and Noble is the last big chain. Soon, no more chain bookstores. Then, no more bookstores. Then, no more printed books.
And it isn't like they have to do it (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon is offering an option. Don't like it? Don't play. However Amazon isn't going away, they aren't going to stop selling eBooks (or physical books). So plan accordingly. If you think not partnering with them is best do that, if you think it is best, do that. But don't assume you can cry and they'll go away. You WILL have to deal with their competition.
Re:Take the handout, dumbasses (Score:1, Insightful)
Except that in 2-3 years, I can still read the paper. I don't have to worry about the durability of the machine, the license details and whether future versions will unsupport to delete previous purchases\\\\\\\\\ rentals. I also don't have to pay an upfront cost to read the books or worry about batteries or charge state.
If somebody's a pot-boiler, read once kind of reader, then suitably priced e-books would be a win. Such prices don't exist today. For other readers, e-books don't work. They're either mis-formatted or merely unavailable.
Re:How is this worse? (Score:4, Insightful)
If people would buy the Kindle at the bookstore were they to sell it then, yes, of course not selling will slow adoption.
If people would only buy the Kindle were the bookstore to sell it, then not selling would slow adoption. But how likely is that? A much more realistic scenario is that a person might have bought the Kindle at their favorite bookstore if it was available, but if not then they'll buy it at Best Buy or Wal-Mart or amazon.com, or even the bookstore down the street that's participating in the program. Either way they get their Kindle.
At most the bookstore might be advertising the Kindle a bit by carrying it, increasing adoption by a miniscule amount, but by this point most people know what a Kindle is and where they can get one. Keeping them out of the bookstores won't change that.
Re:May as well get SOME money (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who browses at a bookstore and then buys via Am (Score:5, Insightful)
But what does browsing for the book on the shelves get you over searching Amazon.com?
Well, um... you, uh, get the see the book???
Seriously. I buy almost all non-fiction books, and 2-3 minutes leafing through the book, looking up a few things in the index, and reading a couple specific passages on topics I'm looking for will immediately tell me: (1) does the book contain the information I need and care about? (2) does the author have a freakin' clue what he/she is talking about? (3) are these things valuable enough to justify the cost?
I can spend time skimming dozens of reviews on Amazon and still have no clue about the answers to those questions. Sure, for some books on Amazon I can get a limited preview or limited search capability, but that's generally not enough to really let me check what I need to.
I own a couple thousand physical books. I can only think of ONE physical book that I purchased in an actual store that I regret buying, and I was in a hurry and just picked up some Barnes & Noble special for $1.99 or something. On the other hand, I must have at least 20 or more books I purchased online that turned out to be much less useful than I imagined. I just can't tell adequately from online descriptions. And returning them is often too much of a pain to bother.
On a related note, there's also the seredipitous encounter with interesting books on a physical shelf. While Amazon may be good at telling me what other people tend to buy who buy the books I'm already searching for, it's very unlikely to tell me about the really cool books out there that people like me may not always know about. Library shelves, on the other hand, are great for containing those hidden treasures, sitting there right next to a book I know on a similar topic. Actual physical bookstores can be good about that as well, though only if they have the kind of specialized non-fiction I like to browse for (and very few do anymore).
I'm very likely to walk out of a physical bookstore with some book I found and thought to be really interesting, and I almost never regret those purchases. Online, I only tend to buy books I already have heard about and which already are supposed to be "good," because I often can't adequately evaluate them otherwise.
Used bookstores are even more critical, because they carry all sorts of out-of-print stuff that's even more difficult to sort through on Amazon (if it's there at all).
You still get the same 'about the author' and plot taglines on the back...
I don't give a crap about the author bio or what some random other people say about how this is the "coolest book ever." I suppose if that's the way you evaluate the books you want to buy, I guess there's no benefit to a physical bookstore. I, personally, prefer to actually examine the merchandise... like the people you mention who might actually like to look at the TV or listen to the stereo before purchasing.
Re:May as well get SOME money (Score:3, Insightful)
While there are significant similarities between the two shifts, they are not completely parallel. For instance the actual playback mechanism for music remained unchanged even as the source shifted. You could unplug a CD deck and drop an mp3 player in and still use the rest of the stack, with primary advantages and disadvantages being linked to the rest of the equipment. With books we are talking about both a new medium AND new way of interacting with it (though there is the possibility of producing flashable 'paper' books), which puts it a little further apart.
I'm not sure that I follow your logic...
There definitely was a shift in how we interact with music when we shifted from CDs to MP3s. A single CD usually holds no more than 20 songs, at most. An MP3 player can hold thousands of songs. When we listened to CDs, we tended to listen to the CD as a whole and the songs in the order that the artist/producer created. With MP3s, we listen to the songs we like and dump the songs we don't like. Plus, most people like to shuffle their songs for a bit of variety. I could go on about other changes such as how we discover music, etc. But my point stands. MP3s and MP3 players changed the way we interact with music just as much as ebooks and ereaders changed the way we interact with books.
I still buy CDs then convert them because CDs are still of higher quality. I'll stop buying CDs when the music stores offer songs in a lossless format, such as FLAC. However, I no longer buy physical books. My Kindle is small enough to carry around, will last two weeks, and can store way more books than I can carry. I see book stores evolving into specialty shops, much like the stores that sell vinyl records.
Re:May as well get SOME money (Score:3, Insightful)
So basically, two employees told you that they're not *allowed*to ignore the rules (unless they want to lose their jobs) in order to give you a free drink, a senior discount for people older than you or discount your book just because...and you figured the bookstore was at fault? Really?
Here's the kind of thing decent people do in situations like those:
-- We realize the cafe is probably just paying to use the Starbucks name/equipment so customers will stay on-site for a quick drink/snack rather than leave & possibly not come back, and that the extra dime reflects the high cost that Starbucks is likely charging them for it.
-- We ask how old people have to be to qualify as a senior, and probably make a lame joking comment like "hey, at least now I feel younger"to indicate we're not going to be a jerk about something out of their control. We pay for the book, wish them a good day, and head on out in a pleasant mood.
Seriously, it's 2013, not 1953. Retail employees are typically not paid a great deal, are under a lot of stress, and will lose their job for doing the kind of things you harangued them for. Stores now have set prices, so folks hoping to talk their way into a deal now go to garage sales, the flea market or farmer's market.