Saturday, January 6, 2007

When a blog draft isn't a blog draft.

Thought I'd found a nifty new way to draft blogs without posting them. Started one yesterday, and posted today. Instead, it dated itself as a blog from yesterday.

Something else I thought I should mention about the number of books selling. B & N is probably cheaper than most indy's, especially on their sale tables. So that would encourage buying. But it also reinforces the paradox. I was estimating total sales, not total books. If a large percentage of books are selling at discounts, it means EVEN MORE books are selling. Making it even more mystifying.

I'm not even talking about Costgo, or Walmart, which I suspect are selling enormous numbers of books at near wholesale. Which carries the premise into a place I can't even concieve.

Occam's Razor is that I'm just wrong about my estimates. But I'm pretty good at that kind of thing; I've got pretty good information, and I've gone so far was to completely revise by my estimates by HALF, for the benefit of the doubt.

It still doesn't make sense.
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7 comments:

RDC said...

Think about this:

A couple of years ago Baen Books (a publisher specializing in Science Fiction) started putting all of their books out in e-book format. The format they used is not locked or encrypted in any fashion. The also started providing several of their books for free (a couple from each author to get people interested in the series).

There was a lot of debate at the time about doing this and if it would impact their other sales. Now after a couple of years their conventional sales has increased and the e-book business now exceeds their Canadian business.

The reason why is because the market is by no means saturated when it comes to readers. A big seller, as far as books go, is really a pretty low number. Thus by giving people access, even with the free copies, or by people copying purchased copies, they got more people interested and increased their overall readership, far more then they lost by people copying. Many of those people that got the e-books then became buyers of the hardcopy version (because most people still prefer reading a physical book instead of an e-book version.

If you apply that to B&N a lot of people like to browse a book store. They generally do not go in looking for book X, they go in and see what is of interest. Books clearly are an area where a very large selection feeds more purchases.

The independent stores that seem to do the best are those with a very clear focus such as sci fi or romance, something where they can stock a large inventory of their specialty area and the people that come in with find something in their interest area.

January 6, 2007 at 7:23:00 PM PST
Duncan McGeary said...

Hypothetically; if you had lived in Bend, when we had three indy bookstores, but we didn't have B & N; and there was no such thing as e-books, would you simply have bought less books?

That's what I'm trying to understand.

January 7, 2007 at 9:03:00 AM PST
RDC said...

Unless one of the book stores had a Science Fiction focus (basically stocked everything in that Genre) I probably would have either gone mail order, or wait for a major buying trip to Powell's in Portland.

One can only buy if it is stocked and the problem with most independents is that they are too small to stock much, unless they specialize.

Books are very much a browse to buy class. Very few people go into a book store to buy a specific book and only that book.

It is kind of like the behavior you get with fast food outlets. If you have one on a corner and then you have two others open up on the other corners, the business in the first usually doesn't drop, it goes up. The reason why is because the market is not saturated and the presence of the others brings more people to that area.

These days the book market is by no means saturated and the best driver of business is getting more people interested (growing the market) instead of market share. The independents split the market, but did not have the capacity to grow it, B&N grew the market by having a considerably greater selection.

January 7, 2007 at 10:48:00 AM PST
dkgoodman said...

Before you publish your edited draft, click the field at the bottom of the edit box labeled "Post and Comment Options". There you'll be able to change the time and date displayed by your post after publishing. You can also do that while composing a post.

BTW, I noticed last night that the little store next to El Jimador, a few doors down from Gambit Games, is also closed. They used to sell jewely, incense, posters (new-agey type stuff). When did that happen? Any idea why? Or what's going in its place? I also saw a sign in their window saying something like, "No to Wal-Mart!" :)

January 7, 2007 at 10:48:00 AM PST
Duncan McGeary said...

DK,

Thanks for the info.

Ponderfusion was forced out by a new owner/landlord. It was the focus of the article, "The Changing Face of Downtown," in the Sunday Bulletin a few weeks back.

January 7, 2007 at 11:00:00 AM PST
Duncan McGeary said...

rdc,

Then you are far more selective and patient than me! Linda has a section in the Bookmark called, "Knock-About-Books." These are the .50 paperbacks, and 1.00 hdcs. Everytime I look at it, I realize that I could very happily spend the rest of my life reading those books, water damage and all.

One phenomenon I've noticed in her store is that she gets an extraordinary number of what I call, Books for people who don't read Books. There are full of short, pithy sentences, lots of font design, thematic paragraphs, etc. Perfect for people with ADD, I guess. Strange little things, but obviously they sell by the ton. Just another way to consume, I guess.

January 7, 2007 at 11:05:00 AM PST
dkgoodman said...

Thanks! I guess I missed that article.

January 8, 2007 at 4:42:00 PM PST

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