O.K. I have to admit I don't quite understand the movement afoot for independent booksellers to sell e-books. I mean, I thought Barnes and Noble was nuts to cut into their own sales, but at least it could be seen as a transitional move.
Selling e-books in indy bookstores? I don't understand the reasoning there.
I think we should double down on our bookishness. We have books. They're paper. Come buy our books. You know, books that can't be changed by the publisher or seller and are eternally secure. Books that you can put on your shelf when you're done. (Yep, I bagged that trophy.) You can only read one book at a time, whether it's paper or e-. They have a nice bookish smell, a nice bookish texture, a nice sense of heft and place and time.
I think it's a case of fighting THEIR GAME, and THEY are going to be bigger and badder and better at it.
I have a saying in my store; You can't have the customers you can't have.
We should be playing up the bookstore experience. The browsing aspect, the conversational aspect, the display aspect, the "Local" aspect, and so on. Play to our strengths, not our weaknesses.
It's one of those cases when -- when I hear an expert explain the reasoning behind something, and it makes NO sense and it just doesn't compute and it seems to be all jargon and code words -- it will be a disaster. The equivalent of watching Time/Warner talk about synergy with AOL, and all I heard was nonsense babble. It's clear they really haven't thought it out.
My bet? There will always be room for real bookstores. And it will be the real bookstores that survive, not bookstores that put on an phony electronic veneer.
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4 comments:
As long as publishers continue to pay to print real books.
I have seen the first case of a publisher deciding to stop printing and go e-book only.
Think music stores and CD's or video rental businesses. Those should be fairly good models for the pace of adoption and the types of change to be expected.
"As long as publishers continue to pay to print real books"
The music industry has adopted digital even faster than the book industry, yet there are still small independent music stores.
I was recently in a college downtown area while on vacation and found three "record" stores that were selling music CDs and LPs.
They were all quaint, quirky stores with their own appeal, in a historical downtown area.
There are niche markets for many "antiquated" items. If printed materials reach that point, Dunc will still have an opportunity. He just might have to be the last one or two or three book stores standing in Bend. Whatever the market will sustain. Of course, he may be retired before it reaches that point. You will have a better idea in 1 year's time when more comprehensive metrics reveal the trends...
Or you can all rip each other to ribbons like rabid dogs, as they're apparently doing back east: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/books/17indie.html?_r=1
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