Thursday, December 9, 2010

If you can't beat them?

Google e-books.

"Indie bookstore customers no longer have to choose between reading digital and supporting their local bookstore — the American Booksellers Association announced today, Monday, December 6, 2010, that ABA member stores with Indie-Commerce websites are now selling Google e-books online. Google launched its e-book program today."

As another comic retailer mentioned, how are you independent if your partner is Amazon or Google?

I simply don't understand how either comic stores or book stores can effectively sell digital books. ALL EXPLANATIONS come across as fuzzy headed, self-deluding, gobbledygook.

I've said it before, but I think it bear repeating: It reminds me of watching the news conference about the merger of AOL and Time/Warner. After all the long, involved explanations of why they were doing it, I remember turning to Linda and saying,

"What they said made no sense."

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Nimby activism is often amazingly effective.

The Powers That Be will back down, given enough opposition.

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Being a doctor's son, I of course know medicine. Very annoying when I go to see the doctor and he tells me, "No ...that isn't it. No....you've got that wrong."

I was indoctrinated against most alternative medicines, as well. Though I think I might have come to those conclusions on my own.

I wonder if other people born in doctor's families feel like they know medicine.

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As I mentioned before, there is a lot of posturing yet to go on about the unemployment benefits -- as well as the tax 'cuts'.

I predict after much more posturing, the whole thing will pass and the money problem will be kicked down the road.

It's only money. We can just print more of it, right?

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This month is just whizzing by. Especially if I break it up in segments -- like, I was thinking, I can make orders next week, but then I realized that by the time they arrived, it would be in the last 10 days before Christmas. So really, next week is it, as far as effective Christmas orders are concerned.

Really not in the mood to push too many bills into January -- if any.

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So the new owners of Breedlove, Two Old Hippies, have two guitar factories in China?

China ....or Northwest Crossing.

Northwest Crossing....or China.....

Hmmmmmm.

Gee, I wonder which is cheaper? Of course, there are the usual "We don't plan to move, we are going to expand...." statements.

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There is starting to be a bit of a boardgame glut developing. I decided I would stock up on the big three, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Carcassonne, mostly. While these are getting more and more in the "I already have that..." category, and the "I saw this elsewhere..." category -- every other boardgame is much more of "I don't know what this game is..." category.

8 comments:

RDC said...

As far as the Indie Bookseller's go they really cannot effectively sell e-books. It is, at best, a short term business model.

There is currently a gap that exists in e-book sales compared to physical sales. You hit on it in one of your comments when you said people buy a book on line, but go to book stores to find books. There is currently not a good mechanism to replace book store browsing and recommendations.

The set of all published books are very very large. Far more then anyone can effectively navigate. Book store buyers screened that set into something more manageable. With e-book, and the greatly reduce cost of production, the barrier for publishing becomes even lower and the set of published material grows ever faster. As such the opportunity that exists is how to provide high quality recommendations (and attract a following to those recommendations) and to find a way to make it profitable. Most likely it will need to be an oneline mechanism, not physical store mechanism. However, for the time being you will have consumers trying to work their way through the sheer numbers of e-books and will still use their local book stores as a source for qualifying or selecting what they should purchase. That will provide some revenue to the Indie stores in the short term, but it is really just a short term play.

Anonymous said...

Breedlove has been making some of its guitars in Korea for years. Most premium makers have entry level (good quality) foreign-made lines to complement their U.S. made lines.

Leitmotiv said...

Time to start promoting Cosmic Encounters by FFG. I'll be in there to buy it, just as soon as expenses allow.

Duncan McGeary said...

I have it in stock. Is there something I should know?

Anonymous said...

Please kill indies ASAP so dunc can retire and RIP.

Anonymous said...

"Please kill indies ASAP so dunc can retire and RIP"

Has to be . . . (drumroll)

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buster to say such a dasterdly thing.

Duncan McGeary said...

That's one of his mild comments lately.

Leitmotiv said...

http://vimeo.com/4653401

after you get past his first minute of self promotion, the video is pretty good