"Can Our Infrastructure Support All this Brewing?" Bulletin, 8/21/11.
Blink.
Of course not. It's a fad.
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"Small Bookstores Add a New Chapter."
I don't argue with the thrust of the article, I've been saying something similar; that small bookstores are positioned to survive better than the megabookstores. They also mention that many of their best customers aren't coming in for the "best-sellers" which is something I've been very aware of. Most of my customers are looking for quality books, books that have a track record. And one of the examples of a new bookstore, was that of an owner working 7 days a week with family, and not doing as well as he thought he would. Well, exactly.
Still, the stat they use to talk about an "increase" in bookstores is exactly the same number I remember reading about 5 years ago: 100 bookstores.
In the year that Central Oregon got an influx of 4 new bookstores,(in the late OO's...) about 100 bookstores opened in the country. Bend, in other words, garnered 4% of the new bookstores in the country that year, with a minuscule percent of the population.
Sadly, with Camalli closing up, two of those bookstores are gone. (I thought Tina had a very nice store, and I'm sorry to see her go.)
I'll just keep saying it: opening new stores (whether in downtown Bend or elsewhere) does not represent market strength, it represents HOPE.
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"Incredible Inevitable Shrinking Album Art."
I probably should start saving up these examples of Unintended Consequences from the digital revolution.
Any one of these small diminishments to the quality of our life are hardly noticeable. It's only when it all done and you realize the sheer extent of it, that it becomes a problem.
People either won't notice or won't care about each small drop away -- but will get a nagging sense of something being not quite right.
All in pursuit of the cheap and easy.
What a surprise.
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I've been saying from the beginning of e-readers that I thought a significant percentage of adopters would drift back, consciously or unconsciously, to the actual books again.
Here's an example I found on Slate, yesterday. He's talking about The New York Times but my point remains.
"Print versus Online." Jack Shafer
"...less than a year after my Times cancellation, I was paying for home delivery of the newspaper again."
"What I really found myself missing was the news. Even though I spent ample time clicking through the Times website and the Reader, I quickly determined that I wasn't recalling as much of the newspaper as I should be. Going electronic had punished my powers of retention. I also noticed that I was unintentionally ignoring a slew of worthy stories."
In my opinion, there are going to be both enough substantive and minor differences in the reading experience that will bring people back.
It may be the layout of the paper, as in the above example.
Or it may be just the feel of paper, the heft of a book on your chest as you lay on the couch reading at night.
I think it's a little early to give up on books.
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7 comments:
I think everyone looks to the 'amazon' now for best sellers.
I would think that a shop such as yours is only good for locals who want to browse collectibles,
The 2nd category of course is the bored out of their mind fucking consumer tourist, whom is of course 'bend', but this bird is a dying breed, and will go the way of the DODO to our Bend.
Never been a better time to take care of your local customer needs.
Still say that we need a local downtown HW store, given the cost of gas and so many people walk & bike, why not have a local downtown hardware store once again?
Yep, the beer biz in Bend is over-done(tm).
But let's look at the facts, ... loser kids from CALI, who maybe spent a year or two at one of cali's mega-brewery's, comes to Bend to MTN bike, and fall's for the place, so he moves to Bend, what the else fuck is going to do?
At least these kids are real brewers, gary fish of deschutes was NEVER a brewer, he was a restraunteur, which is why his beer sucks. Bend Brewing is just in recent years exploring, Silver Moon was until a few years ago shit, only BONEYARD is new and good,
Cascade is not real, but a license from the boys in redmond, but their beer had big problems in early years with infection. Like most of the native Central-ORYGUN beers, these boys never went to school. At least the new boys running 'summit' on galveston, are trained in CALI to make beer, so its clean and good.
Too many? It's hard to say, but in general having a 'micro-brewery' on every corner is a safe- bet for a min-wage family biz, that said most of the micro's are bottling, and there are few outlets to sell the bottles on shelf space.
Case in point deschutes runs about 25% of capacity, when you consider their hours of operation, for the scale of the brewery, overbuilt, and spent MILLIONS $$$ on marketing and never cracked new markets.
It's a road to NO-WHERE, but if your going to do the min-wage DUNC biz in the beer, it can be a good simple life, if you enjoy cleaning up vomit at 2am, ... :)
Books will return, and be strong, and I'll tell you why.
CONTROL
Now the GUBMINT shutdown CELL phones in Bay-area, most of the world has shutdown facebook, all to control 'uprisings'.
Books, electronic books or their messages will rile the masses, and thus selectively the GUBMINT's will banish books containing provactive ideas, this is the future, already apple had banned the books of ORWELL, even though people had paid. So long as books are stored on a SERVER ( corporation ) the access will be selective and controlled.
FREE MEN WILL ALWAYS EMBRACE BOOKS.
Anonymouse: maybe you should open a hardware store downtown? Let's see. Maybe $2 per sq. foot (if you're lucky), and you need at least 2,000 sq. feet, wouldn't you think? Sort of dinky, but minimal. $4k rent plus NNN (you know, another fat percentage to keep up the exterior and taxes, etc.). Plus utilities (huge), plus things you don't think about at first (like replacing lightbulbs constantly). Oh, you'll need some staff, security cameras, lots of fixtures, signage, POS system, a couple hundred thou in start-up inventory. All you have to do is sell about $16,000 worth of screws to cover the basic monthly nut. Before you pay yourself, before you pay back your initial investment, before you get a penny of profit. That's a lot of screws. Good luck. Don't sign a long lease.
"shifting back..."
Your comment reminds me of my .... electric toothbrush. A revolution when we got it 6 months ago! Gets my teeth just as clean as the dentist can, in 2 minutes.
*
But now ... I realize I've been using my ol' fashioned brush for a month while the electric gathers dust. The electric is too much time and complication.
Sometimes the manual, non-battery powered device is best!
The big one for me is contacts.
I put my glasses on in the morning, take them off before bed, and I'm done.
Ok, HW store is a bad idea, after all Bend only loves shit you don't need.
I have an idea, how about opening a boutique in Bend that bleaches pubic hair?? That is something everybody needs, and understands in Bend.
Why did our old HW store dowtown close years ago?
$2/ft rent? In this economy. Only an idiot signs a long term triple net lease, of course most folks in Bend are idiots. :)
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