I know this is a utterly ridiculously contrarian viewpoint, but I think the future of the independent bookstore, games store, comic store, video store, record store -- is bright. So bright, we need to pull shades.
If I had to guess what a town like Bend will look like in 10 years, I'd bet we have at least one independent bookstore, one record store, one comic store, one games store -- maybe more.
What we won't have is a Borders, Barnes and Noble, Blockbuster, Virgin Records -- whatever oversized monstrosity you choose.
In other words, it's the mass market, category killers who are going to be wiped out by the digital asteroid, leaving the survivors of this digital revolution to reap the benefits. The dinosaurs will be gone, and the mammals will have their day. After generations of scurrying into niches, the niches are going to bloom.
For most of my career, the mass market has been the biggest obstacle to my making money. The internet is relatively new, and frankly, the same responses I developed to survive the onslaught of Walmart is the same response I have to Amazon.
You can't beat them.
They will always be cheaper, they will always have more.
I was fortunate in that comics were such a small industry, that the mass market more or less ignored them. I could take a bigger slice of a much smaller pie. There are probably as many comic books stores in the U.S.A. as there are independent bookstores, or record stores, even though comics are much, much smaller market overall.
My guess is, that a small slice of a much bigger market (books, games, toys, music), even if that market shrinks drastically, will provide independents a future.
For sure, there is going to be a shakeout, as everyone adjusts to the new realities. Creative destruction on a massive scale.
But I truly believe that the shopping experience, the browsing, touching, seeing, talking, feeling, atmosphere soaking experience of independent stores is here to stay. Let Amazon have 90% of the market, and the 10% will still probably be more money than most comic stores make today, so I know it can be done. Independents won't get rich, but I think there can still be a satisfying career to be had.
No doubt, digital will reign supreme, but there will still be plenty of people who want books, or who want digital...and books. I think, in fact, that there will be lots of people who come back us, as the soullessness of the computer screen sinks in.
It will be our job as independents to have an idiosyncratic and interesting selection of books, have them displayed in eye-catching ways, be willing (and knowledgeable enough) to talk and interact with the customer, have places and hours where we can be found, and otherwise be a satisfying and enjoyable experience.
Those skills can be developed, even now. After a year or two of absorbing the lessons of the e-readers, I'm feeling more optimistic now than I have in a long time.
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27 comments:
For the first time sales of electronically distributed music exceeded CD sales.
Yes the size of the physical media markets are shifting such that they will not support large stores.
It does create an opportunity for a smaller store for a specifc time frame.
10-15 years from now the opportunity will probably be back to one store in the town the size of Bend selling all of them. Kind of a curio store.
The question is at what point do record companies stop producing CD's. Same as a what point do publishers stop printing physical books.
Even though e-books are several years behind the music business, the physical cost of production, shipment weight, returns make the elimination of the physical printing process much much economically attractive then for the record companies to stop producing physical CDS. Physical CDS are cheap to produce, small in size, light volume compared to price. Books consume trees, paper pulp production is an environmental nightmare when you consider bleaching chemicals, oders, etc, The physical weight of books is heavy as far as shipping costs. Returns are a major part of the business. Print runs need to be pretty massive to deal with the setup costs.
I expect that publishers will stop printing physical books (atleast a major percentage of titles) before music companies stop making CD's.
"The question is at what point do record companies stop producing CD's. Same as a what point do publishers stop printing physical books."
Good point.
I'd be even more worried about the distributors. It would be horribly inconvenient and possibly expensive to have to order books from individual publishers.
But ... there are so many books in the world, as I've said before, that I'm not really worried about running out of physical objects to sell.
As far as the "curio" store is concerned, I don't think it will shrink that much. 'Hybrid' stores are more likely. Book and Game stores. Comic and record stores. That kind of thing.
My understanding is that they actually had an increase in sales of CD's last year.
Books really haven't shrunk as much as people think.
I actually think books will convert faster.
When you look at sales the buyers of MP3 players were pretty much a young demographic. When I look at buyers of e-book readers they tend to be pretty much across the spectrum. When I was in B&N last week I saw more in the 50-60 age category looking at and buying e-book readers than in the 20-30 age group. Of course the older age group is your heavy reading demographic. The key thing is this is a technology item that does not appear that the older readers will avoid and delay acceptance.
The publishing run size and the economics of it will drive the publisher decisions of when to stop printing.
Man, I just don't see it shrinking so far as to not being worth putting out physical books.
Comics sell in much smaller quantities.
Even sports cards, which are my poster child for dysfunctional collapse, still are being produced.
Even Non-sports cards, even smaller.
We may have to get a little creative, but that's what we little guys can do best.
If a publisher, or record maker, decides to go only digital -- it to me is the same thing as small stores who think they can replace the physical store with an online presence.
I have not seen one local store succeed at that.
Not one.
Not even close.
In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the physical will always be a component, even if it's just marketing.
Sure, there will be AOL/Warner brother merger type thinking -- with similar results.
Smart publishers will continue to do both...
The sale of e-books is starting to take a hockey stick growth pattern.
2009 61 million, 2010 165 million
2010 will exceed 430 million (wholesale e-book sales). It is rapidly going mainstream.
It is interesting when compared to total sales numbers of 11.25 billion is 2009 and 11.67 billion in 2010. .5% of total in 2009, 1.4% in 2010. While I do not have total numbers for 2011 information indicates minimal growth of the overall category in which case the e-book sales would come in around to 3-4%. At that rate it will not take long before smaller volume books go electronic only. If this growth rate continues them 10% is likely in 2012 and 20-25% in 2013 at which point growth will probably slow down a bit. But I can easily see the market at greater than 50% e-book well before 2020.
AMAZON has done quite well without a physical presence.
I-tunes by Apple, while apple does have stores for its devices I-tunes is basically an electronic presence.
Google Android Ap store.
You will have niche publishers and for that matter probably have some ocmpanies that buy the rights from the publishers to print physical books, but it won't be the mainstream publishers any more.
etc.
PS that is what is so threatening to B&N. They have in depth knowledge at the rate at which e-book readers are selling (Amazon indicated the their Kindle fire was selling more than 1 million per week). They can run the trend line and see the writing on the wall.
"AMAZON has done quite well without a physical presence...."and so on.
See, here I seem to have a different opinion than just about everyone else.
I believe that the digital and online sales feed off the existence of brick and mortar outlets far more than they realize or understand.
I can't prove this by statistics; this feeling comes from experience.
It doesn't matter is the vast majority of customers don't see records, or comics, or books or whatever and buy them online, they are still be influenced in ways that can't be quantified.
I don't know how to explain it, but I'm absolutely sure of it -- but in most cases, no one will realize it until too late and even then they'll point to other reasons.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the most effective promotional tool a manufacturer could have would be a retail outreach; throwing a bone the way of brick and mortar independents would be extremely smart. Free shipping, a few extra percentage points, something to keep them going....
....even if most of their sales are online.
Nike figured out you don't have to convince the entire playground to buy their shoes, you just have to convince that one guy.....
Bricks and mortar independents are that 'one' guy...
Duncan,
I have said the same thing before concerning the publishing industry. It is an opaque market. One can only become familar with a small percentage of books and authoris. As such most people select the books they are ready based upon the releatively small set in a book store. A set that is filtered (one might disagree with the quality of that filtering) to those books that the store would expect to appeal to its customers.
As stores vanish the electronic e-book stores are going to have to come with tools that repalce that filtering function. Tools that quickly identify to readers books that are likely to appeal to them, and not force them to slog through all books in a category including the old back list.
The bookstores are calling that "filtering" -- "curating". The glass half full, if you will.
But that's kind of what I'm reaching for -- don't underestimate the core competency of the guy willing to actually buy and display a book and influencing the general direction of things.
The tipping point almost can't be reached if the whole pile comes down on your head at once.
The tipping point gets reached by individuals choosing. And I believe that brick and mortar stores by definition are doing the choosing.
Seriously -- the thread is so thin that I can't quantify it. But --like gravity -- it may be a weak force but it's unavoidable.
You need that PERSON, flesh and blood, somewhere in the pipeline other than online.
Nobody seems to understand this...but after watching customer behavior over the years, I'm convinced of it.
Like I said, we won't see it until it's gone...
"No doubt, digital will reign supreme, but there will still be plenty of people who want books, or who want digital...and books."
Yes.
"I think, in fact, that there will be lots of people who come back [to] us, as the soullessness of the computer screen sinks in."
No. That's about as likely as people going back to manual typewriters and dial telephones. The ebook is just too convenient in too many ways.
"The question is at what point do record companies stop producing CD's. Same as a what point do publishers stop printing physical books."
Good analogy, except for one thing: There's an aesthetic appeal to the printed book that the CD doesn't have. I believe people will continue to respond to that aesthetic appeal and will want to have beautiful books. But ebooks will replace the read-once-and-throw-away books -- and I think that's probably a good thing.
"That's about as likely as people going back to manual typewriters and dial telephones..."
Well, as some wise person said somewhere:
"There's an aesthetic appeal to the printed book .... I believe people will continue to respond to that aesthetic appeal and will want to have beautiful books."
I'm just saying that some folks will forget that "aesthetic appeal" for awhile, and then come back to the bookstore for books...
Not that they'll abandon digital altogether.
"I'm just saying that some folks will forget that "aesthetic appeal" for awhile, and then come back to the bookstore for books... Not that they'll abandon digital altogether."
Right. But that means the books will have to have aesthetic appeal, not just be your standard mass-market paperbacks. I'm envisioning a world of smaller bookstores with a smaller but more high-quality inventory. Sort of like bookstores used to be way back in the day.
It think this is where you and I are at a disconnect.
I think books, all books, have an appeal that digital does not. I won't imply that you aren't a reader, because obviously you are, but it seems to me that most real readers are more connected to the physical book than maybe they realize.
A story. I decided that I'd make my office very Zen. Since I have access to books any time I want, I decided to clear out my personal library, and only have the one or two or three books that I'm actually reading or going to read.
I did that for awhile.
Then I spent Christmas at my sister Tina's house, surrounded by the warm caress of her many books.
I changed my mind, and started to fill my office with books again.
It's just the feel of books that I can't imagine Digital taking the place of for most readers. All books --- beat up paperbacks, as well as aesthetically designed books.
I'm betting that appeal won't go away.
There are some people who get a warm fuzzy feeling just by being surrounded by books or by fondling books, even beat-up old paperbacks, as you say. There are also people who get a warm fuzzy feeling by having 70 or 80 cats in their house. But I think such people are a minority, and in the case of books, a dwindling one.
Footnote: I think there may be something in what you say about readers missing the aesthetic aspects of the book-reading experience. E-readers in themselves are pretty sterile. But there are ways of making them less so. A few months after I got my Nook, my wife bought me a beautiful hand-tooled leather cover for it. With the cover on, the Nook has the heft and feel (and smell) of a fine leather-bound book, and holding it becomes a much more pleasant sensory experience.
"I think such people are a minority, and in the case of books, a dwindling one."
I think this is where we have to agree to disagree.
I think it's the majority of real readers who are like this:
"...people who get a warm fuzzy feeling just by being surrounded by books or by fondling books, even beat-up old paperbacks..."
"I think it's the majority of real readers who are like this"
Define "real readers," please. I consider myself a "real reader," but I don't get a quiver just from being around books -- unless they're beautiful books, and then it's because they're objects of beauty, not because they're books per se.
You're equating "real readers" with bibliophiles, and they're not the same.
I don't know if I can define "real" readers. I know one when I see one.
But people like me who always have to have a book they are readers, who would go through withdrawal without a book, and who have to have a pile of books to choose from just to make sure.
People who didn't choose to become readers, but who just always were readers, and so their love of the book goes back to childhood, the feel, the look, the smell, the touch.
Maybe we're creating cyborg readers now, but I doubt even that. I suspect that "real" readers gained their love of books through physical contact and that will always be true.
Like I said, we disagree.
e-books are just too convenient.
Once I got used to using an e-book reader physical books became awkward.
I had a library of around 2000 books. Within the next month or so I will probably have 50-100 physical books.
My reader is always with me. Far easier to carry then a single book, yet I have an e-book library of over 1000 volumes that is always with me.
Duncan,
I just noticed that HBM and I used the same word concerning e-books - convenient
That fact that he and I agree must mean that your view is in reral trouble.
Yeah, I thought of that.
Not a big enough sample.
"But people like me who always have to have a book they are readers, who would go through withdrawal without a book, and who have to have a pile of books to choose from just to make sure."
That's exactly how I am. Only now my "pile" of books is on my Nook, and I can conveniently take it anywhere I go.
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