What is the future of bookselling? As much as I understand the efficiencies of Amazon, browsing through a bookstore can't be replaced by online; it's a different experience.
Admission fees? Retail stores are increasingly losing to online services, so the brick-and-mortars might have to focus on the experience of being in a bookstore.
For more on this idea, The Experience Economy is a good read. (Skip everything but the first 2-3 chapters. After that, it gets redundant and a little weird at the end.)
But cafes aren't really selling books -- they're selling coffee and cookies. A lot of people seem to just hang out in book stores, without buying anything, so I really wonder if the cafe business model will work out long-term.
They may also continue to find more and more creative loss leaders to get people into the bookstores. Anecdotally, I know when I go to Borders or BN to work and use the free wifi, more than 50% of the time I end up buying a book too, and almost 100% of the time something from coffee shop.
Voted you up because I like the sentiment behind your comment and love printed books, but I still am eco-friendly enough to think it's better to not cut down the trees if we don't have to.
Inventory: a mix between bestsellers (e.g. Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter) and the long tail, with very specific titles tailored to smaller audiences. Amazon excels at the long tail and traditional stores can't compete with that, as they're restricted to high street real estate with limited capacity. Another problem for small stores is that they don't have the knowledge and expertise to give advice to their customers on what titles to buy for niche markets (or buy the right stock to begin with beyond using the besteller lists), which Amazon does very well through user generated reviews and the recommendation system. This is a major concern for brick and mortars, because people value a trustworthy authority they can go to that will tell them what to read next (as the erudite bookseller of the past would do in nostalgic stories).
Medium: Moving towards digital, but physical books will remain relevant. Eventually digital might become so superior from a practical perspective that physical books will become collectors items in the sense that people will want to have some of them around for nostalgic reasons (e.g. religious texts, favorite authors). But people are programmed to hoard physical objects, so even when digital becomes superior they'll still want some books. In the mid-term you will see printing on demand in a reasonable quality distributed through and printed by local stores[1], allowing them to participate in the long tail segment instead of just stocking bestsellers.
Shopping experience: It's fun to go to a bookshop and browse, even if you're going to order the books you like from Amazon in the end. This will become something you do on a free afternoon as a form of leisure (as many of us do already). Successful shops will figure out a business model around this, focussing on the experience instead of the practicalities. For more practical purchases (e.g. "I need a book on Haskell, pronto") people will use Amazon instead.
Small players will remain active in niche markets, like selling collectible antiquarian books, where focus and specialization gives them an edge over big players like Borders or Amazon. This will mostly happen over the internet, which is a change that is already happening. A good friend of mine runs a high street antiquarian bookshop and has days where he sells for less than $20 in his brick and mortar store, but makes up for this by selling online. The main reasons for keeping the brick and mortar shop are nostalgic, as a warehouse for this inventory and as an avenue for people to come in and sell him new stock.
[1] That is if copyright holders will go along with this approach, because the publishing, movie and music industries are rackets that don't necessarily have the best interest of their customers in mind (customers as in consumers as well as resellers like bookshops and record stores).
Similar to many retail sectors aka nothing very bright? When the WSJ story about in store smart phone price shopping ran there were people quite proudly commenting that they shopped at borders to find their books and then ordered them all online.
If people don't value the retail experience, it's very possible it'll disappear aside from a few niches like perishables and very expensive impulse items.
I still buy printed books. I almost never buy any books at a major book retail store like Borders or BN because they carry very very little that I am interested in buying. They used to stock more that I was interested in, but their stock has changed over the years. I suppose they were aiming for a more middle-of-the-road, palatable-to-all sort of stock selection, but I for one have basically been driven away.
I initially reason, well, I must be a very unusual shopper. I buy a lot of books on programming topics, math, science, etc., and I eschew with passion anything written for dummies, idiots, fools, or morons.
But then I wonder, am I really so unusual? I'm not an expert historian, but I enjoy studying history, and I'm disappointed with the local store's selection of history books about as much as I am with their technology books. I enjoy studying linguistics, and have watched the store's linguistics section melt away into nothingness. I enjoy science fiction, but am dismayed to see shelves of fantasy displace books by my favorite authors.
I can't really speak for every subject matter, but for pretty much every topic I want to read about, the big chain bookstores seem to be dwindling their stock, and smoothing out what little they do carry to appeal to some unknown typical readership.
If this is indeed true of all (or even most) of the subjects of books they carry, then I find it hard to believe that anyone who truly enjoys reading books is content with what they carry. Which leaves... people who really aren't very fond of books to peruse the shelves? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me.
I would greatly enjoy doing more book shopping in person. I seem to be good enough at searching Amazon to come up with good books sight unseen, but I'd like to go browse in the store, if only the store had books in stock that I'd want to browse.
I generally prefer Borders to Barnes-and-Noble because they always seemed to stock more titles. But I almost never buy anything at either of them without one of their 30-50% off coupons, which brings them close to Amazon's price.
I can't find it, but there's an article out there somewhere about how Boston Market has really struggled because they set their prices high and issue a lot of discount coupons, so a lot of their customers are bargain shoppers not people looking for higher quality.
I definitely wish that either book chain (or a new business) would focus more on the "experience" part of what these stores are now. They're always busy, but mostly full of people with laptops. I know some of them won't spend a dime there, but I suspect most of them would pay a couple bucks an hour for a comfortable seat, power, decent wifi, and access to snacks, drinks, books, and gadgets to buy. I know I would.
Amazon reviews are seriously broken. I'm surprised anyone would want to defend them other than Amazon employees or partners.
Sure, there are some good reviews on Amazon by credible critics and book lovers, but they have increasingly become like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. Most reviews I read, even on academic books that the hoi polloi don't read much, variate a great deal and swing wildly between 5 star ratings and 0. They are also filled with petty invective, academic flame wars that have no place on a good review site, and authors faking reviews for their own books (or those of their scholastic rivals).
I find them generally informative, it depends on the book I guess. If something has 20+ reviews you can easily get a pretty good feel for it. I'd agree with you on obscure stuff with only a handful of reviews. As long as you don't have to trust any single reviewer there is a lot of good information to be had, same with IMDB really, every popular movie has reviews at each extreme, but given enough choice in reviews you can get a decent feel for it.
i dont have the attention span for a book. that said, i read voraciously from a variety of resources using instapaper. i read a minimum of 2-3 hours per day everyday.
i haven't opened a book in over a year, and haven't finished a book in years.
Books are random-access; you don't necessarily need to read the entire book to benefit from it.
But anyway. As a non-book-reader, where do you see local bookstores heading? I suspect that nothing they could do to their stock or their prices would draw you in?
I actually love going to bookstores. Borders included. Books make great gifts, I like the way they look and feel, and I don't mind paying for them.
That said when I do buy books I RedLaser them and buy online. Here's what bookstores could do to get my money:
-sell coffee and make a quite place i can plug in and use wifi
-set up small reading/work stations with tables and comfortable chairs spread out amongst the aisles
-sell food and/or beer on site
some places kind of do this with tacking a starbucks in, but they are usually busy and loud and feature the parts of starbucks i dont like and cut out the parts i do. mainly the plush seating areas.
i do a lot of remote work and a bookstore environment seems better than a starbucks or indie coffee shop, which is where I've been spending such time.
The shift could feed Amazon, Apple *and other survivors*
with extra customers.
As the market for physical copies are dwindling, total profits in the industry decreases and some companies will decide to exit. This will reduce the decline of profitability for the remaining businesses and thus reduce the rate of companies exiting the industry.
I think you hit on something very important - that the buyers who decide what gets sent to the bookstore matter a lot.
Let me give you a couple of examples from the days when my parents ran a general and Christian books and music store...
The store was located close to several antique shops - women would go antiquing, drag their husbands along, then stop at the bookstore. Our bookstore had a huge selection of books on antiques and collectibles for just this reason - stuff you would be hard pressed to find even today in a Borders or B&N, like a $200 book on Tiffany Lamps, or even a $30 book on Depression era pressed glass.
Of course, the men were often bored - until they saw the books we had on cars, trucks, car repair, woodworking, military aircraft, etc.
We would sell at least $1000/week of car repair manuals such as the Chilton or Motorcraft series (and this was a small store). The $17 book on small gas engine repair (lawnmowers etc.) did very well also.
When we found people were restoring old Mustangs, we started carrying the $80-$110 Hollander Interchange manuals, which tell you which parts from which Mustangs are exactly the same for each year (e.g. a suspension component from any of 65-68 Mustangs might be identical, making it easier to find the part).
If you walk into a Borders today, you will find very little customization of each store for the local market. For instance, in the York, PA, store, home of a big Harley Davidson factory and filled with people who like hot rods (big cruise nights in the area) ... not even a small table packed with such books.
Second example: the Christian music buyers were always focused on the teen market (Christian Rock like Petra, etc.) -- but Christian music-buying teens usually have far less allowance money (IME) because their parents are more conservative.
So our music selection ignored the teens, and focused on having the music that the parents or other Christian adults would want (tended to be Christian country, Sandi Patti, and Christmas albums). Those folks, being adults, and in the prime of their earning years, had little hesitation in buying, often multiple items at a time. The buyers at other stores turned up their nose at such folksy stuff, to their detriment I think.
Imagine the sales lost by bookstores nationwide by focusing on Twilight books, heavily discounted, which attract distracted and less-rich teens, versus looking for and exploiting local niches.
The problem is that bookstores charge too much money.
Borders will sell my book for $49 when it comes out, whereas you can preorder it from Amazon for around $22 which is about what it costs to buy the ebook copy right from the publisher. Then my book won't sell because it's too expensive, so we'll have to buy it back from Borders and I'll get charged against my royalties for a "return".
It's not e-books, it's that the prices are too high. Amazon has every book Borders has, and if I ship the thing overnight I still end up with a cheaper copy than it would cost to buy it across town.
Going out of business is the result of not meeting customer demand, either in terms of relevance, quality, or in this case, price.
There's the additional problem that a traditional book store has huge advantage in selling limited edition signed copies of books, which I've seen in local book stores many times, but I've yet to see in a big name book store.
I remember seeing a Charles Stross book selling for around $50 signed. I saw a signed Nights Dawn Trilogy for what would have been $400... all used books.
I wanted to ask what the signed (second edition IIRC) copy of The Colour of Magic was going for, but I didn't dare as it was locked up behind the counter and I knew I'd want it!
> The problem is that bookstores charge too much money.
What exactly do you expect them to do? Do you have any idea of the overhead of running a bookstore? It's easy to say that Borders should match Amazon's price, but if you take one look at an Amazon fulfillment center, you'll see a gap that simply can't be closed.
What exactly do you expect them to do? Do you have any idea of the overhead of running a bookstore?
I suppose he expects them to go out of business. The cost of operating a bookstore is irrelevant to the buyer - if the overhead is such that they can't either compete on price or otherwise differentiate their product or experience to justify the cost difference, then abandoning the business model seems like the only choice.
Our local bookstore (part of a regional chain) has three times the shelf space for Manga than they do for computer books.
I used to like browsing in bookstores but now its like they don't want my business. Why should I have the bookstore order something for me? I pay more than Amazon and they add no value - that's why they're failing.
"Why should I have the bookstore order something for me? I pay more than Amazon and they add no value ..."
They add value by allowing you to physically browse through books to see what they're like.
I buy some books based on author or recommendation, but otherwise I'd prefer to be able to flip through a book (a, no, "Look Inside!" isn't the same) to get a feel for it.
There's also the serendipity factor you get just from wandering around a book store, picking stuff up because the cover caught your eye or whatever.
The problem for the bookstore is all of that is available to people whether they make a purchase or not, so they end up being the display room for Amazon.
I was just telling my wife this morning that the book business has changed radically -- there's been a seismic shift in the last year.
I don't see how the brick-and-mortar guys are going to do it. Even if you charged more and offered a high-touch experience, folks will just come in, browse the books, then scan them on their iPhone and buy them on the net.
Ebooks throws an even bigger monkey wrench into the works.
Some bricks and mortar stores are doing fine, the local shops that stock local books and local authors and sell used books are doing great. Amazon gives them a global market for their used stock.
The chains that campaigned against net price agreements and talked about business and not being sentimental are no complaining about ebooks, Amazon and supermarkets - well tough
I haven't bought a book in a store since probably 1999. I remember buying from bookpool.com when they were around and had the cheapest tech books.
Recently Amazon has basically dominated this market and has eaten the B&M stores lunches, as far as I am concerned. The best thing Amazon ever did was launch the ratings and reviews and get tons of people to add valuable content to their site and augment the one huge disadvantage they had over B&M; you can't tell if the book was any good. I find the ratings and reviews are as valuable, if not more, than me briefly looking through the book myself.
Now, I don't think ebooks have much to do with this at all as I don't see ebooks selling nearly as well as people think they will sell. I personally hate reading in that format and will continue to buy books to read as I find the experience much more enjoyable and maintainable. Thinks like Safari online are just AWFUL ways to consume material, IMO. The only reason I have ebooks is if I travel and want to have something to read on my iPad instead of carrying 4-6 books with me.
Oh yeah, and don't get me started on the price of most technical ebooks!
All in all...B&M stores like Borders are dying b/c they couldn't or wouldn't adapt in the face of someone like Amazon who is better at the modern game than they are. This is very much like Netflix v Blockbuster...
The Barnes and Noble I used to go to all the time in Manhattan will be closing January 3rd. It's really sad. The economics are fairly straightforward: physical stores cannot compete with the internet for goods sold. However, I'd only buy something on perhaps one-fifth of my visits. What they really had was an atmosphere, and the coffeeshop / bookstore experience is something Amazon can never sell.
They need to make a pivot into selling an experience, which is obviously harder to monetize than sold goods. But it's certainly possible (see: Starbucks) and it's something a lot of people are willing to pay for.
Sometime I wonder what would happen in the near-future?
Many brick-n-mortar stores (musics/cd, books, video-rental) where people used to sort of hang-out are now closing their doors and filing bankruptcy. Many young people are losing their jobs.
A few days ago I saw Amazon selling video games about $10 cheaper than EBGames (this particular game: Call of Duty Black Ops).
These are places where kids and teenagers used to hang out or even work during the summer.
Automation is replacing humans. Not sure if that's good or bad.
As much as I'd like to buy items cheaper, I'm a bit worried with the repercussion of my action.
Starbucks should sell more books, and find the right size for their "mega store"...which would basically be the size of the old small neighborhood bookstores. They have the atmosphere similar to what people loved about old small neighborhood bookstores.
36 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 87.5 ms ] threadFor more on this idea, The Experience Economy is a good read. (Skip everything but the first 2-3 chapters. After that, it gets redundant and a little weird at the end.)
http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-Theater-Every-Busin...
Medium: Moving towards digital, but physical books will remain relevant. Eventually digital might become so superior from a practical perspective that physical books will become collectors items in the sense that people will want to have some of them around for nostalgic reasons (e.g. religious texts, favorite authors). But people are programmed to hoard physical objects, so even when digital becomes superior they'll still want some books. In the mid-term you will see printing on demand in a reasonable quality distributed through and printed by local stores[1], allowing them to participate in the long tail segment instead of just stocking bestsellers.
Shopping experience: It's fun to go to a bookshop and browse, even if you're going to order the books you like from Amazon in the end. This will become something you do on a free afternoon as a form of leisure (as many of us do already). Successful shops will figure out a business model around this, focussing on the experience instead of the practicalities. For more practical purchases (e.g. "I need a book on Haskell, pronto") people will use Amazon instead.
Small players will remain active in niche markets, like selling collectible antiquarian books, where focus and specialization gives them an edge over big players like Borders or Amazon. This will mostly happen over the internet, which is a change that is already happening. A good friend of mine runs a high street antiquarian bookshop and has days where he sells for less than $20 in his brick and mortar store, but makes up for this by selling online. The main reasons for keeping the brick and mortar shop are nostalgic, as a warehouse for this inventory and as an avenue for people to come in and sell him new stock.
[1] That is if copyright holders will go along with this approach, because the publishing, movie and music industries are rackets that don't necessarily have the best interest of their customers in mind (customers as in consumers as well as resellers like bookshops and record stores).
If people don't value the retail experience, it's very possible it'll disappear aside from a few niches like perishables and very expensive impulse items.
I initially reason, well, I must be a very unusual shopper. I buy a lot of books on programming topics, math, science, etc., and I eschew with passion anything written for dummies, idiots, fools, or morons.
But then I wonder, am I really so unusual? I'm not an expert historian, but I enjoy studying history, and I'm disappointed with the local store's selection of history books about as much as I am with their technology books. I enjoy studying linguistics, and have watched the store's linguistics section melt away into nothingness. I enjoy science fiction, but am dismayed to see shelves of fantasy displace books by my favorite authors.
I can't really speak for every subject matter, but for pretty much every topic I want to read about, the big chain bookstores seem to be dwindling their stock, and smoothing out what little they do carry to appeal to some unknown typical readership.
If this is indeed true of all (or even most) of the subjects of books they carry, then I find it hard to believe that anyone who truly enjoys reading books is content with what they carry. Which leaves... people who really aren't very fond of books to peruse the shelves? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me.
I would greatly enjoy doing more book shopping in person. I seem to be good enough at searching Amazon to come up with good books sight unseen, but I'd like to go browse in the store, if only the store had books in stock that I'd want to browse.
I can't find it, but there's an article out there somewhere about how Boston Market has really struggled because they set their prices high and issue a lot of discount coupons, so a lot of their customers are bargain shoppers not people looking for higher quality.
I definitely wish that either book chain (or a new business) would focus more on the "experience" part of what these stores are now. They're always busy, but mostly full of people with laptops. I know some of them won't spend a dime there, but I suspect most of them would pay a couple bucks an hour for a comfortable seat, power, decent wifi, and access to snacks, drinks, books, and gadgets to buy. I know I would.
Sure, there are some good reviews on Amazon by credible critics and book lovers, but they have increasingly become like searching for a needle in a stack of needles. Most reviews I read, even on academic books that the hoi polloi don't read much, variate a great deal and swing wildly between 5 star ratings and 0. They are also filled with petty invective, academic flame wars that have no place on a good review site, and authors faking reviews for their own books (or those of their scholastic rivals).
i haven't opened a book in over a year, and haven't finished a book in years.
But anyway. As a non-book-reader, where do you see local bookstores heading? I suspect that nothing they could do to their stock or their prices would draw you in?
That said when I do buy books I RedLaser them and buy online. Here's what bookstores could do to get my money:
-sell coffee and make a quite place i can plug in and use wifi
-set up small reading/work stations with tables and comfortable chairs spread out amongst the aisles
-sell food and/or beer on site
some places kind of do this with tacking a starbucks in, but they are usually busy and loud and feature the parts of starbucks i dont like and cut out the parts i do. mainly the plush seating areas.
i do a lot of remote work and a bookstore environment seems better than a starbucks or indie coffee shop, which is where I've been spending such time.
The local book store may survive yet.
Let me give you a couple of examples from the days when my parents ran a general and Christian books and music store...
The store was located close to several antique shops - women would go antiquing, drag their husbands along, then stop at the bookstore. Our bookstore had a huge selection of books on antiques and collectibles for just this reason - stuff you would be hard pressed to find even today in a Borders or B&N, like a $200 book on Tiffany Lamps, or even a $30 book on Depression era pressed glass.
Of course, the men were often bored - until they saw the books we had on cars, trucks, car repair, woodworking, military aircraft, etc.
We would sell at least $1000/week of car repair manuals such as the Chilton or Motorcraft series (and this was a small store). The $17 book on small gas engine repair (lawnmowers etc.) did very well also.
When we found people were restoring old Mustangs, we started carrying the $80-$110 Hollander Interchange manuals, which tell you which parts from which Mustangs are exactly the same for each year (e.g. a suspension component from any of 65-68 Mustangs might be identical, making it easier to find the part).
If you walk into a Borders today, you will find very little customization of each store for the local market. For instance, in the York, PA, store, home of a big Harley Davidson factory and filled with people who like hot rods (big cruise nights in the area) ... not even a small table packed with such books.
Second example: the Christian music buyers were always focused on the teen market (Christian Rock like Petra, etc.) -- but Christian music-buying teens usually have far less allowance money (IME) because their parents are more conservative.
So our music selection ignored the teens, and focused on having the music that the parents or other Christian adults would want (tended to be Christian country, Sandi Patti, and Christmas albums). Those folks, being adults, and in the prime of their earning years, had little hesitation in buying, often multiple items at a time. The buyers at other stores turned up their nose at such folksy stuff, to their detriment I think.
Imagine the sales lost by bookstores nationwide by focusing on Twilight books, heavily discounted, which attract distracted and less-rich teens, versus looking for and exploiting local niches.
Borders will sell my book for $49 when it comes out, whereas you can preorder it from Amazon for around $22 which is about what it costs to buy the ebook copy right from the publisher. Then my book won't sell because it's too expensive, so we'll have to buy it back from Borders and I'll get charged against my royalties for a "return".
It's not e-books, it's that the prices are too high. Amazon has every book Borders has, and if I ship the thing overnight I still end up with a cheaper copy than it would cost to buy it across town.
Going out of business is the result of not meeting customer demand, either in terms of relevance, quality, or in this case, price.
I remember seeing a Charles Stross book selling for around $50 signed. I saw a signed Nights Dawn Trilogy for what would have been $400... all used books.
I wanted to ask what the signed (second edition IIRC) copy of The Colour of Magic was going for, but I didn't dare as it was locked up behind the counter and I knew I'd want it!
What exactly do you expect them to do? Do you have any idea of the overhead of running a bookstore? It's easy to say that Borders should match Amazon's price, but if you take one look at an Amazon fulfillment center, you'll see a gap that simply can't be closed.
I suppose he expects them to go out of business. The cost of operating a bookstore is irrelevant to the buyer - if the overhead is such that they can't either compete on price or otherwise differentiate their product or experience to justify the cost difference, then abandoning the business model seems like the only choice.
I used to like browsing in bookstores but now its like they don't want my business. Why should I have the bookstore order something for me? I pay more than Amazon and they add no value - that's why they're failing.
They add value by allowing you to physically browse through books to see what they're like.
I buy some books based on author or recommendation, but otherwise I'd prefer to be able to flip through a book (a, no, "Look Inside!" isn't the same) to get a feel for it.
There's also the serendipity factor you get just from wandering around a book store, picking stuff up because the cover caught your eye or whatever.
The problem for the bookstore is all of that is available to people whether they make a purchase or not, so they end up being the display room for Amazon.
I don't see how the brick-and-mortar guys are going to do it. Even if you charged more and offered a high-touch experience, folks will just come in, browse the books, then scan them on their iPhone and buy them on the net.
Ebooks throws an even bigger monkey wrench into the works.
Major changes are coming.
The chains that campaigned against net price agreements and talked about business and not being sentimental are no complaining about ebooks, Amazon and supermarkets - well tough
Recently Amazon has basically dominated this market and has eaten the B&M stores lunches, as far as I am concerned. The best thing Amazon ever did was launch the ratings and reviews and get tons of people to add valuable content to their site and augment the one huge disadvantage they had over B&M; you can't tell if the book was any good. I find the ratings and reviews are as valuable, if not more, than me briefly looking through the book myself.
Now, I don't think ebooks have much to do with this at all as I don't see ebooks selling nearly as well as people think they will sell. I personally hate reading in that format and will continue to buy books to read as I find the experience much more enjoyable and maintainable. Thinks like Safari online are just AWFUL ways to consume material, IMO. The only reason I have ebooks is if I travel and want to have something to read on my iPad instead of carrying 4-6 books with me.
Oh yeah, and don't get me started on the price of most technical ebooks!
All in all...B&M stores like Borders are dying b/c they couldn't or wouldn't adapt in the face of someone like Amazon who is better at the modern game than they are. This is very much like Netflix v Blockbuster...
They need to make a pivot into selling an experience, which is obviously harder to monetize than sold goods. But it's certainly possible (see: Starbucks) and it's something a lot of people are willing to pay for.
1-off printing costs MUCH more than batch runs of printing.
Many brick-n-mortar stores (musics/cd, books, video-rental) where people used to sort of hang-out are now closing their doors and filing bankruptcy. Many young people are losing their jobs.
A few days ago I saw Amazon selling video games about $10 cheaper than EBGames (this particular game: Call of Duty Black Ops).
These are places where kids and teenagers used to hang out or even work during the summer.
Automation is replacing humans. Not sure if that's good or bad.
As much as I'd like to buy items cheaper, I'm a bit worried with the repercussion of my action.