For someone like me who buys a lot of books is it worth paying an extra 30% every time to keep a large chain alive? What's the difference between taking a picture of a book and writing down the title? I still buy a lot of books from brick and mortar stores anyways. Also, I think buying the used books at my local bookstore is more profitable for them than buying the new books they sell.
Edit: I'm a Canadian so the special "Canada" pricing makes the price difference 40% sometimes despite our dollar being close to parity. I don't like the disappearance of small bookstores either so I do the best I can to support them. What can brick-and-mortar stores do against Amazon? What Chapters does is sell a lot of other stuff besides books. Stuff they can mark up with higher margins.
Absolutely correct about the Canadian prices. I have spent the last 2.5 years here, and I get your point about selling other stuff (like Chapters/Indigo already does).
The thing is, that other stuff can also be bought online. People browsing for books in store (before buying it from Amazon), don't really buy those other items either (why should they). So, these stores aren't really gaining anything from people browsing their selection, other than perhaps taking a cut from coffee shops.
On the other hand, if I want to gift a book, I almost always pick it up from a store. I generally don't plan ahead enough to order from Amazon (no Prime in Canada either :)) and dropping into a store works well. I am caught in two minds about these stores, I love going there, but I can't figure out a way for those guys to turn a profit without charging us the premium that they do.
I do this quite regularly, mainly because it is a lot more convenient to "browse" in book stores and taking a look at titles that seem interesting than using Amazon for the same purpose.
I think that this is more of an UI failure on Amazon's part than an inherent advantage of physical stores, a failure that a competent designer or even someone who things rationally should be able to solve quite easily.
Unfortunately I doubt we'll see an Amazon redesign proving my theory as long as any brick-and-mortar store is still standing.
Former independent bookseller here, and former employee of Borders and Amazon.
There is little new to see here in this story. In general retail, physically checking out the competition's pricing has a long history. The only new twist is the barcode apps to check price immediately. Brick and mortar bookstores or "showrooms" are going to have to compete with better service and markup on non-book items. I don't think that's going to save the bookstore chains, though.
If this is really a problem (and I suspect it the number of people who do this is much lower than the number of people who don't buy the book at all) then maybe the stores should focus on those who come to buy only one book or the immediate gratification of walking out with the book, rather than waiting days for it to get from Amazon.
Finally looking it up on Amazon means you can read the reviews -- and, funny enough, take advantage of Amazon to decide if the books should be brought or not.
But it is also clear that the future of book buying isn't going to happen in book stores -- I am kinda amazed they lasted as long as they did. With expenses for employees, heating, rent, theft, etc you would think the stores would have gone banckroupt a long time ago.
"December 4, 2011, 10:36 PM"
...
"Now a survey has confirmed that the practice, known among booksellers as showrooming, is not a figment of their imaginations."
Definitely a problem for the bookstore's business model, however I don't see how this is different than going to your local public library seeing a book you like and buying it on amazon later, in fact most public libraries will get a book for you ( and you can borrow it! ) for no or very little charge.
> I don't see how this is different than going to your local public library
The activity is no different, but the impact is totally different. When you don't buy the book from the store, they lose potential income from a limited pool of local book buyers; if that happens too often, they don't make enough money and go out of business.
When you don't take the book from the library, they save money they would've spent handling you. If that happens too often, nothing's likely to happen, since most of the library's funding is from local taxes, traffic fines, and state grants (which includes federal money given to the states to support libraries).
I worked in an independent bookstore while in college for about 3 years, shortly after the rise of Amazon as an ubiquitous force in bookselling.
The independent bookstores that are still operating today are survivors. They've somehow survived the big box retailers, the bargain booksellers, Amazon, the Amazon / eBay used book secondary market, the rise of e-readers, the decline of magazine & newspapers, and the general decline of long-form reading across the board.
I doubt indie booksellers are worried at this point. They've survived the apocalypse several times over in the last 15 years. Barnes and Noble has something to worry about, but the indies survive purely on the sense of community among avid readers and generally being a staple of intellectual pride in the neighboring community.
If you have a local bookseller on your block, who is still operating it means they are a warrior and a survivor. I'd take a bet they're more worried about the economy and inflation than technology-based disruption at this point...
Hmmm, I think the trends in book sales closely resemble music sales from 5-7 years back.
And in the last decade, many indie music stores have gone out of business. Small record stores are uncommon today. I wouldn't be surprised to see this same trend effect bookstores.
Have you noticed more musical instrument shops? In Birmingham UK there are several classical music instrument shops including a violin maker, and a number of electric/pop music shops. One or two independent music media shops left clinging on... Has to be a trend there.
I beg to differ. Mom and pop stores have it the worst. Their getting competition from B&N and Amazon. Being a staple of intellectual pride doesn't pay the rent.
In the past few years I've only seen book stores close and I've never seen one open.
My city had a decent sized independent bookstore open just two years ago. And since they just moved into a better location, I'd assume they're doing ok.
Over the years I've actually done the opposite. I'll read reviews on books I'm interested in on Amazon and go to a local bookstore to buy it. I appreciate the book reviews but I'm impatient and want the book now.
The iPad and iBookstore have changed my behavior slightly in that I can both read the reviews and buy the (e)book at the same time. I'm still buying mostly physical books because I love the weight and feel of books but I'm starting to gradually switch.
"I'll read reviews on books I'm interested in on Amazon and go to a local bookstore to buy it. I appreciate the book reviews but I'm impatient and want the book now."
Great point, I didn't even think about this while reading the article but your comment made me realize I do this a lot.
I've done this quite a few times. If Amazon has the book for 40+ percent off and the bookstore has it for full retail, it's hard to overcome that though. Borders and their constant 25-40% discount coupons also made it hard for me to consider buying any but the cheapest books without that deep of a discount.
A parallel: a local hockey pro shop charges a "fitting fee" ($25, I think) for trying on ice skates there. If you end up buying skates, they put the fee towards your purchase.
I find the practice repellant, but that's just me.
There's a number of other local pro shops that are equally apportioned that don't charge such a fee. Some even offer incentives to buy there (free sharpenings, free stick if you buy a top-end pair, etc.) rather than the disincentive to leave without purchasing.
I've played hockey all my life. I know the type of skates and holders I usually like. When I see a sign like that, even though I'm pretty sure I'll buy the first pair I try on, it encourages me to take my business elsewhere.
Most of what the store is doing, apart from the human and atmosphere aspect can be replaced by an online curated browsing site. I think ultimately it's not enough to keep them operating on current form and would need to move towards something of a book club or reading space that only sells really niche things and things like coffee.
I think amazon could make physical spaces in certain locations as somewhat of a club or browsing experience an sell the books near the online price with same/ next day ordering in. Could be like an extended prime membership. Whether they would go down this probably low margin path though is another thing.
I do this all the time. I spent a summer working in NYC and used to visit Strand Books pretty frequently (at least once a week). Stand has an interesting model because the downstairs is filled with used books. I'd regularly do a price comparison check on the used titles versus their Amazon counterparts.
What I found is that sometimes the brick and mortar bookstore actually had the price advantage with these used books. When you factor in the minimum $3.99 shipping cost on a lot of used Amazon non-prime titles, they came out to being slightly more expensive than the used books I looked at in the store. This wasn't always the case, but it happened at least 30-40% of the time.
I do this, but I buy all most of my books from www.betterworldbooks.com. It has free shipping to Argentina(where most pages won't even ship here, and Amazaon charges a hefy fee), and it gives a lot of the profits to charity. Getting books in their original language is damn ahrd here, and I care a lot about that. I don't like reading translations if I can help it.
But honetly, the bookstore seems to be blossoming here. I've seen more bookstores opening than closing in teh last few years. Specially ones that serve coffe on the side(or maybe it's their main business), and ones that selled niche or used books. I'm sure the fact that importing books is ahrd for a private citizen has a lot of imapct on this. Shipping from Amazon takes at least two weeks, and I've waited as much as two months for a shipment from BWB. And I can't even think of a good book page for books in spanish, but I can't say I've looked to hard for that.
Could a bookstore not offer an Amazon purchasing option? If customers want to browse books in the store and purchase off Amazon, why not explicitly enable this? The tradeoff is obvious to the consumer: either get the book now for a heightened price, or get it later more cheaply. The bookstore could make a commission off the Amazon referral.
Amazon won't go for that because a number of states treat having an affiliate in their state as a "business presence" which triggers the requirement to collect sales tax in that state.
All the affiliates in my state were eliminated that way.
For me, it's the reviews. I see a book (or product) that looks interesting, make a note of it and check the reviews online (typically Amazon) to see if it's worth the purchase. If the reviews are favorable and I decide I want to buy it, the choice is pretty simple; I'm already at the online store, the price is usually lower and the purchase is a click away (versus a drive back to the store and potentially waiting in line).
If I do bother to check the reviews on my phone while I'm in the store, then it's a simple price comparison, and the online retailer almost always wins again.
Just like with online referrals, Amazon should release a barcode scanning system with store-identification or perhaps simply a geotracking system where brick and mortar stores get a cut of sales from Amazon made by recent visitors to the store. Everybody wins.
The only difference between online and offline referrals is the difficulty of tracking credit for the purchase but I think that can be surmountable.
For the same reason they pay for online referrals - it's an avenue that drives sales their way. No charity involved.
As for the pricing at b&m stores, at least in the case of smaller shops, they simply don't have the ability to price anywhere near Amazon. They don't have the leverage to negotiate low enough prices from publishers and distributors.
B&N I don't know about. I'd think they could discount somewhat more, even in store.
The store could provide wifi and rewrite your urls going from your phone to amazon to include the affiliate tag, but this would not affect purchases made from a home computer.
If you prefer the e-reader to the bound book, what choice do you have? I "showroom", but then again, I only drop in bookstores because they're a calming detour in a busy day in some city - almost never as a lone destination (which was common for me 5 years ago). As much as I love the stores, I've completely bought into the convenience of e-books and Audible, which have made it possible for me to take in orders of magnitude more books in a given week than I could in the era of the printed page.
The focus on customer ethics is misguided when you consider the likelihood that a good portion of bookstore's best customers are probably exactly the kind of people ready to rapidly adopt new reading mediums.
My preferred method of purchase is locally, and in cash.
My usual temptation is different: to go onto Amazon and review some book that I bought elsewhere. I don't do this--it implies no economic loss to Amazon, but it seems to me to involve bad manners.
35 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 59.8 ms ] threadEdit: I'm a Canadian so the special "Canada" pricing makes the price difference 40% sometimes despite our dollar being close to parity. I don't like the disappearance of small bookstores either so I do the best I can to support them. What can brick-and-mortar stores do against Amazon? What Chapters does is sell a lot of other stuff besides books. Stuff they can mark up with higher margins.
The thing is, that other stuff can also be bought online. People browsing for books in store (before buying it from Amazon), don't really buy those other items either (why should they). So, these stores aren't really gaining anything from people browsing their selection, other than perhaps taking a cut from coffee shops.
On the other hand, if I want to gift a book, I almost always pick it up from a store. I generally don't plan ahead enough to order from Amazon (no Prime in Canada either :)) and dropping into a store works well. I am caught in two minds about these stores, I love going there, but I can't figure out a way for those guys to turn a profit without charging us the premium that they do.
I think that this is more of an UI failure on Amazon's part than an inherent advantage of physical stores, a failure that a competent designer or even someone who things rationally should be able to solve quite easily.
Unfortunately I doubt we'll see an Amazon redesign proving my theory as long as any brick-and-mortar store is still standing.
There is little new to see here in this story. In general retail, physically checking out the competition's pricing has a long history. The only new twist is the barcode apps to check price immediately. Brick and mortar bookstores or "showrooms" are going to have to compete with better service and markup on non-book items. I don't think that's going to save the bookstore chains, though.
Finally looking it up on Amazon means you can read the reviews -- and, funny enough, take advantage of Amazon to decide if the books should be brought or not.
But it is also clear that the future of book buying isn't going to happen in book stores -- I am kinda amazed they lasted as long as they did. With expenses for employees, heating, rent, theft, etc you would think the stores would have gone banckroupt a long time ago.
Really, just figuring this out in 2011?
The activity is no different, but the impact is totally different. When you don't buy the book from the store, they lose potential income from a limited pool of local book buyers; if that happens too often, they don't make enough money and go out of business.
When you don't take the book from the library, they save money they would've spent handling you. If that happens too often, nothing's likely to happen, since most of the library's funding is from local taxes, traffic fines, and state grants (which includes federal money given to the states to support libraries).
The independent bookstores that are still operating today are survivors. They've somehow survived the big box retailers, the bargain booksellers, Amazon, the Amazon / eBay used book secondary market, the rise of e-readers, the decline of magazine & newspapers, and the general decline of long-form reading across the board.
I doubt indie booksellers are worried at this point. They've survived the apocalypse several times over in the last 15 years. Barnes and Noble has something to worry about, but the indies survive purely on the sense of community among avid readers and generally being a staple of intellectual pride in the neighboring community.
If you have a local bookseller on your block, who is still operating it means they are a warrior and a survivor. I'd take a bet they're more worried about the economy and inflation than technology-based disruption at this point...
And in the last decade, many indie music stores have gone out of business. Small record stores are uncommon today. I wouldn't be surprised to see this same trend effect bookstores.
In the past few years I've only seen book stores close and I've never seen one open.
(http://www.morrisbookshop.com/)
The iPad and iBookstore have changed my behavior slightly in that I can both read the reviews and buy the (e)book at the same time. I'm still buying mostly physical books because I love the weight and feel of books but I'm starting to gradually switch.
Great point, I didn't even think about this while reading the article but your comment made me realize I do this a lot.
I find the practice repellant, but that's just me.
I've played hockey all my life. I know the type of skates and holders I usually like. When I see a sign like that, even though I'm pretty sure I'll buy the first pair I try on, it encourages me to take my business elsewhere.
I think amazon could make physical spaces in certain locations as somewhat of a club or browsing experience an sell the books near the online price with same/ next day ordering in. Could be like an extended prime membership. Whether they would go down this probably low margin path though is another thing.
What I found is that sometimes the brick and mortar bookstore actually had the price advantage with these used books. When you factor in the minimum $3.99 shipping cost on a lot of used Amazon non-prime titles, they came out to being slightly more expensive than the used books I looked at in the store. This wasn't always the case, but it happened at least 30-40% of the time.
But honetly, the bookstore seems to be blossoming here. I've seen more bookstores opening than closing in teh last few years. Specially ones that serve coffe on the side(or maybe it's their main business), and ones that selled niche or used books. I'm sure the fact that importing books is ahrd for a private citizen has a lot of imapct on this. Shipping from Amazon takes at least two weeks, and I've waited as much as two months for a shipment from BWB. And I can't even think of a good book page for books in spanish, but I can't say I've looked to hard for that.
A quick web search turns up: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
All the affiliates in my state were eliminated that way.
For me, it's the reviews. I see a book (or product) that looks interesting, make a note of it and check the reviews online (typically Amazon) to see if it's worth the purchase. If the reviews are favorable and I decide I want to buy it, the choice is pretty simple; I'm already at the online store, the price is usually lower and the purchase is a click away (versus a drive back to the store and potentially waiting in line).
If I do bother to check the reviews on my phone while I'm in the store, then it's a simple price comparison, and the online retailer almost always wins again.
The only difference between online and offline referrals is the difficulty of tracking credit for the purchase but I think that can be surmountable.
I think the problem is the pricing in the stores. Often books are over 50% more in retail stores then on Amazon.
As for the pricing at b&m stores, at least in the case of smaller shops, they simply don't have the ability to price anywhere near Amazon. They don't have the leverage to negotiate low enough prices from publishers and distributors.
B&N I don't know about. I'd think they could discount somewhat more, even in store.
The focus on customer ethics is misguided when you consider the likelihood that a good portion of bookstore's best customers are probably exactly the kind of people ready to rapidly adopt new reading mediums.
My usual temptation is different: to go onto Amazon and review some book that I bought elsewhere. I don't do this--it implies no economic loss to Amazon, but it seems to me to involve bad manners.