Slashdot Mirror
Bookstores May Boycott New Amazon-Published Books
destinyland writes "Amazon has begun signing their own authors and then publishing the books themselves, leaving booksellers 'wary' as Amazon 'tries to have it all,' according to a Boston newspaper. The co-owner of an independent bookstore near Cambridge considered boycotting Amazon's new line of books, complaining, 'They are a huge competitor, and they don't collect sales tax, giving them an unfair advantage.' A children's bookstore noted that 'the pie is getting cut into fewer pieces. I'd be nervous if I were an adult book publisher.' Borders bookstore has already declared bankruptcy, leaving The Daily Show to joke that bookstores should simply become 'digital downloading' stations — or a 'living history' museum where future generations can learn what a 'magazine rack' was."
Just ask the people who deliver ice to houses.
There we go again... Is this the correct chronological order of ascension to evilness: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon...?
Of course I can blame them. As a former author the entire system was geared against the author. I have talked to several authors who have shifted to the new self-publish ebook paradigm eg Amazon. They love it. They get to keep more of their own money, and with Amazon they get a half decent DRM. And you got to give credit to Amazon they preserved with the Kindle and it is doing well.
The fact that independent bookstores go downhill is not a surprise, and they have to adapt and think of other ways to make money.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The article identifies ONE well-selling book. Amazon has been doing print-on-demand and e-publishing for thousands of hacks already, and even for some algorithms that do nothing but mash Wikipedia pages together. I really wouldn't be surprised if this ends up working more as leverage for those services than to pounce on the next big authors.
What competing bookstores? There's Barnes and Noble, and a few remaining independents. Borders is in bankruptcy liquidation. ("Everything must go! 40-60% off! Store fixtures for sale.) Barnes and Noble is in financial trouble. When they go, there won't be much left.
When the big guys give it up, the distribution channel dries up.All the warehousing and shipping needed to service little bookstores isn't profitable if the volume is too small.
Bookstores are going the way of record stores and video rental stores. Gone. It's sad, but probably inevitable.
Are they being blacklisted because their book is full of porn ads like your link?
And the worms ate into his brain.
They are a huge competitor, and they don't collect sales tax, giving them an unfair advantage
No Amazon has an "unfair advantage" over an independent book store because:
a) It doesn't have sales staff who spend most of their time not actually doing anything.
b) Doesn't pay prime commercial rents on its facilities.
c) Has a collection so vast that no physical book store could compete.
d) Is a huge corporation so purchasing, HR, marketing, shipping etc is amortised by the sheer volume they sell.
e) Is a huge corporation and negotiates favourable tax breaks with state and federal authorities.
Amazon doesn't want to pay state taxes not because paying them would make them unprofitable, but because working out the taxes for 50 US states plus all the other countries they ship to (who would probably start demanding tax collection if Amazon caved to the states) is an unholy nightmare.
Bricks-and-mortar stores need to stop whining about on-line businesses not paying sales taxes, and need to start restructuring their businesses to deal with advantages that huge retailers like Amazon have. Here in Australia the b&m retailers are whining that imports under $1000AUD don't pay 10% sales tax, completely ignoring that those goods are generally 30% - 50% cheaper then the same product from a b&m store. A 3% - 5% price increase on those imports isn't going to save b&m stores.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Coming next - Blockbuster boycotts movies that are available on Netflix... oh, wait...
Bow before me, for I am root.
If Amazon aren't required to pay it, that's the fault of unfair legislation, not of the company itself. And here in the UK they do charge VAT*, as they do in many other countries they trade in, so it's a bit misleading to say they don't pay the tax at all.
And it's not like there's anything stopping these bookstores setting up online shops and reaping the same tax benefits - except bitching about Amazon is a lot easier than trying to compete directly with them. Pitch the two on the same playing field and it's clear Amazon will be the winner, as they're the ones with the USP.
* - there's a small loophole allowing stuff to be shipped from Guernsey VAT-free which Amazon uses for some items, but that's due to be closed up at some point.
Bookstores are going the way of record stores and video rental stores.
Isn't this really more about publishers than bookstores, though?
If Amazon is effectively positioning itself as the entire supply chain from author to reader, a lot of middlemen are going to get cut out, which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing if they no longer serve a useful purpose but cream a bit off the top anyway.
However, given that Amazon have little credible competition for two major sales channels (on-line ordering of paper books, and distribution of e-books), there is a very real danger here that this series of events will follow:
Rather like DRM and AAA games, we are in danger of being left with no-one producing good work that you can simply pay for and enjoy any more, just mediocrity with strings attached.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Isn't this really more about publishers than bookstores, though?
It is. We'll probably still have a publishing industry, but it will publish the few mass-market titles that appear in racks at non-bookstore retailers, like drug stores and supermarkets. Everything else will be remote-order or on line only. For those books, the publisher has a very limited role and function.
Meaning that Amazon doesn't have restrooms... oh well.. I'll just have to use my own. It's just across the hall after all.
Book publishers and sellers are overpaid, lazy and up their own backsides. I honestly can't think of any group more ripe for a digital arse-raping. Except for music companies... but we've already had lots of digi-arse-play with them.
The Amazon Kindle is the first ereader that I could honestly recommend to a normal person - and by normal I mean not a geeky weirdo like me. It's not going to stop there either - just wait until we get proper rollable displays and electronics
You are quite right!
Slashdot has spent a lot of mindshare on the evils of the Music biz, but not too far behind that the book industry was pretty nasty too.
However I will go out on a limb and say that Borders deserved to croak for missing the boat TWICE. Not only did they goof giving the online side to Amazon, but they missed the REASON Amazon was beating them - centralized selection. But come on gang, can we admit to ourselves how totally crappy it is to order a book on amazon and have to wait for it to be delivered?!
What Borders missed the chance for, and the media blanked the stories about, is Print On Demand. It's been carefully slammed as "eew, why would you do that?". But books are digital, right? All Borders (or Barnes & Noble - they should have had a vision meeting and worked on it *Together!*) had to do, was invest in a beautiful untouchable-quality POD system. "Can't find that obscure book that only did a 7,000 copy small press run? We'll print it for you in an hour!" (You do need the hour, getting a book that doesn't fall apart does need time for the pages to be cut and fit and glued right.)
The shelf selection would be a Lead-In sample, just to get people thinking of what they want. The POD could also fix gaps in series etc. On and on. And yes, the systems are here - Harvard University Bookstore has one. In my hand are three sample Google-Books editions of some very rare Buddhist books, one of which answered a theory question I had for five years. A year ago they had some cover art licensing gaps, so it has only a blue white text cover, but that's irrelevant. The book is REAL, and equal quality to standard paperbacks.
So THIS is the true casualty of the Intellectual Property bickering. But the forces that be missed the chance. POD is coming, and the first company to nail it will re-write publishing.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
However, there is a monopolistic danger if Amazon becomes the one major player in publishing, and controls all aspects of the chain from advances to the e-reader.
They can't (yet) prevent others from competing in the same market, but they do have a huge customer base as a bootstrapping advantage.
This is good news. Hopefully, Amazon will start publishing school textbooks, too, at a fraction of the overinflated price that conventional publishers currently charge.
Better yet, publish them as e-books and sell Kindles to school boards.
Yes I can, because they refuse to compete in the one place they can win; Right Fucking Now. I have wanted a book, and gone to several stores so I could have it that day, and no one would have it. "We can order it for you" does not work, since I can too and for less. Yet, every time I go into Barns and Noble, they have less books? WTF?!? How can you have books 1,2,5,7,9, and 11 in a 13 book series, and not expect people to want the missing ones? (Real story. Dresden Files) Here is a plan. Instead of 14 stores in Houston with a crappy selection, how about 4 stores with an amazing selection?
There is a borders within a half mile walk from my apartment. It's in a high densitiy urban setting along with a plethora of other shops, two movie theaters, numerous restauraunts, etc.
Everytime I'm out on a leisurely stroll, I go in and browse throught the Philosophy, Religion, Politics, History, and IT sections. They very rarely have anything I want to read. With the bankruptcy, I've been stopping in more often as they get new shipments from their warehouse. After four visits, they finally had one title I was willing to buy for the price they offered, a paperback reprint of William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Meanwhile, at Amazon, they have a metric truckload of independent affiliates offering rare and hard to find titles. I can find the out of print /Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy/ by Dvornik from one reseller or Dominic O'Meara's /Platonopolis/ by another. Amazon offers an interface that allows me to browse the titles of a multitude of independent bookstores that cater to my tastes. Borders never offered that.
So what we're actually seeing is the death of mass-market booksellers in preference to sellers that allow independent affiliates that specialize in various niches to prosper.
I'll take that over Borders anyday.
In all seriousness, if you have a problem with this trend, produce something good and sell it in physical form. Or open a book store. Just because a lot of the culture is shifting this direction doesn't mean that one or two people with a vision can't start a movement in the other direction, if they can convince enough people.
Personally I don't see physical books vanishing anytime soon. Until they provide contracts equivalent to what you can do with paper books, libraries will still have a need for physical copies. And personally I prefer to buy things in hardcopy when they're anything that I expect to take seriously.
In all seriousness though, how many people really pass books down to their children anymore? Society's changed... physical tokens of personal expression aren't nearly what they once were, and I honestly think that's a good thing in the long run. Being less attached to hauling around physical delivery media like books and CDs also leads to less attachment to random things like cars and trinkets, and more emphasis on experiences and ideas. Even if Amazon does pull whatever random book you personally connect with (which is so unlikely to happen it's approaching impossible in the first place) that doesn't remove any of the impact the book had on your life. And on the other side, self-publishing an ebook may be the only way for someone who writes your favorite book ever to start a career.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Sorry, those were Federal, not state, programs
I was referring more generally to a compulsory political institution that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory. This includes both sovereign states and states within a federal system.
Actually, they're not. Cable companies have reported extremely weak pay to view sales, low enough to impact their revenues in a very visible way last year. There was an article about it on slashdot, look it up.
Why does browsing a few web pages and downloading a 400-800kb file require broadband?
From the summary: "I'd be nervous if I were an adult book publisher." I imagine that books with a lot of skin-tone illustrations are bigger than 800 kB.
You do realise that when enough of book stores go down, demand for books will eventually follow? Bookstores create demand by letting people window shop, read, touch real books.
As amazon has proven, virtual shop will have something that is tailored for your preferences. Which for next generations means mostly games, videos and music. Creating supply creates demand in entertainment, and vice versa - reducing supply reduces demand as customers simply spend their entertainment budget elsewhere.
Now, publishers had this coming with extremely author-hostile policies they had for last couple of decades. But what the hell do independent book stores have to do with it?
"Hello Mr Bookstore Owner, I'm looking for Big New Amazon Thriller."
"Oh, you can't buy that here. We don't sell Amazon books. Amazon are evil."
"So you're not going to sell me the books I want to buy?"
"No. If you want to buy Amazon books you'll have to buy them from Amazon, or the bookstore down the road which does stock them."
"Well, guess I won't be buying anything from you in future then."
With policies this retarded it's no wonder so many bookstores are going bust.
When on this subject, I always recall that great movie "You've Got Mail", where a small "Shop Around The Corner" is out-foxed by a big chain. "Can we save the Shop Around The Corner?" Asks Kathleen Kelley and the crowd goes wild. Of course, while offering verbal encouragement, the crowd continues to not offer its business. Is that evil? Uncharitable? Unwise? "I've heard Joe Fox compare books to olive oil", says Kathleen Kelley. Kathleen Kelley is a walking encyclopedia on the subject of children's books and can offer you advice on what to read with your kids. Kathleen Kelley hosts a reading hour to get kids interested in reading. Kathleen Kelley knows who you are and always offers service with a smile. Is it worth it?
The Shop Around The Corner employs four people: the owner, Kathleen Kelley, and two college students. Let's peg decent wages for them at, say, $100000, $60000, and 2x$20000. In New York, you can barely live on this. Let's add rent on the place at $20000/year, and other miscellaneous expenses of $20000/year on business license, electricity, insurance, whatever. That comes to $240000/year, $960/day. "Is that why it costs so much?" "That's why it's worth so much." The store is open, say, 12 hours a day, 8am-8pm. That's $80/hour, or $1.33/minute. How fast can you check out? Friendly service with a smile takes time.
Small shops can get away with higher markup. The books, after all, are already there, so there's an expectation of immediate satisfaction which can tolerate a higher price. Let's say $10 markup for hardcovers and $2 on paparbacks, which is just barely on the line between making a profit and losing your customers. If an average customer buys a hardcover and two paperbacks, each checkout nets you $14. You need to get a customer like that every 10 minutes to get the aforementioned income level. Now, if you've ever been to a small bookstore, you'd know that they are usually empty. I don't know if people hate books, or what, but I've never seen more than ten people in a store at once, and that's a crowd. That was twenty years ago. I imagine now things are even worse. I can not imagine how anyone can run a small bookstore profitably.
What exactly do you get at "Shop Around The Corner" that you do not get on Amazon? Customer service. If you are the kind who likes to chat, to ask advice, and to receive books from a real human being, that must be invaluable to you. Only, can't you get better social interaction by spending time with your friends? Ok, there's also advice about what to read. After all, Kathleen Kelley knows everything. Well, that's why we have friends who tell us what we might like, book clubs, review sites, and amazon lists and recommendations. Ok, but isn't it nice to pick up a real book, feel the binding, smell the pages, and flip through it to see if what's inside? A nice thing to have indeed, but is it really worth a $10 markup?
The bottom line is: you go to the bookstore to buy a book. You don't need to go there to socialize or to ask advice. You just need the book. Amazon gets you the book with minimum overhead, so you can spend that money you saved on something you like instead of on keeping Kathleen Kelley in business. Oh, by the way, the author of the book is surely more important to you than she is, and the authors get 40% royalties when they publish on Amazon, and maybe 10% elsewhere (if they haggle real hard). Isn't it better to reward the creators rather than useless, but nice, middlemen?
This is pretty much the fear of most people I know who are into books and know about amazon. This effect will be slowed down by libraries, but it will likely push through regardless.
They get to keep more of their own money, and with Amazon they get a half decent DRM.
There's no such thing as 'half decent DRM'. I'm pissed off that Amazon don't tell you whether books for sale there have DRM, because I was caught by my first DRM-infested book purchase there this week and had no way to tell before I bought it.
Kindle DRM pisses off your readers and, according to a quick Google search, is useless against pirates because it appears to be easy to remove if you don't mind downloading dubious and possibly illegal software.
The only people who benefit from Kindle DRM are Amazon, because unless you crack the DRM it requires you to either buy a Kindle or use their Kindle software to read the books you buy. Pirates just download the pre-cracked books.
All that the "independents" in my area offer is the same junk as in the supermarket "best-sellers" list or remaindered copies of over-hyped books.
Ask them to order-in something different and they claim "that is out of print" and perhaps I would prefer some garbage written by Jeremy Clarkson as that is also filed in the Transport section.
Let them die.
Go visit Powell's Books in Portland. Then come back and tell me you will eat your words. Most people do not understand what a real bookstore looks like, one that is devoted not to playing the corporate money game, but instead to disseminating knowledge and culture. Go to bookstores in Paris' Latin Quarter. When I was there, these stores were full of people. Philosophical works were displayed prominently; Voltaire, Rousseau, Sartre were easy to find, while empty vapid corporate writing was difficult to find.
Perhaps I am a bit of a luddite, but I am deeply uncomfortable with literature that only exists as states in a chip. If we could imagine a totalitarian government, perhaps like Stalin's or Mussolini's, there is the potential for such a government to implement widespread control over what we read and write. We all take for granted the freedom of the internet, but that can change. A totalitarian government could build systems that could track every page you read, and wipe books out of existence with the execution of a single command. At least with a printed book, there is no way to wipe it out other than to physically destroy it. There is no possibility of surreptitiously modifying the work after it has been published, deleting words or paragraphs without a trace. I have read enough history to have a deep distrust of human nature. A survey of the history of the Roman Empire should be enough to display what we are capable of doing.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
POD is coming, and the first company to nail it will re-write publishing.
To be fair, POD has been coming to rewrite publishing for the last twenty years or so. But I tend to agree, if I could go to a bookstore and walk out five minutes later with a decent printed copy of any book in existence at a reasonable price then I'd go there a lot more.
You do realise that when enough of book stores go down, demand for books will eventually follow? Bookstores create demand by letting people window shop, read, touch real books.
I've bought way more ebooks in the last year than I did physical books the year before.
You seem to be so smart!
And yet you're too stupid to realize why your comment is dumb.
A bookstore like you describe can't survive unless it's in an area where people actually care about those books. Small town bookstores sell the crap you mentioned, because it SELLS. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre DON'T.
Signed,
someone who owns a comic book store in a small city and who is constantly nagged by so-called experts for focusing on manga (which sells) instead of used 80s comic books (which don't sell).
From what I can see, the actual story is that one bookseller has considered boycotting Amazon in response to one strong-selling Amazon book.
Headline makes it sound like this is an industry-wide trend, but then again, this is Slashdot...
while( ! article.isWorthwhile() ) { article.generalize(); } article.publish();
You can only have a monopoly with government backing. If Amazon becomes the only player it will be because they are serving the authors and customers the best. As long as the government doesn't create artificial barriers to entry than it is not a problem. As long as Amazon runs their business well they will succeed. If it goes to their head and they start to abuse their place thinking they have no competition they will be sorely mistaken.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The argument is that for every one of you, in ten years there will be ten youths that will have no contact with books, and won't buy any, because they never ran into a bookshop and browsed it in their lives. Not that it undercuts the number of the current clients.
Speaking as an owner of a literary agency as well as a fellow with many thousands of physical books in my library, IMHO POD had its market potential nuked by the same forces that are impacting normal print. That is (a) the ability to carry an entire library in a Kindle, iP[od|ad|hone], general purpose Android device, other dedicated readers like the Nook, your home computer, laptop, etc; (b) the ability to put a title you want to read in your hands in seconds, (c) the ability to read what would have been a heavy volume on a relatively light device. Print (not POD) also suffers from (d) the eBook and POD ability to get a book from "last word written/edited" to the sales channel in what is effectively zero time.
Good POD devices are expensive; and demand, like demand for any physical book, is dropping as more and more people hop on the eBook bandwagon. This makes payback for the POD device an uncertain proposition for the host business.
The entire book business is in flux. One reason authors are interested (and understandably so) in Amazon's all-in-one model is the horrible royalty conditions the legacy publishers have imposed upon eBooks. With a normal book, the tradition is an advance, then royalties. With an eBook, the approach so far has almost always been give the publisher the book, they'll charge all costs to its account, and when it pays them off, they'll come with a (very small) royalty. There are several consequences to this, one of which is critical. For an established author who isn't top tier (meaning, can't demand an up front royalty), income from the previous traditionally published book fades away in the normal fashion as buzz for it dies down, but income for a new eBook via the same route won't even start for a year or more -- and in the meantime, the publishers still expect the author to do a great deal of the marketing out of pocket. That's a very tough situation to find yourself in, particularly if you are trying to make it as a full time writer.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Bullshit, if anything Amazon makes it sweeter for the little guys! I've probably been blowing a good $100 a month on little bookstores through Amazon, because my mom loves funky cheesy horror that you can't find around here and thanks to Amazon having such a HUGE selection of used books cheap thanks to all the little mom and pop shops instead of trying to figure out which books she's read or not I just throw a C-note on my account and tell mom to go nuts. She's happy with having new books constantly showing up, I'm happy because i don't have to figure out what to buy her anymore, hell even the local library is happy because when mom runs out of shelf space she brings them another load!
Book people are book people, same as nerds are nerds and jocks are jocks. that is just who they are and that won't change with the loss of hipster hangouts like Borders, where overpriced books and overpriced coffee collide. Instead what will happen to the little mom and pop shops will be the same thing that happened to the local pawn shop. I walked in and said "How do you guys stay in business, when there is hardly ever any cars here?" and he just pulled back to curtain to show his kid hunched over a PC. he said "eBay and Amazon friend, we make a good 25% profit and nothing stays more than a week or so."
It'll be the same with books, hell you'll have relationships with the booksellers even! There is one little gal in I believe SF mom has bought enough from she shoots me a heads up when they get a new one by one of mom's authors and I get a free bump to first class shipping. She's happy she has a steady customer that always buys from her, I'm happy because yet again I don't have to guess. it works nicely and its all thanks to Amazon!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
so my number 1 complaint about (new) bookstores is they never have what I am looking for, so now I have even less of a reason to go to them
have fun, your 200,000 square foot coffee shop really cant be doing that well
The summary attributed that quote to (an owner/employee) of "A children's bookstore...". I don't think he or she was speaking of the same type of "adult" books you (and some of the people who replied to your post) think she meant. I believe she meant "not children's books."
Of course, you may have been making a sarcastic comment, in which case, "never mind!" ;-)
On a personal note, I bought one of the first Nooks sold by Barnes and Noble. At the time, it was (IMHO) better than the Kindle. I still use it everyday.
The best feature? I can order a mystery novel sitting on my couch at 3:00AM and before I can exit the Nook Store and get over to My Library (on the Nook), the entire book is already there waiting for me. The original Nook has both WiFi and (free) 3G. Because books are not very large (even books that are compilations of other books) the download time in either case is about the same (at home, or places with WiFi hotspots, it always uses the WiFi). Otherwise, it uses 3G.
The second best feature: I have "low vision." Before my vision started to decline, I used to read about 40 books a year. Over the last 10 or so years, that went down to about 4 per year. Since I got the Nook, I'm making up for lost time. In the last two years, I've read about 80 books per year (all on the Nook). You see, my Nook (as with most eBook readers) lets me change the font size (as well as the font face) so I can actually read the book without straining too much. Can't do that with a paperback.
Finally, if you take your Nook into a B&N store, it will immediately connect to their in-house WiFi and display "coupons" for money off on coffee, accessories and even books. Friday is "free eBook day" (you don't have to be in the store to take advantage of this benefit -- just press a button on the touch screen and it's downloaded to your Nook).
Barnes and Nobel is still around because they have embraced the changes the Internet has wrought in the retail book selling market. The Nook was their gutsiest move yet, but they've done other creative things to stay competitive (like compete successfully with Amazon's pricing for books bought online and a $25USD per year Members program that is very similar to the $75USD per year Amazon Prime program). And, by the way, Barnes and Nobel had a "self-publishing" mechanism in place years ago (c. 2000). Still do, I believe.
Nope, I don't work for Barnes & Nobel. I'm a software developer. Just a very satisfied customer.
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
in my state, books are taxed, magazines aren't
in my state, sugar soda is taxed, bread isn''t
you have to maintain a list of what is, and isn't taxed, in each zipcode...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I know bookstores have few customers these days, but I like them and need them. I like to relax in the bathtub with a good book. I prefer paper books over "ebooks", reading a webpage on the screen is fine, reading a whole book is not.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Sure, Amazon is thriving as the de facto marketplace that gets a cut of every sale.
But within that marketplace, independent stores of the sort that the big box bookstores were putting out of business now have a national marketplace that allows them to thrive where the big box bookstores have trouble keeping pace.
You can only have a monopoly with government backing.
No, you can have monopolies for other reasons too... limited supply, networking effects, barrier of entry etc. You need to regulate the market to ensure competition, remember that monopoly is the best possible state for a private company to be in... competition is for the benefit of the purchasers, not the producers.
An example is phone communications. If there were no regulations, the best way to earn money would be for the top companies to merge and disallow any connectivity outside this new network. This massive barrier to entry would ensure that in a short time, you can set the prices to what maximizes income rather than what competitive pressure allows.
Personally I don't see physical books vanishing anytime soon.
They won't, just like 8-Tracks, Cassette Tapes, CDs, and MP3s have not killed off all Records and Small Record Stores.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
"Perhaps I am a bit of a luddite, "
Yep, nailed it.
The point of POD is that you have your library of electronic books, but you want the Old School feel if holding a book - you print the one you need. You can certainly give the file to the POD operator in the store.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So if bookstores choose to boycott Amazon-published books, leaving Amazon to sell the books themselves like they do most other books, doesn't this make brick-and-mortar bookstores even less relevant?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Amazon used books is made of win.
Sometimes you can find a good paperback fiction book for 1 penny with 3.99 media mail shipping.
$4.00 US for a book to be shipped to the house.
How awesome is that?
Borders can bite my shiny metal ass.
Has world really gotten to the point where "eventually" in context no longer means proper long term of half a century or more, but is instead "here and now!"?
Check if the book's Simultaneous Device Usage says "Unlimited" in the Product Details. If I understand correctly, that means it does not have DRM.
This is exactly why I bought a Kindle. (And I haven't bought a print book since.) I was blessed with a borders two blocks away from my house, it was four floors, each floor was very large, and it was often open until midnight. The only thing better I could ask for is for the damn place to have some books. A few years ago the best science fiction authors got together and made a list of the 100 best SF books. I had read many of them, but many I hadn't. So I made my list of 25 books and went down to Borders and started looking. They didn't have one.
Not a single one of the 25 best SF books in the world. They had a few that I had read, but none that were on my list. Looking further entire legendary authors were unrepresented. Harry Harrison had nothing. From Piers Anthony to Vernor Vinge, nothing. Alfred Bester had nothing, Niven had one book. Ursula Le Guin, one book. The Herbert section was mostly the awful Dune books Frank Herbert's son has vomited out and had copies of half the originals.
And of these four floors, one floor was mostly music. (Who buys that in a store anymore either?) Kids books area was huge but it was 80% toys. The staff was smart and knowledgeable, but they'd often recommend books they didn't have in stock.
And on the other side of it, I've been an author. I know how badly publishers treat them. It makes the music industry look charitable. Glad to see authors getting their due.
Blackwell's in the UK are already on it. They've got an instore POD machine which prints any paperback they've got the file for, including Gutenberg stuff, in seven minutes or so, for the standard price of a paperback the same size. The thing they didn't expect, but which has been very popular, is the number of people self-publishing on it. For under £100 you can plug in a USB stick and get ten proper paperback copies of your own book, however good or bad. Colour cover and everything.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I understand the point. The problem is, as I said, that the POD equipment is expensive, "real" books are dropping in popularity (regardless of how they are produced) and that generally speaking, the "feel" of a real book is more troublesome than the "feel" of an eBook. Personally -- and I readily admit this is just an opinion, but it *is* an opinion from someone who reads about a book a day -- real books seem to be to be more a matter of nostalgia than actual functionality; most of us reading today grew up with real books, and I think there is a hangover type of thing going on. In terms of actual benefits of a real book in the normal types of uses they undergo... there are very few.
There are potential "gotchas" for eBooks, but so far, they've been able to keep those experiences to a minimum, and as long as they do... eBooks will clobber real books.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Amazon.Com does NOT have a sales tax advantage in the eyes of the law. Yes they do not collect them, but individuals are still required by law to pay use tax on them unless the item is tax-free per state guidelines. So if the state is losing money, it is because Amazon's customers are committing tax fraud.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
When are people going to get over this, Amazon is NOT the only mail order place that does this. THEY ALL DO, it's the law.
Borders was FORCED OUT OF BUSINESS BY GREEDY INVESTORS. From the article http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Borders-seeks-approval-to-liquidate-1471467.php
So don't for an instant imply that Borders went out of business because of Amazon not paying state sales taxes. There are a lot of things to bash Amazon on, but obeying the law as far as collection of state sales taxes go shouldn't be one of them.
Small town bookstores sell the crap you mentioned, because it SELLS. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre DON'T.
You sir are a troll. I think you will find you and I have profoundly different world views. I suspect that in your worldview, society exists as an exercise in commerce. We humans are born, we become educated so that we can earn and then we consume. In this worldview, a book, say by Rousseau, exists as a way to make money. People buy it for whatever reason, be it amusement or education, and the bookseller/author/publisher make money. The fact that, Rousseau's "The Social Contract" for instance is one of the defining books of our civilization, that it informed the framers of the US constitution for example is beside the point. Its worth is measured in the profit it makes.
I do not doubt that many bookstores would not be able to profit financially by selling philosophical classics. I acknowledge the fact that the level of culture and education in much of the West, especially in the US has deteriorated. And I suspect that if you haven't seriously read Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre, you will have no idea what I am bemoaning, no idea what will actually be lost if we as a civilization begin to forget our intellectual roots. These works will just disappear in the public consciousness. Our civilization will forget what democracy is, will forget about Truth and Justice, about the beauty of science, about the joy of understanding the world for its own sake. We will become a nation of consumers, voting for whatever politician we think will increase our ability to consume. The problem is that we will lack the intellectual ability to understand what is actually in our own best interest. Our lack of real education and culture will make us too stupid to make real decisions about our society; others more powerful than us will start making the real decisions in their own interests. Looking at the current level of political discourse, I would say we are already well on that path.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
POD is not coming and if it ever does it will certainly not rewrite publishing. If someone ever wastes their time developing a decent POD implementation the best they'll achieve is a high rank in a sad magazine article entitled, "Top Ten 'Too Late' Technologies".
Digital readers are only going to improve in quality and drop in price. Right now there is zero reason for fiction to exist in a physical form except as a rapidly disappearing anachronism. As readers improve, technical and other large format books will soon join them. Just because there is currently still a market for physical books that doesn't mean it's a large sustainable one worth investing in.
And yet you're too stupid to realize why your comment is dumb.
A bookstore like you describe can't survive unless it's in an area where people actually care about those books. Small town bookstores sell the crap you mentioned, because it SELLS. Voltaire, Rousseau, and Sartre DON'T.
Bookstores sell what people want. You're right. But also sometimes people buy what is being sold.
Basic principle of marketing -- you can accept what the situation is and just give people what they think they want. Or you can find new markets by convincing people they want something they didn't realize they needed before.
Our society is currently somewhat anti-intellectual. A bookstore that tries to fight that (through novel advertising and promotions) would be refreshing to some. Would it make a lot of money? Probably not. But if no one does it, there definitely won't be a market for it anywhere.
You make some money getting people to buy what they already think they want. You usually get more money by finding something else and convincing them. If you only have a selection of what you think people already want, you'll never get them to buy something more.
someone who owns a comic book store in a small city and who is constantly nagged by so-called experts for focusing on manga (which sells) instead of used 80s comic books (which don't sell).
Something sounds wrong with your statement. If you are truly "constantly nagged" for not selling something, presumably those who are nagging you are interested in buying it. They may not be a large market or your target market, but if they are "constantly nagging" you, maybe you should sell them something they want.
On the other hand, perhaps you meant "occasionally asked," in which case it's probably not worth your trouble. Or perhaps these people aren't actually customers, in which case -- why the hell do you give a crap what they say?
and with Amazon they get a half decent DRM.
What a major advantage!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
amazing selection
That just blew my mind.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
No, I simply stated that book STORES exists as an excercise in commerce. It's in their interest to make profit off the goods they offer, and yes, the worth of a product is measured in the profit it makes. That's why a re-edition from philosophical classics are dirt cheap. Because they're not covered by copyright, because few people are interested in them (be it because of lack of interest, or the fact that their ideas, as you stated, are an integral part of our "civilization". And this is the first point where I'm going to disagree with you: You're just limiting yourself to Western civilization. Completely forgetting about our dear friends at the East and their own schools of thought. The fact that a book makes serves as a basis for the US constitution simply means that it's relevant to the history of the west.
Read your comment again, your moaning (not bemoaning) is just about losing the values of Western civilization. And your logic has two, completely flawed assumptions:
1) The works will not disappear from public consciousness. "On ne tue point les idees". Ideas cannot be killed.
2) on a more mundane way of thinking: you don't just get books from bookstores. There are libraries too. And there's the internet nowadays.
3) French revolutionaries and philosophers aren't the only people capable of writing those books. Have you even considered the possibility of someone else writing influential philosophical books?
And you also whine that we WILL lack the intellectual ability to understand what's in our best interest. As if we, as societies, ever had a chance with that. The level of political discourse? Wait, what? Before all your 1700's frenchie idols, there was a world, you know? There were whole civilizations and empires. The roman empire worked rather good, then it went to shit. But society didn't disappear - we just changed ideals. During the roman empire it was ok to fuck a young boy, now we see that as disgusting. How do we even know the civilization we have right now is "good"? Why would we even want to kep it? I mean, since the 1800s, the world has been governed by people in London and Washington. Most of Africa is a wasteland, why does the world even want that world to continue?
And this world we live in is the very product of the ideas you are defending so much.
How's that for a troll?
Harvard University Bookstore has one.
The Harvard University Bookstore is run by Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, Inc. Of course, Barnes and Noble College Booksellers was a separate company from Barnes & Noble, Inc until 2009 (although Len Riggio. the chairman of Barnes & Noble, owned controlling interest and was chairman of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers as well).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I keep evangelizing to my friends and family about how happy I am with my Kindle and how I can carry entire libraries with me at any given time. However, most of the non-techie people I speak with seem to be attached to the idea of physical books. While, the trend is clearly going towards digital, I see a very real market continuing for dead-tree books and that may shrink, but it is clearly in no real danger of evaporating completely. POD is a novel idea and while I do not see it making any huge waves, I think there is clearly a niche for it. i wonder how they would go about enforcing copyright. Would the POD stations treat it like a copier, where there is a big warning not to print off a physical copy of a book you do not have the rights to or would they be influenced to actively police it? Would I be able to walk in there with torrented ebooks on my flash drive and walk out with unlicensed realistic-looking copies? That seems like a potential legal issue for sure.
One significant disadvantage of eBooks over dead tree books is the fleeting nature of them arising from the imposition of DRM.
I learned a lot from books I picked up from bookshelves in my home when I was a child just by browsing. There were classics which no one had read in twenty years, there were engineering text books that my father had kept (presumably he had opened some of them in the prior twenty years since he got his degree!), there were reference works -- a potpourri. I could pick up a book that was way over my head and that no one would ever have bought for me (or even thought to) even if it was 99 cents and just skim it and pick up a little something about some random topic. Two or three years later, I might run across the book again and skim or read it again and get much more from it. I recall reading Huck Finn at least three times before I was an adult and getting a completely different story each time (the first time it was an interesting tale, the second time it was making some very important points, and the third time it was a masterful work which showed how a point can be made without actually belaboring the point).
While it's true that some of the fiction works I'm talking about are now available on the internet due to them being so old, that's not true of newer works which are likely to be locked up virtually forever due to modern copyright law.
With DRMed eBooks, the odds of yourself or your kids being able to browse your collection in twenty years seems much lower than with hard copy books due to device changes, companies going out of business, changes in the law, etc.
Of course, eBooks can be great for that bestselling novel that probably will never become a classic and whose primary purpose is to keep you amused on a trip. If it had been a dead tree book, you would probably just leave in the airport when you finished with it so the DRM isn't a big deal and the advantages of eBooks probably far outweigh the disadvantages in this case.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
While I am sympathetic to your anti-DRM rant, just how big of a market is there for Kindle books among people who don't own a Kindle, iOS device, Android device, WP7 device, Blackberry, PC, or Mac?
It's worth noting, too, that the "dubious and possibly illegal software" is entirely written in Python and is remarkably easy to use.
Exactly! And you have NO idea how happy it makes a horror fan like my mom to have a constant stream of books showing up at her door. With Amazon used books it is as simple as "hand mom my account, tell her what she can spend, let her loose".. never any problem finding say book 5 out of a series of 8, never any problems with the quality of the books, its all easy peasy.
How could anyone think dead tree databases are going away when it has never been easier and cheaper to get them? And I can tell you that you don't need some hipster joint to "create" new readers. I walk into the local library hefting mom's latest Sci Fi/horror donation and I'm swarmed by college girls all trying to see what goodies mom has brought the library. They often have to do a "slap and scan" as I call it because the college girls have carried off the entire donation before they can even do more than slap a scan tag!
So I don't see it going anywhere. Amazon makes it so damned easy to shop that it is one click and here is a book. How much nicer and simpler can you get?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Or perhaps these people aren't actually customers, in which case -- why the hell do you give a crap what they say?
He doesn't, which is why they're always complaining.
I don't think that makes sense.
The youth of tomorrow will never buy physical books like the youth of today have never bought cassette tapes. That doesn't mean they won't read or buy ebooks.
Maybe not
I have a Kindle and I like having an e-reader.
I think digital is the way to go for hippie reasons, making it easier to move when I go to another apartment, and for dozens of other reasons.
Libraries are getting under-utilized now that so much reference information is online.
People who like reading typically LOVE coffee shops. (which is why Borders had Seattle's Best, Barnes and Noble has Star Bucks and Books-A-Million has Joe Mug)
WHY DO THEY HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT?
In the future (as in tomorrow) I would LOVE to build a multi-story Library/Coffee Shop/Bookstore. Have all the racks upon racks of print books upstairs (the actual library section), have the first floor full of sofas, overstuffed chairs, print magazines, shelves upon shelves of "take a book leave a book" racks (coffee shop near my place has one) for people to anonymously trade print books and magazines, have a movie viewing room, maybe a bike service section outside. It should appeal to hipsters and college students to no end, make people upset about the disappearing bookstores happy (especially if we keep retail physical media going), make the people who are upset about libraries disappearing happy, and it should be self financing through media sales and overpriced coffee.
Just thinking out loud here.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Check if the book's Simultaneous Device Usage says "Unlimited" in the Product Details. If I understand correctly, that means it does not have DRM.
Thank you: I just checked and two books which I know don't have DRM are listed as 'unlimited' while the book I bought with DRM doesn't list 'simultaneous device usage' at all. I'll remember that in future,
...
The fact that independent bookstores go downhill is not a surprise, and they have to adapt and think of other ways to make money.
Yep, same with Mom & Pop Grocery Stores, or for that matter, Small Businesses.
Be seeing you...
Yeah, right. Without bookstores, nobody will buy any more books. Just like nobody buys music now that there aren't any record stores.
I'm tired of hearing the old dinosaurs moan as their grip on the business fails. I can try and get an agent and try and get published and then make $1.50 on every $30 book sold in a bookstore or I can put a book online somewhere and make $1.50 on every $2 book sold online. The only difference is that in the second case, the author makes as much or more than before and the reader can afford to buy fifteen books for the price of one.
Jerry Pournell retains the digital rights to his works and has been selling them on Amazon for two or three bucks each. A trivial amount for such great writing - and he's making a nice bit of side cash just from that. The only person who is losing out is the old dinosaur retailers, agents, publishers, distributors, and other middlemen (and if you're an old fashioned mom and pop bookstore, your competition isn't Amazon, but the big mega-bookstore down the street that moved in on you twenty years ago).
Incredibly irrelevant comparison. Cable companies have poor sales of porn content, because they have horrible offerings of boring soft-core tripe. Why would people pay a lot of money for crap via their television when they can get a whole month subscription to some website with far better or more interesting content online?
SKY IS FALLING OH NOES!
Brick and mortar dinosaurs can choke on it.
As someone who practically grew up in Powell's Books, I buy all my books online. They're way cheaper. Especially with Amazon Prime two day shipping. However, Powell's Books is the way to have a competitive niche (plus, they also have an online distribution presence . . . except for the whole still being more expensive part).
When books are no longer the niche, perhaps provide an enjoyable social experience, where you can sit among others and enjoy a book and a coffee and a muffin for a few hours. The Powell's experience (negating the actual book purchasing part itself) is worth a few bucks for sitting and reading.
Ok, first let's dial down the tone here; I am really not sure the insults are necessary. Thank you for your detailed reply.
No, I simply stated that book STORES exists as an excercise in commerce. It's in their interest to make profit off the goods they offer, and yes, the worth of a product is measured in the profit it makes.
I think my concerns are broader than just bookstores. I would hope you would agree that our system of commerce is a tool to serve the public good. That is, our system of money serves many purposes, limiting our consumption to goods we need, working hard to produce goods for others, following careers in fields where there is demand, producing goods that are needed, etc. In other words, this system is a tool designed to increase the material well being of society. But only a tool.
In the case of literature, we have a system of copyright that was designed to encourage authors to write. It allowed the authors to extract a profit for the work they created for a limited time. Thereafter, the material they created would revert fully to the public domain. This system was not designed to give the author absolute ownership of the work they created, but it did allow them some measure of control over it. The key thing to remember here is that the copyright system was a tool to benefit the public good; it balanced the needs of the public for written work with the needs of the author to eat, live, and prosper materially.
What I fear is changing is that we are mistaking those tools, commerce, copyright, etc. for the public good that they were meant to serve. Instead of creating something for the public good and making money by doing so, we think the purpose of making these goods is only to make money. Money becomes the reason for everything, for working, for creating, for living. Is the purpose of a bookstore ONLY to make money? Or does it also serve another purpose?
And this is the first point where I'm going to disagree with you: You're just limiting yourself to Western civilization. Completely forgetting about our dear friends at the East and their own schools of thought.
I am not completely forgetting the East. However since this is the civilization I live in, and since many of the principles of our civilization have seeped into the eastern civilizations, I feel it is appropriate for me to base my discussion around such Western views. Our systems of money, of laws, of science, of education, of private property come almost completely from ancient Greek civilization. Those ideas have spread around the world, including to China, Japan, and the other Asian nations.
1) The works will not disappear from public consciousness. "On ne tue point les idees". Ideas cannot be killed.
Perhaps, but ideas can die a slow death from neglect. Case in point: the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was founded on classical Greek ideals and principles (the same ideals and principles that inspired the French Philosophes). For a time, it was quite democratic (apart from slavery of course). Officials were elected yearly, and there was a Senate that was tasked with preventing the rise of a tyrant. Then Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, starting the path that would lead to a long string of emperors, some despotic and some good. Arguably the Roman Empire was at its peak under its first real emperor, Augustus. After that, Rome slowly started moving away from the Greek heritage that had made it so powerful. Emperor Constantine came to power, signalling a rise in superstition and a decline in rationalism. The Roman Empire became a theocracy, casting aside its rational heritage. And for about 1000 years, Rome forgot many things. Most pointedly, the successor civilization to the Roman Empire lost the ability to build complex architectural structures. This drought in architecture was broken in the 1400's, when Filippo Brunelleschi, inspired by his exploration of Roman architecture b
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
No sci-fi - yes, this seems to be a problem. Sci-fi seems to have split into several splinters.
Fantasy claiming to be sci fi. Lots of this.
TV and game stuff - crappy books claiming to be Halo books (spare me), and crappy Start Trek or Dr Who stories.
and some dribs and drabs of actual sci fi. With far too many excessively long series (come up with some NEW ideas, why don't you?)
Actually, fantasy overwhelming the sci fi and fantasy shelves is my big complaint. Who are these followers of dragons and magic? I've read Lord of the Rings, and it was damned good, but that's not why I'm here in this bookshop.
I miss Niven - when he was just Niven. And Forward. And ... oh anyway there are quite a few.
"Cats like plain crisps"
I still find myself using printed copies purely because I can *much* more easily flip between pages, and can organise the pages on the desk the way I like as I try to follow the argument (and a self printed copy is better than a bound copy here, because the binding restricts the layouts).
I use a ebook reader/printed copies rather than the screen to give my eyes a rest, and a change. The point is that a single format is not the best for every use, so I think the death of the printed book is overhyped and it will just become another media format (and probably a niche one). But books do have some major advantages over the other formats. They don't require any support technology to read, they are stable for a long time , are not as fragile as an ebook screen, and they are cheaper than an ebook reader. All of which may be important to your needs.
Novels, I prefer in ePub/Mobi formats since the reader I have is has a form factor which allows it to fit into a pocket better than the massmarket paperback format. And this is depsite having a screen approximately equal to the pages size, the ebooks thinner form factor work better given the way most pockets are constructed.
Master of Peng Shui.Ancient oriental art of Penguin Arranging)
ZIP codes aren't even enough. They're set up by the post office for its own convenience in routing mail; not by any municipality with taxation authority. I once lived in a ZIP code that encompassed one town, cut a swath out of another, and included bits of unincorporated land in two counties. Any one of those entities, as well as the state, could have set their own sales taxes, at different rates, on different items. Where I live now, there is a multi-county transportation agency that is authorized to (and does) charge a sales tax to help pay for commuter rail.
You can't even use the city field in your address; because, once again, the convenience of the post office comes into play. When I lived in the ZIP code I mentioned above, I lived in an unincorporated part of one county. But my mailing address listed the town in which the post office branch which delivered to my home was located, even though my home was outside the city limits.
Basically, you need to be able to pinpoint every single address to which a shipper could possibly deliver a package; and know what tax is charged on what items on that specific address. That really would be a holy hell of a huge and complex database. And said database could not remain static. Cities and counties like to change the tax rates and declare sales tax holidays (sometimes only on specific classes of goods) based on the shifting winds of politics.
Maybe... MAYBE... Amazon could handle the task. But you could kiss all of the smaller web-retail outlets goodbye. And I have doubts that even Amazon could build and maintain such a database.
Imagine all the people...
Thing is, music is a bad comparison, because it's found its way into media that youth of today uses constantly, i.e. movies, games and so on. The contact with music doesn't go away just because music stores do.
This isn't like that for books, and it is shown very well by declining numbers of young people visiting libraries.
With Search Inside The Book (SITB), users can indeed "examine" the book they are aout to buy. The number of pages they can read is limited, though.
Manoj Srivastava Key C7261095 fingerprint = CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
>Books with good quality content and good production values will then become a thing of the past, because quality costs a lot to produce, readers can't examine the books before they've paid for it the way they can in a bricks 'n' mortar book store, and not enough people will exercise any legal right of return they may have to make a difference to the policy.
This is completely false. Customer reviews are superior to publisher gateways for determining quality and you can already download samples of every book on Amazon's Kindle to see if you'll like it or not.
Books are copyrighted. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly. It's not surprising that a government-granted monopoly gets leveraged to produce other monopolies. Getting rid of copyright entirely probably wouldn't be good for authors, but I can think of other types of government-granted monopolies that would not ultimately hurt authors but would be nicer for competing booksellers (for instance, having a system where you can have a copyright, but you can only sell non-exclusive rights, so any third party could always come to the authors and license the work for another service).
And anti-circumvention laws are also government interference.
To say that Amazon can become a monopoly without government backing misses the biggest pieces of government backing.
And yes, this also means government interference is propping up Microsoft. More so, in fact.
You and I have very different views of the world, for the simple reason that you're American, and I'm from Argentina. Our views on politics is simply too different, the difference being that I'm familiar with the US political system, and you probably just know that Argentina is in South America and its capital is Buenos Aires. As a curiosity you can read the preamble of the Argentine constitution and find it interestingly familiar.
Most important: we have a different view of what a GOVERNMENT is supposed to do. In my country, the government (more precisely: El Estado, The State) provides free education (from kinder to university) and health (but you still can get private education and private health). In our view, the state is in charge of fullfilling the needs that have been neglected by private individuals (or corporations), either by regulating or providing government-sponsored alternatives. This was the same in the US until the end of WWII when the military-industrial complex was born and corporations pushed for a downsizing of the state, effectively reducing it to sockpuppets. The people vote for which corporation will be in charge for the next 4 years.
In my country it's completely different. It's just the Peronists, and "any other party". Either the peronists are in charge, thugging everyone around, or the other party is in charge, and gets thugged around by the peronists, and eventually resigns.
Regarding to your bookstore idea: this applies to every other business, providing either goods or services. Business need to make a profit in order to survive, but that's because the system demands you it. You need to pay your employees first, your taxes second, and anything left is for you. The government doesn't care if you're providing a service to mankind. If you don't pay taxes, you go to jail. If you don't pay your employees, they sue you and you lose your stuff. When a library makes enough profit, it can take the risk of selling "alternative" books. If you make barely enough profit, you either close or focus specifically in "best sellers". I'd rather stick to selling best sellers and get kids used to "reading" (once they get hook up on reading they're more likely to read french revolutionaries than they would if they never read a book before) than closing my shop for good.
I'm a techie, I own a Nook, I also still have an ever expanding room full of dead tree books. I don't see digital copies ever replacing my actual library. I admit, part of this is nostalgia, but there are also real, decent, reasons behind this. I'm not going to discount nostalgia, either, though, since casual reading is about enjoyment and not just technical matters of efficiency and cutting-edge-itude. I like sitting in my sunny room, on my comfortable leather chair, smoking my pipe with a decent glass of bourbon, reading actual books. There is something comforting in it. There also is something comforting in being able to walk into a room, and actual SEE books, to be able to walk past them, touch them, pull them off a shelf and physically examine them, and furthermore, quickly re-experience the pleasant memories of reading them. There also is something to having old books that you've carried around with you for decades, with its unique record of wear, it familiar heft and appearance. A good, loved, book is much like an old friend. I don't get that same feeling examining a flat list of titles and authors on my neat digital gadget.
Another reason I like physical books... I trust them. Being a technical, geeky, type, one thing I've learned is the transitory nature of digital things. Especially digital things tied into the whims and fortunes of a single device or entity. No one, barring a Fahrenheit 451 world, can take away, or spontaneously edit my physical books. The death of a single company, or server, or a simple policy change within a corporate behemoth, can't take a book away from me. In ten years I know my books will be sitting here still, but I'm not as sure about my insubstantial collection of small digital files (and oft included DRM).
I went to school for something hugely reading based, and academic (philosophy) field, so I have a large collection of strange, and utterly unpopular books sitting in my office. Being that these are niche titles (sadly), many of them will never turn into ebooks. There are still many, many, movies that have never made it to DVD, much less the newest, and greatest, trends. Will all format changes you run into the problem of popularity guiding conversion. The more obscure the title, and the small niche it may occupy, the less of a chance that some publisher will decide its worth it to convert to the newest trend. Further, my obscure titles don't lend themselves to linear reading, which is something that various ereaders completely fail at. Its hard to have 10-20 pages which you need to continually re-reference, plus constant flipping to indexes, figures, diagrams, and, heaven forbid, arbitrary points in completely different texts. Outside of casual fiction, I rarely read a book in the way that my ereader wants me too.
There also is the question of the second-hand market, and the joys of wandering through bookstores, flipping through random books at whim. I often discover whole new genres and authors this way. The ability to sit in a chair and read a chapter of two of a completely random book is one of the rare joys in life. Going to a book store is an experience, shopping on line is a focused, targeted, and purposeful activity. Its efficient, merely. Me and my girlfriend often set aside a whole day to go browse a large used bookstore, or go to one of the now defunct multi-story Borders in a ritzy shopping center. Often we even drag our friends and parents along. Its a fun summer outing. Hitting up Amazon's website for a quick, efficient, purposeful, transaction doesn't compete. These new or used books often cost less than than the ebook versions. Its amazing, I save money for buying something with actual materials and an actual supply chain.
That said, I love my Nook. I usually buy books for my Nook, and if I like them, I'll grab them for real. I end up wasting less space, in theory, with my large "too read" pile, and end up with less physical books taking up space. I generally only collect books by authors I truly enjoy now.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I sure hope you don't use Kindle for environmental reasons. If you do, you should do more research on what it takes to make a single unit.
If you like sci-fi then I could recommend reading some books by author Karl Schroeder. He wrote the four book virga series that I really enjoyed. It was neat to find some truly original sci fi that wasn't all this mystical junk.
"For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice" -- God
You and I have very different views of the world, for the simple reason that you're American, and I'm from Argentina. Our views on politics is simply too different, the difference being that I'm familiar with the US political system, and you probably just know that Argentina is in South America and its capital is Buenos Aires. As a curiosity you can read the preamble of the Argentine constitution and find it interestingly familiar.
Well, from memory I believe the PM/President of Argentina is Eva Kirshner or something like that. I'm not sure if you have an American style Congress/Senate/Presidential Head of State structure, or whether it is closer to the British Parliamentary system. Judging from the Spanish origin of your country, and because you have fallen under the American sphere of influence during your country's formative years, I would suspect you have a president as Head of State, because the alternative would be that you have a royal figurehead as head. That would imply that you similarly have a Congress and a Senate.
It strikes me that your country has a weakness for ideology. You went the more socialist route, and your economy crashed. Specifically, some time in the 1980's as I remember, your debt had built up. Unfortunately for you, your debt was denominated in US dollars. A crisis of confidence caused your currency to collapse, while your debt, denominated in US dollars remained unchanged or increased. This caused your effective debt to increase massively, a hundred times or more if memory serves. This was of course unserviceable. Most of the cherished government services your country had built up ceased to exist. Your formerly healthy middle class largely disappeared, and your country entered an economic stasis similar to that of Cuba after the 1950's, with most of the cars on your streets dating to the 1980's for more than a decade.
Politically your country has experienced massive ideological swings, with Peronists one pole and more right wing leaders on the other (you will forgive me if I have trouble categorizing Peron as "left" or "right", as I believe both left and right wing extremist ideologies are remarkably similar, especially in their inability to describe a successful path for managing a civilization. In any case, your country has had violent swings from left to right, and has had trouble I think finding a stable equilibrium in "the center".
If I could describe the weaknesses in Argentina that might have lead to its difficulties, I would say that (a) your country has a weakness for ideologies and (b) that your country doesn't make or manufacture much of anything that the rest of the world demands, or at least demands enough to support generous public expenditures. Germany and Norway on the other hand do make or manufacture things, and they are able to afford more generous public expenditures, while still maintaining a healthy economy.
Oh, and you had a war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.
The above is from memory. I could probably be more elegant and accurate if I did some research. I can understand your skepticism about government action and socialism. However, I do believe it is possible to find a comfortable center where the best ideas are taken from both left and right. Above all, I believe it is important to be rationally educated, and to understand the philosophical justifications for what we think. Otherwise, I worry that America for one will fall under the sway of dangerously irrational leaders who will wreak havoc on the lives of the citizens they lead.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. You confused her for Eva Duarte de Peron, who was Peron's wife (she was only the first lady). Honest mistake.
American-style President, Congress and Senate.
Completely wrong. My country went, from 1976-onwards, with the "neo-liberal" route, as every other country in South America, because of US pressure. Around that time, most south american countries were controlled by military dictatorships, in order to crush every kind of communist revolution, by US orders.
The debt was denominated in US dollars, because money was provided by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), who gave out "loans" to every country in the region. The US government used (and still does) the IMF as leverage to make countries do whatever it wants to do. Argentina was the poster child of IMF "help" until late 00's when the IMF pressured for even more and more "debt reduction", which of course couldn't be done, as every service as you mentioned, ceased to exist. Most of them were privatized (oddly enough, the state owned ones like the power and water companies for my province work great, while the privatized power company in Buenos Aires has many problems even when receving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidies. And the water company had to be "statized" (de-privatized) again because it was emptied by private owners. The same thing that happened with Aerolineas Argentinas, who owned tens of planes, simulators, etc and by the end of the decade was operating at a loss and leasing airplanes. The railways service operated at USD 1M a day in loses for 30.000km of railways when it was state owned, and when it was privatized it costed the state USD 1M a day in subsidies for 1500km of railways. If anything, the "socialist" route was working rather well.
The IMF refused to give out loans to Argentina, we went from poster child to failed experiment. We finally fixed the problem ourselves and experienced a period of amazing growth, and paid off a good deal of IMF's debt, and re-structured the rest. We politely refuse IMF's help now, and we get a lot of heat from that, meaning the US government is trying to get us under their control again.
The fact that cars were old is that the access to credit is, and has always been, impossible, in this country. To get a loan first you need to prove that you don't need it (as an anecdote, I can tell you I went to the local HSBC branch to ask for a credit card. I didn't "qualify" for one so the only way for me
Consider this article one bit of information for authors and buyers to consider when making a purchase.
The article may very well be identifying the first of many examples to come. It could very well be a bad conclusion, but at this point Amazon does have the power to take over e-publishing. Whether they do, or can in the near future, depends a lot on what people do and what publishers do and what authors do.
Do you ever watch Pawn Stars? That's pretty much what I get from that kind of customers.
They mostly want to get rid of old comic books and get fresh (old) comic books, but they want me to buy they stuff for the same price I'm going to sell them. Sometimes they even want to adjust for devaluation and inflation! The other day this woman comes in with two Sailor Moon manga from the 90s, books #2 and #7, and she wanted USD 10 for each, which was MORE than what she paid for over 15 years ago. And I guess I could order those from Spain, sell them new for about $15 and make a 30% profit.
Also, it's a small city and they pretty much know each other from conventions and such. They have pretty much traded every comic book they had, so when they come into my store trying to sell me their stuff, it's the lowest bottom end, the kind of crap none of them wants (damaged, missing numbers, bad comic books, etc).
If I were to provide what these guys want, I'd need to travel to Buenos Aires ($200 round trip and about $200 extra for spending. I'd really need to go and not just mail order because I'd need to visit underground shops which don't really give a fuck), $300 or so in "stuff" to sell, if I'm lucky, for $600 over the course of 1 year. So I'd be looking to invest $700 to earn $600 (not adjusted for 25% annual inflation).
Does it sound like a business plan to you?
I sure hope you don't use Kindle for environmental reasons. If you do, you should do more research on what it takes to make a single unit.
Lets compare
Kindle with 500 books:
plastic, metal, electronics.
Weight is somewhere around a pound.
Volume less than a cubic foot.
500 Printed Books ...
Toxic chemicals in ink, whitening the paper, glue, binding material, colored ink for covers,
Weight around 500+ pounds
Volume 50 cubic feet
I hate to be the one to tell you that publishing books actually requires environmental resources. Paper manufacturing has historically been a very nasty process, with lots of dead fish, and actual burning rivers. A lot of the inks used are hazardous. Then you have the glue, thread, cloth, leather, foil, etc. used in the final product. After that, you also have the packaging (more materials), and shipping of the final products.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Then there's the fuel needed to get the books from wherever to my place, then there's the fuel needed to move my books when I move, not to mention the greater volume dwelling that would need to exist to house said books..... Having books that you keep as someone who actually moves occasionally consumes many resources, not the least of which is the organism moving said books (my back!!!).
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Thank you for your post. It was enlightening.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Maybe you meant to write that to someone else. I think you're dead right - they are a waste of your time.
Borders was killed by horrible management.
They wanted all the stores to be clones, right down to stock, never mind if certain types of books simply wouldn't sell in a given location. This meant that many locations ended up having to give shelf space over to things that simply would stay on the shelves until either sold ultra-cheap or returned, and doing so in favor of stocking more copies of things that would sell.
They chased off the employees who knew the stock. This is the main reason to go to a brick-and-mortar bookstore, in many cases--Amazon's recommendations are sometimes very strange, when you get down to it, and a live human is still better than it when you're trying to find a good reference book most times. Worse, this was in favor of ones who might as well been asking you if you wanted fries with that, and would forget to ring up items...but not forget to deactivate the security tags & bag them. (This doesn't inspire customers to go out of their way to mention surprise free items, either.)
They were just as friendly to authors, too, who would come into signings to find, if they were lucky, only a few copies of any of their books on the shelf--and get told to please not sign any books not being bought that day because they then can't be returned if not sold. The latter might be excusable if the policy is to basically have the signed-by-the-author copies be something you have to turn up on the day the author visits to get, but if you're doing it because you're worried the book won't sell in the first place when autographed copies are easier to sell...and there's really no excuse for not thinking ahead when you've arranged a signing and making sure there's copies of the book(s) to sign.
Bottom line? I stopped going to Borders well before I started using Amazon regularly.
What if Amazon is able to undercut the Big Publishers by offering their books to the small stores as a cheaper price, which would then enable to the small store to charge their usual price and enhance their profit?
Would a small business truly be stupid enough to turn away prospective business, especially in this down economy?
If Amazon Books to make them a higher margin of profit, and they choose politics over business, then they deserve to go out of business.
Bearded Dragon
I'm not suggesting that paper isn't a nasty, wasteful process that is dangerous to the environment, nor am I in any way ignorant of the impact of the publishing industry and the paper and pulp industry.
However I am suggesting that if you did some research into the environmental impact of electronics manufacturing and disposal you'd discover that it is an equally nasty and wasteful process. And it is this that I believe you are ignorant of.
Examples being the production of integrated circuits, semiconductors, printed circuit boards, and printed wiring assemblies. All release hazardous gases, effluents, use up amazing amounts of water and energy for an item several hundred times their size and use a large number of hazardous chemicals.
This does not even consider the environmental cost of getting the raw materials used in electronics out of the ground and processed even before they go into the manufacturing process.
I'm not even asking you to care, just to be aware.
I'm not suggesting that paper isn't a nasty, wasteful process that is dangerous to the environment, nor am I in any way ignorant of the impact of the publishing industry and the paper and pulp industry.
However I am suggesting that if you did some research into the environmental impact of electronics manufacturing and disposal you'd discover that it is an equally nasty and wasteful process. And it is this that I believe you are ignorant of.
Examples being the production of integrated circuits, semiconductors, printed circuit boards, and printed wiring assemblies. All release hazardous gases, effluents, use up amazing amounts of water and energy for an item several hundred times their size and use a large number of hazardous chemicals.
This does not even consider the environmental cost of getting the raw materials used in electronics out of the ground and processed even before they go into the manufacturing process.
I'm not even asking you to care, just to be aware.