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."
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.
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.
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
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.
online book purchases DO NOT require broadband. That's the whole point of the kindle 3g.
3G is "broadband", not in the FCC sense of 4 Mbps but at least in the sense of being a lot faster than dial-up.
how many bookstores are in those rural areas? I'd bet you'd find better 3g coverage than you would bookstore coverage.
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?
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?
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 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).
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.
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!"
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
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.
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)
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?
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.
So the majority of bookstores pass into history and the remainder becoming, book printing and binding centres. Laser printers make localised book production cheap enough and of course, how much you are willing to pay for the binding is your choice http://www.wharley.com.au/Index.htm.
So you buy your electronic version and take it to the book production facility of choice and have them produce it http://www.aboutbookbinding.com/index.html, you can even make it yourself.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.