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Amazon Gets Blow-Back Over Plan To Sell Kindles At Small Bookshops
Rambo Tribble writes "No sooner had Amazon revealed their plan to offer independent book shops the Kindle for re-sale, along with a kick-back on e-book purchases, than the fur began to fly. It appears the shops view the plan as Amazon-assisted suicide. Given the apparent terms of the deal, it looks like they may have a point. Amazon may well have done themselves more harm than good with this ploy. One storeowner wrote, 'Hmmm, let's see. We sell Kindles for essentially no profit, the new Kindle customer is in our store where they can browse and discover books, the new Kindle customer can then check the price on Amazon and order the e-book. We make a little on their e-book purchases, but then lose them as a customer completely after two years. Doesn't sound like such a great partnership to me.'"
Big Warehouse Book stores kill the independent book stores. Amazon killed the Big Book stores. But the silver lining is that the death of the Big Warehouse Book stores gave new life to the independents. So now Amazon tries to kill the independents, but they are not morons.
The independents were saved by Amazon, but that doesn't mean they are stupid enough to let Amazon kill them next.
I'm kind of interested in the bookstores I know of that are not going under because of Amazon. At least here in Chicago, the independent booksellers I frequent appear to be doing very well, especially now that the Borders and B&N and other chain bookstores have all but disappeared.
I don't see that they've changed their business model much with the rise of e-books, yet they are still busy, filled with customers, and in once case, even expanding.
If you treat customers right, I think there's still room for booksellers to succeed. Don't compete on price - compete on service.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The independent books that I know have a small edges going for them.
There is new market for “shopping / entertainment“. You go to the store to be entertained and you pay via a purchase. Kind of like renting office space at the coffee shop for the price of a cup of coffee. Most of these shops tend to be narrowly focused, have a deep catalog of hard to fine / out of print stuff (which is sold via Amazon), have lots of events (singings, clubs, etc.) and sell a lot of stuff other than books.
Oddly the one that I am thinking about was the Amazon Bookstore specializing in woman and lesbian literature. There was a bit of a tussle between them and Amazon.com over the name and the more or less won that fight.
The big coffee-table picture books will still be around (looking at some of the beautiful photography in those books is lost on an 8.9" kindle screen). I also think technical books will remain viable in print (I've got a handful of dev-related books on my kindle, and I've invariably bought the printed versions where available). I also still insist on buy DVD/BluRays, mainly because I don't like the Netflix availability (although I do use it), but also seem to be in the mood to watch movies when my internet connection goes down.
The market is dwindling, I grant you, but there are niches where I think physical books will remain relevant. Maybe we'll see bookstores dwindle in size to become like a magazine stand or similar.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
This. The greatest example, I find, is with recommendations: try as they might, Amazon's recommendations are still very often inaccurate, backwards-looking (I already bought this thing, I don't want a hundred suggestions of other things exactly like it!) and very sensitive to trends. Your local bookstore, however, might have someone who knows just what you usually like and comes up with a few new books every so often when you pass by. They know you personally, they know your preferences and they actually read the stuff they sell. It's a more personal and customized experience which a blank, faceless website just cannot match.
Yes, it does mean bookstores need to do more work to encourage and nurture a certain feel of community, actually talking with customers and engaging with them, but... That's a good thing. We need more of that and fewer standardized, giant corporation-driven stores.