NY Times - The Bookstore's Last Stand

[ProfCrash]

King has come out as a strong supporter of a-readers. Heck, he ended up with a pink Kindle when the K2 was announced.

I don't want Barnes and Nobles to go out of business. Competition is good. But I am not going to cry for Barnes and Nobles or the Publishers. They both contributed to the current state of books. Barnes and Nobles drove out Independent Booksellers and the Publishers did little to nothing about it. They were fine with Barnes and Nobles and Borders deeply discounting new releases, and in doing so undercutting the Indies, as long as they, the Publishers, got paid for the full value of the book.

Now Publishers are worried about Amazon doing the same thing? BS. They are worried because they don't understand e-books or where the market might go. Instead of exploring their options, they have buried their heads in the sand, occasionally appearing to complain about big, bad Amazon. I guess it was ok when it was Barnes and Nobles and Borders, two stores, undercutting the Indies but god forbid one store undercuts the big chains.

Silly.

[AndrewH]

Adapt or die.

Running this sprint was, of all companies, Barnes & Noble, the giant that helped put so many independent booksellers out of business and that now finds itself locked in the fight of its life.

Queue the tiny violins. Turnabout is fair play.

What its engineers dreamed up was the Nook, a relative e-reader latecomer that has nonetheless become the great e-hope of Barnes & Noble and, in fact, of many in the book business.

e-hope? e-hope? Hope is an intangible, thus cannot exist in e-form.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Less interesting but more amusing was the basic premise that "as B&N goes, so goes US Publishing" and that a B&N failure would wreck backlist sales and leave Publishers pushing grocery carts in the streets.
Riiigghhttt! No golden parachutes for that crowd?

Spin me a new one, NYT...

If B&N does fold, it certainly will be detrimental to the publishing industry. Have we seen Borders' $3 billion in sales appear anywhere yet?

If B&N closes, the only B&M retailing options I'd have would be grocery stores, Kmart and Target. They only have the NYT Bestsellers and some romances. And I don't live in a rural area.

While it may not be grocery cart territory it's not many levels from such.

[charmian]

If the publishers want to make sure the e-bookselling business doesn't become a monopoly, it makes great sense to support Barnes & Noble.

If they want to arrest the shift from p-books to e-books, I'm not sure that makes as much sense. If you go to a B&N, they're promoting the Nook hard. The windows are filled with pictures of the Nook; it's what you see when you walk in the door, they've added more tables where you can play with the Nook, shelves of attractive Nook covers, etc. B&N is trying to lead the charge towards e-books too.

The goals of publishers and B&N are not totally in sync: if B&N is successful as a starbucks + magazine rack + nook kiosk + the types of books that aren't being turned into ebooks + a few bestsellers, that would mean the publishers lose, even if B&N is OK. IIRC B&N is shedding stores anyhow.

[ProfCrash]

And maybe the Publishers missed the news reports that Barnes and Noble was trying to separate the Nook Business from the Brick and Mortar business. The Nook stands a better chance of surviving then the brick and mortar stores.

[Kumabjorn]

For someone who doesn't live in the US; Isn't the Nook more accesible? You can hold it, fool around with it, test read something on it, that sort of thing. From what I understand the Kindle is available at Target, is it as visible there as a Nook in a B&N? Can you actually test it, or is it in a locked glass cabinet?
To my thinking, making the Nook easy to access would give it a potential advantage on the Kindle.

[charmian]

As a US resident: well, it depends how accessible a B&N is. To me Kindle and Nook are about equally accessible, because the closest place to my house that carries one of them is Best Buy (carries both).

In Target, the Kindle is testable, and not in a glass case, although sometimes it is beat up, which would probably never happen to a Nook in B&N. The question may be, what is closer to your house, B&N, or Target or Best Buy? I think Walmart may carry ereaders too, although I'm not sure which ones, or if they're outside or in a glass case.

[rdfry]

Originally Posted by charmian

As a US resident: well, it depends how accessible a B&N is. To me Kindle and Nook are about equally accessible, because the closest place to my house that carries one of them is Best Buy (carries both).

In Target, the Kindle is testable, and not in a glass case, although sometimes it is beat up, which would probably never happen to a Nook in B&N. The question may be, what is closer to your house, B&N, or Target or Best Buy? I think Walmart may carry ereaders too, although I'm not sure which ones, or if they're outside or in a glass case.

Walmart does carry the Nooks and Kindles.

[fjtorres]

Kindles are *everywhere*.
Radio Shack, Walmart, Best Buy, Office Max, Office Depot, Target, etc.
The only place you find Nooks and not Kindles is B&N.
The only place you find Kindles and not Nooks is Amazon.

Not quite a wash but hardly an issue.

[carpetmojo]

[QUOTE=speakingtohe;e. .........................Rightly or wrongly, the majority are making their decisions based on the company's bottom line and what it will do for the company, not for the additional dollars it will add to their pension, buyout package or similiar.
So the company makes an additional 10 million, the president, vice-president and other senior partners would not see much of this personally except perhaps for rising prices on stock that they owned which has nothing to do with retirement.Helen[/QUOTE]

You are obviously not living on the same planet I am !

Please see recent announcement's regarding banker's / CEO's bonus / pension / efficiency payouts.
And the strange mention of rising prices of stock they own "...which ahs nothing to do with retirement" is definitely not in my knowledge of business behaviour...
You see, they have to be payed vast sums of money, otherwise they'll throw thier toys out the pram and go somewhere else .....

Never that lucky, though, are we.........

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

If B&N closes, the only B&M retailing options I'd have would be grocery stores, Kmart and Target. They only have the NYT Bestsellers and some romances. And I don't live in a rural area.

Those would be the only choices for most people.
(Already are, for me. There is no B&N near me and now that the local Borders are gone it's Amazon or nothing.)

My point isn't that I want B&N to go away.
(And I don't think they will. Not just yet.)

Rather, my disdain is for the people who created Amazon (and B&N before it) with *their* policies and are now hand-wringing about the mess they created for themselves. And they expect somebody else to save them?

Borders is gone?
Well, they could have worked with them on inventory instead of pushing them into outright liquidation.
Nobody picked up the Borders trade?
I remember there were *two* bidders but the publishers wouldn't help out.
And they bemoan Borders? *They* pushed them over the cliff!

B&N in trouble because dept stores and groceries carry the same bestsellers, but cheaper? And where do they *get* those books? Bootleggers?

If the Glass Tower publishers *really* wanted to help B&N, they could do it in an instant. They choose not to. Because it is cheaper to do nothing.
The world the big publishers face is the world *they* created.
They created the mess, they can live with it.

My sympathy is reserved for the B&N employees stuck in this mess.

[ProfCrash]

And the Independent stores have greatly decreased because the Publishers were fine with Barnes and Noble and Borders underselling the Independents. The publishers did nothing to help the Independents.

The reality is that the Publishers helped to create this mess. Barnes and Noble help create this mess. Now they both want to blame Amazon. It is a massive amount of BS.

I don't want Barnes and Noble to go away. Competition is good. But the Publishers and Barnes and Noble need to face reality and deal with the environment that they helped to create and stop crying about how unfair Amazon is.

[6charlong]

I've started buying my eBooks from my local, independent book store. You need a reader that can render ePub, but I like my Nook Simple Touch much better than the Kindle Touch. It has better balance for holding for long periods at a time and the screens are notably easier to read.

Checkout IndieBound. The site will help you find a local independent bookstore near you.

http://www.indiebound.org/

[Blue Tyson]

No it won't.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

No it won't.

No small bookstores in Coober Pedy?