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Originally Posted by fjtorres
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....
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When Amazon started in the proverbial garage, B&N was the 800-pound gorilla. The publishers didn't give Amazon any favorable treatment, certainly not at the start.
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Originally Posted by fjtorres
Borders is gone?
Well, they could have worked with them on inventory instead of pushing them into outright liquidation.
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It's ridiculous to blame the publishers for Border's rampant failures.
Borders expanded too fast and with an astounding lack of savvy. They ran into financial trouble right as the financial crisis hit, which meant they had to borrow large sums of money at the worst possible time and thus at very bad rates. Their management turned into a revolving door with big payouts for exiting CEO's. They flubbed online sales, as evidenced by Amazon basically running and fulfilling their online division for years. They flubbed the transition to ebooks in the exact same way; they didn't have the resources to develop their own device, so they had to cut a deal with Kobo (another short-term win that, if they had survived, would have harmed them in the long run).
Last but not least, brick and mortar sales were falling, a change accelerated by the recession. That left them with a lot of overhead and dwindling revenues.
There is no way the publishers could have saved that mess just by giving them better terms on inventory.
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Originally Posted by fjtorres
Nobody picked up the Borders trade?
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Yes. Amazon and Apple.
B&N stores got a pretty good bump, but as far as I know they got nowhere near 100% of Borders' business. And even with that bump, B&N is
still predicting a loss for 2012.
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Originally Posted by fjtorres
B&N in trouble because dept stores and groceries carry the same bestsellers, but cheaper? And where do they *get* those books? Bootleggers?
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Meaning what, the publishers are not supposed to distribute their books through Target and Walmart? How is that supposed to work?
Even if they did try to redline those stores, Walmart would just buy them through a book distributor like Ingram or Baker & Taylor.
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Originally Posted by fjtorres
If the Glass Tower publishers *really* wanted to help B&N, they could do it in an instant.
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And how would they do that, without getting railed by anti-trust suits or engaging in uncompetitive practices?
The publishers can't force people to buy books only in one store, or to buy in person rather than online.
The publishers are no more to blame for this than B&N, Borders, Amazon -- and
the buying public. After all, we are the ones who are buying ebooks and buying online, or browsing in the indie stores and buying online....