Let's reinvent the bookstore...

[fjtorres]

From Intelligent life:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/conte...sign?page=full

When online shopping offers choice, convenience and competitive prices, why would anyone go to an actual shop? To try on clothes, perhaps. To sit on sofas or lie on beds. But if you’re after music, film or books, you’re more likely to go straight to the internet. In the digital age, bricks-and-mortar shops have to work much harder to attract our attention, let alone custom. Brands rip out and refit their stores every few years: interior design is, clearly, already crucial to their fortunes. But could design go further, and lure us away from our tablets and back onto the high street?

Curious to explore this territory, we asked four leading architecture and design practices to create a shop. Specifically, in the age of Amazon and e-books, a bookshop to save bookshops.

Their analysis was stark: “Design on its own will not save the bookshop.” But Roberts was undaunted. “If you leave the model as it is and redecorate, nothing’s going to change. The solution needs to be much more fundamental: informed, strategic and daring.” The bookshop, as Gensler saw it, had to anticipate every sort of literary need, from grabbing a paperback or download, to relaxed browsing, personally tailored reading-lists, self-publishing, book clubs, author events and even an enhanced experience of reading a book in the bookish equivalent of a flotation tank.

A week later, Roberts produces a bird’s-eye view of Gensler’s bookshop, another disarmingly simple drawing containing a lot of original ideas. The first surprise is that you don’t have to enter the store to shop from it: the glass façade is a touchscreen that can be tapped on to download e-books from QR codes. The choice could be infinite—“the whole catalogue of the British Library,” said Roberts, taking on Amazon with a sheet of smart glass.

Burdifilek's shop, ILB, with its glass facade, "lives right on the street". The plinths carry "a very procured edit" of related things to buy—in this case kitchen equipment, tying in with a cookbook promotion

A elegant composition in steel, glass and wood, Burdifilek's bookshop combines tradition—"the smell of books and beautiful cabinetry"—and technology. A digital back wall and airy stairwell unify the two floors, so "both have equal value"

Coffey's vision includes a bar and printing press, performing writers, floating robots (the silver discs hovering on the left), holograms and good old-fashioned paper, ink, leather and gold leaf

Of particular interest was the upfront mandate of 2000 sq ft size.

Very wise.
All the mounting evidence is that the day of the big house bookstore chain is done. There might be room for a handful of them scattered around the biggest cities. But hundreds? Nope.
The future of B&M bookselling is small...

[Lemurion]

Interesting article, but it's missing one key element - an Espresso Book Machine. Install one of those and in principle you can then have any book printed on-site.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Interesting article, but it's missing one key element - an Espresso Book Machine. Install one of those and in principle you can then have any book printed on-site.

The Coffey model riffs on the POD concept.

[crich70]

And you still need a place for when author's give readings from their books.

[theducks]

Take a page from days of olde:
Radio (later TV) stores had a repair desk (the shop was in the rear).

Folk need their ebook devices repaired (even reset. for the Tech challenged) these days.

Sell SERVICE as well as books

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Interesting article, but it's missing one key element - an Espresso Book Machine. Install one of those and in principle you can then have any book printed on-site.

Makes me think of the bookstore mentioned in Robert Sawyer's Flash Forward...

Instead, they met at the Chapters superstore in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. This one still devoted about half its space to actual pre-printed books that were for sale: guaranteed bestsellers by Stephen King, John Grisham, and Coyote Rolf. But the rest of the facility was taken up by individual display copies of titles that could be printed on demand. It took only fifteen minutes to produce a single copy of any book, either in mass-market paperback or as an octavo hardcover. Large-print editions could be had, as well, and computer-translated editions in any one of twenty-four languages could be produced in only an additional few minutes. And, of course, no title was ever out of stock.

[crossi]

I don't know. I live in Seattle where it is frequently rainy and cold and I travel by bus. It takes a lot to get me out of my house for a cold trip by bus for anything. Even in good weather it's still probably at least a 45 minute trip each way. Maybe for christmas shopping I might make the effort but I don't think any of those ideas would lure me to a bookstore.

[danskmacabre]

When I lived in the UK I used to go into town sometimes. When I did I usually dropped in on Borders (now closed) and goto the Cafe in there.
They allowed you to get books off the shelf and read them in the cafe, which was nice.

Unfortunately I never bought books there as I was using an ereader by then.
If they had some sort of automatic facility where I could browse a physical book and then immediately buy it in an electronic format at the counter or something, I would have actually spent money on books there.
It would have been nice if there was a sticker or something on the physical book I could get a number off to do the actual purchase.
Oh well, a missed opportunity and they're history now anyway.

They even sold Kobo Ereaders there as well, which seemed strange as my ereder is what stopped me buying books from Borders.
Still, they have a nice cafe and I spent a fair amount of money in the Cafe there at least.

[RHWright]

Interesting link. I skimmed it, but will dig into it fully later on.

My first impressions are that a few things pop out: emphasis on experience/service, knowledgeable staff, and making a physical store a place you want to go (and spend $$). But in a way that makes sense for what readers want.

I think B&N in the US has drifted afield from this understanding. That, along with strong price competition from online retailers, is weakening their position. They seem too focused on marketing/selling to everyone, instead of building an identity and core around raving fans of reading culture. Then expanding it to be a lifestyle brand that many people want.

I call this the "Apple" model. Love 'em or loathe 'em, they have built a successful business model by starting with a niche of devotees, popularizing it to the point that being a "Mac" or "PC" person was a thing, and then becoming a real presence and identity in the marketplace.

I don't know if this type of transformation is possible for B&N or any bookstore, but it would be interesting to see some attempts at rethinking the "typical" bookstore.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Makes me think of the bookstore mentioned in Robert Sawyer's Flash Forward...

I was thinking more of the one from Panshin's Star Well, myself.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by RHWright

My first impressions are that a few things pop out: emphasis on experience/service, knowledgeable staff, and making a physical store a place you want to go (and spend $$). But in a way that makes sense for what readers want.

I think B&N in the US has drifted afield from this understanding. That, along with strong price competition from online retailers, is weakening their position. They seem too focused on marketing/selling to everyone, instead of building an identity and core around raving fans of reading culture. Then expanding it to be a lifestyle brand that many people want.

I think it will be hard for B&N to wean itself from the front table payola. They're too addicted to coop "marketing" money to balance their books to adopt a reader-centric approach instead of a publisher centric approach. It is all about pushing out the books they have, by the boatload, instead of finding out what each reader wants. And, of course, those happen to be the same books you can find everywhere from Walmart and costco to Target.

[BigReader]

Since Amazon can profit by selling paperback and kindle books both, why don't bricks and mortar bookstores sell ebooks?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Interesting article, but it's missing one key element - an Espresso Book Machine. Install one of those and in principle you can then have any book printed on-site.

Do you have any idea what such a machine costs? Hardly feasible for a small bookstore.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BigReader

Since Amazon can profit by selling paperback and kindle books both, why don't bricks and mortar bookstores sell ebooks?

Because they can't compete on prices. Amazon are cheaper precisely because they don't have B&M stores. You'd simply get what already happens in B&M stores: people go there to browse, and then buy the books more cheaply at Amazon.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you have any idea what such a machine costs?

About $85,000.00

Hardly feasible for a small bookstore.

Especially when publishers aren't making a lot of titles available on it. If the publishers had their entire catalog available (or as much as they do as eBooks now) it might be more feasible to base a store around stocking some bestsellers and doing POD for most of the rest.


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