Let's reinvent the bookstore...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

POD definitely has a part to play with old or obscure books. I'm doing a part-time degree in Egyptology, and a number of the books I've bought for the course have been POD facsimile editions of very old books which it simply wouldn't be otherwise economic to keep in print. It's ideal for such things, but not for popular bestsellers.

Oh, no way.
Those are a dime a dozen all over. POD is no substitute for cheap chinese presses. Even indie authors can afford those for their frontlist.
The way it is used is to replace the racks and racks of spine-out dusty backlist titles that might sell three copies in a year and don't generate and net profit.

[6charlong]

The bottom line in this discussion seems to be that the people who want to keep independent bookstores in their communities must be willing to pay to preserve them, either in higher prices for ebooks (at least a little more than the Amazon discount), or in the cost of time spent leaving home to reach a physical store. The Independents need something to attract customers.

The lowest common denominator for an Independent Bookstore is the coffee shop that sells ebooks plus a small stock of best-sellers. Most communities larger than about 5,000 could support one, but to make it work they would need support from their community and the publishers, too. Putting a bookshelf with first chapters of books, curated for that community, in the coffee shop and making Wi-Fi available (maybe with a small charge for ebook downloads from that Wi-Fi PID), might help cement the notion of a quiet read with a good book and a coffee.

Americans can buy ebooks from a local independent bookstore now but we still wander off to Amazon over price, and, let's face it, because Amazon is a nice service. But supporting something like this does not seem to be something Amazon wants to invest in.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Whereas for me, my nearest decent bookshops are a big city (Manchester) about 40 minutes' drive away, with expensive car-parking charges .

Why not have them send the book by Post ? Or is the British postal service lots worse than the US postal service?

Things sent 1st class (really standard mail: just labeled Priority Mail)in the SF Bay area usually arrive the next day (without paying a premium charge)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

The bottom line in this discussion seems to be that the people who want to keep independent bookstores in their communities must be willing to pay to preserve them, either in higher prices for ebooks (at least a little more than the Amazon discount), or in the cost of time spent leaving home to reach a physical store. The Independents need something to attract customers.

The lowest common denominator for an Independent Bookstore is the coffee shop that sells ebooks plus a small stock of best-sellers. Most communities larger than about 5,000 could support one, but to make it work they would need support from their community and the publishers, too. Putting a bookshelf with first chapters of books, curated for that community, in the coffee shop and making Wi-Fi available (maybe with a small charge for ebook downloads from that Wi-Fi PID), might help cement the notion of a quiet read with a good book and a coffee.

Americans can buy ebooks from a local independent bookstore now but we still wander off to Amazon over price, and, let's face it, because Amazon is a nice service. But supporting something like this does not seem to be something Amazon wants to invest in.

How big are these $85K machines?
At the current SF Bay area retail space rent of $6 to 18 a square foot, a row of these might be way cheaper than all those shelves

[tubemonkey]

Bookstores need to offer goodies to attract customers. Since most of their customers have smartphones, how about free WiFi and free wireless charging mats? Starbucks does it, so...

Starbucks To Introduce Free Wireless Charging At Stores

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by theducks

How big are these $85K machines?
At the current SF Bay area retail space rent of $6 to 18 a square foot, a row of these might be way cheaper than all those shelves

Seven feet by three feet.

http://www.xerox.com/digital-printin...spec-enus.html

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by theducks

Why not have them send the book by Post ? Or is the British postal service lots worse than the US postal service?

Things sent 1st class (really standard mail: just labeled Priority Mail)in the SF Bay area usually arrive the next day (without paying a premium charge)

I do have them sent by post. I buy from Amazon.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But you wouldn't only have to wait 10 minutes. If you among the first people in the bookshop in the morning, and there were 5 people at the checkout in front of you buying only 1 book each, you'd be waiting an hour. If there were 20 books waiting to be printed ahead of yours, you'd be waiting three and a half hours. It just wouldn't work. Even if the bookshop printed 24h a day, and the printer worked perfectly, you could only print 144 books a day. That's not very many for even a moderately successful bookshop.

Is the assumption that the only way to buy a book in the bookstore is to have it POD? I would think that most people would buy off the shelf and only the occasional customer would want a book that had to be POD.

OTOH, if I know I want 10 books that need to be POD (or might need to be POD), I would call the bookstore (or go to its website) and "preorder" the books for pickup later in the day or the next day.

I view it as I view getting my prescription drugs at my local pharmacy: I call in my renewals and am told by the pharmacy when they will be ready for pickup. I can then pick them up any time after that at my convenience.

Of course there is another way to look at it: while waiting for the POD to finish, you could use the time to explore the shelves for other books to buy.

What I find difficult with your scenario, Harry, is that the implication is that there are no preprinted books available for sale -- every book must be POD.

If I can wait for 2-3 days for delivery from Amazon, I cannot see the difficulty in waiting even an hour at my local bookshop. I'd like to think that my hour's wait kept someone local in a job and off the public rolls.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Definitely. But one can (and I do, quite often) order POD books from Amazon. The benefits of the physical bookshop when it comes to ordering things for later delivery are difficult to see.

Other than the fact that you can order your books from Amazon stark naked, what is the benefit to ordering from Amazon a POD book on the assumption that a local bookstore has POD facilities?

To order from Amazon, you go to a website, enter the book order, and wait for delivery.

To order from the local POD bookstore, you go to a website (or telephone) , enter the order, and either pick up the book yourself or wait for delivery (I admit I'm assuming that the local bookshop will deliver either like Amazon using third parties or, unlike Amazon, by using its own staff. I have yet to meet a bookshop in my area that wouldn't deliver).

Seems to me the only difference in the experience is that you aren't getting a package wrapped in the Amazon name.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by LovesMacs

What if you take this a step further: a physical bookstore plus website offering local delivery for POD books. Like something that's not in stock? Order it in the store or on the website, and get a physical book faster than what Amazon or other online retailers can match.

Great idea but it lacks the most important element -- the wrapper won't say Amazon.

I've noted that with many people it matters not whether Amazon is the best option, just that Amazon is the only option they will consider -- if Amazon doesn't sell it, they won't buy it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Other than the fact that you can order your books from Amazon stark naked, what is the benefit to ordering from Amazon a POD book on the assumption that a local bookstore has POD facilities?

You've misunderstood me. I said (or meant to say, at least ) that it was difficult to see the benefits of physically visiting a B&M store and ordering a POD book, compared to ordering one online.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Great idea but it lacks the most important element -- the wrapper won't say Amazon.

I've noted that with many people it matters not whether Amazon is the best option, just that Amazon is the only option they will consider -- if Amazon doesn't sell it, they won't buy it.

Hey, its brand loyalty.
Amazon is not unique in inspiring it. Most successful companies develop it with care because it is vital to staying in business. Sony, for one, has been living almost exclusively off brand loyalty for the last decade. Apple, for another, has long depended on it to "justify" its margins. Some people only buy FORDs and others only Hondas. It's common.What else are fanboy wars about but brand loyalty?
Without brand loyalty, B&N would probably be in chapter 11 reorganization already. So don't knock it.

As for Amazon, of course some people don't even go anywhere else. That is what Prime exists for; it's a loyalty program. They get people to sign up for the shipping and offer up freebies to keep them shopping there. And, having committed to the membership fee, people will then want to maximize their return on it by using it as much as possible. It's no different than SAM'S OR COSTCO: people don't signup with either and pay the annual fee to drop in once in a while, they do it because they intend to shop there often enough to recoup the fees.

Sorry, but folks seem obsessed with Amazon as some kind of lowball discounting monster and forget there is much more to their business, to any business, that just racking up products, pricing them, and waiting for consumers to come and buy. To hear the talk, many bookstores seem to operate on a magical "stock it and they will come" model. And when consumers flock to amazon instead, they kneejerk into thinking "it's only about the prices, those dirty lowballing so's and so's" and when they clearly see it's *not* all about the prices blame the shopper for "getting hooked". Well, it's not all just about prices. It is also about convenience, ease of use, speed of fulfillment. About constantly looking for ways to get customers hooked because that is a good retailers job; to build up goodwill and loyalty to ensure repeat business. It is about service, service, service...
So Amazon does Prime, they do product subscriptions, they build a crowd-sourced review system, they do simple ebook returns, they streamline their fulfillment system by pre-positioning product at regional distribution centers.
Amazon didn't spring full-blown out of some monstruous retailing god's head, it grew out of a small garage-type operation twenty years ago. They have spent those twenty years building customer relationships for fast, reliable, and yes cheap shopping experiences.
And after twenty years some folks...a lot of folks...trust them to deliver the goods and the experience.
They own massive brand loyalty and consumer goodwill because they worked hard to get it over two decades and many of their would-be competitors don't give customer loyalty (and how to earn it) a second thought. And if you don't even try for it, you won't get it, no matter how entitled to it you may feel.

Over the years I've seen some pretty extreme cases of brand loyalty but one of the more amusing popped up last night at the Digital Reader Blog: a comment flatly stated that if the new Rowling book isn't on Amazon on release, she would just "get the free version and pay for it when it shows up at Amazon".

Now that is loyalty to scare the bejeezus off publishers.
(Much like a certain website discussed over at Teleread that offers thousand and thousands of pirate editions in epub only...flanked by purchase links to Amazon. Apparently the website operates on the premise that Kindle users will willingly pay for books they know are available for free right there.)

"It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack..."

Master Jack
Four Jacks and a Jill, 1968

[pwalker8]

There are two types of shoppers out there, those who just want to buy a specific item and those who enjoy the shopping experience. For those who remember, at one time many major malls had one or two book stores in them. I can see something like that coming back, a book store, perhaps with coffee shop, that has an array of books to browse plus POD, but I think that would be a short term thing. Right now, online shopping isn't really designed for those who like to browse, it's more for people who just want to buy a specific thing, but eventually I think they will solve that issue.

I still haven't run across an ebook store that comes close to the experience of when I use to go to B&N every couple of weeks to see what new books had come out. I'm not talking about the Starbucks, big comfy chairs and all that, but rather being able to walk over the the SF&F section, scan through the "New Books" shelves, then a quick walk through of the other shelves to see if some other title I might be interested in had been restocked. Then do the same for the other genres and subject that I am interested in. I might spend 30 minutes to an hour in the store and come out with 4 or 5 books.

The truly sad thing is that online book stores have so much untapped potential. Amazon's "People who bought this book, also bought these books" is a nice feature as is Apple's genius suggestions, but I can think of so many customizable notifications and searches that I should be able to do. Why not have a watch list that notifies me whenever a book by a favored author becomes available? Why not have authors of books that I buy automatically added to that watch list (preferable customizable so I can be prompted to add if I so choose). Eventually, someone is going to get it and start doing these things.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Hey, its brand loyalty.
Amazon is not unique in inspiring it. Most successful companies develop it with care because it is vital to staying in business. Sony, for one, has been living almost exclusively off brand loyalty for the last decade. Apple, for another, has long depended on it to "justify" its margins. Some people only buy FORDs and others only Hondas. It's common.What else are fanboy wars about but brand loyalty?
Without brand loyalty, B&N would probably be in chapter 11 reorganization already. So don't knock it.
...

For all practical purposes, Amazon has become the online equivalent of Walmart or Costco. Yes, there are certain loyalty programs (I pay from Prime from Amazon and am happy with it), but for the most part, Amazon is for people who are looking for a combination of price, convenience and reliability. I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon for that reason. But like Walmart and Costco, Amazon does have a downside, especially when it comes to ebooks. By pushing the maintenance of the ebook catalog onto the "publishers", they enable get rich quick types to game the system. Thus the hundreds of porn and PD books that seem to get republished on a daily basis.

Walmart, Costco and Amazon are not inherently evil by any stretch. They are just companies doing business like any other. The issue comes when they are the only game in town.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

The truly sad thing is that online book stores have so much untapped potential. Amazon's "People who bought this book, also bought these books" is a nice feature as is Apple's genius suggestions, but I can think of so many customizable notifications and searches that I should be able to do. Why not have a watch list that notifies me whenever a book by a favored author becomes available? Why not have authors of books that I buy automatically added to that watch list (preferable customizable so I can be prompted to add if I so choose). Eventually, someone is going to get it and start doing these things.

Hmmm...so you're saying that one of the online bookstores should buy luzme.com. I agree...I would love to see that!

Shari