B&N What Went Wrong & When ?

[eschwartz]

Something fishy -- at first pwalker8 wanted to know why Amazon didn't have any such feature, and now he claims he knew it existed all along, but he doesn't think it works properly.

I would have expected him to say in post #86 "Amazon isn't horrible/terrible, but they could be so much more. How hard would it be to get their author tracking system to actually work properly (rather than only sporadically emit alerts)? And there should be an option to automatically add an author when I buy one of their books."

... thus indicating his awareness of the feature, and his disapproval at its effectiveness or perceived lack thereof.
Instead, we ended up discussing whether such a feature exists or not! Rather a waste.

[darryl]

I think we do need to give credit where it is due. He actually wrote that Amazon isn't horrible/terrible. Mind you, the glass is half empty (at least) attitude to Amazon is evident with:

Amazon will usually pull back the author, thought they do like to put in a bunch of other authors they are trying to push on you.

Amazon is certainly suggesting Authors they consider you may be interested in in the hope that you will buy. But they are certainly not in any position to push anything on you. The choice is ours.

[disconnected]

I seem to get several random emails from Amazon every day but hardly any of them are for authors I'm supposedly following or ebooks with available updates.

The other day I got an updated ebook notification (I think it was only the second one I've ever received). I looked through the Manage my Kindle screen and found 64 more ebooks with updates available.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

They'll order it...
(...small stores, too, BTW...)
...and it'll take weeks to get in.

Or, you can order it online and get it in days.
Or in seconds if you like ebooks.

The bottleneck isn't the store; it's the publisher.

I don't know if it would be practical in the usa, because of the size and population density, but it hasn't to be so. In germany you can order a book in a shop and get it the next day most of the time. But books are a bit more pricy here and have set prices. If the retailers in the us would take a cut from their profit to have intermediate retailers that provide the books, they could beat or match amazons delivery times. Oh, and the system can be used by small shops too, so for example in the suburb where I growed up, there was a small store for pens etc. where you also could order books.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

I don't know if it would be practical in the usa, because of the size and population density, but it hasn't to be so. In germany you can order a book in a shop and get it the next day most of the time. But books are a bit more pricy here and have set prices. If the retailers in the us would take a cut from their profit to have intermediate retailers that provide the books, they could beat or match amazons delivery times. Oh, and the system can be used by small shops too, so for example in the suburb where I growed up, there was a small store for pens etc. where you also could order books.

Oh, in the US it would be trivial for an order to be fulfilled overnight: most online retailers do it. UPS and USPS are very fast and efficient. The publishers are...less so.

The issue is that the publishers eliminated their ability to process small orders decades ago.
On purpose.
In decades past, before the foreign multinationals took over, most big US publishers had significant direct to consumer order fullfilment capabilities that were dismantled to improve ROI.

Their order fulfillment processes are now geared towards shipping big orders to distributors and bookstore chains, not consumers or independent bookstores. That is why, when Amazon switched to just-in-time ordering for Hachette books during last year's catfight delivery times ballooned.

The only reason online retailers can deliver arbitrary books overnight is they pre-order large numbers and warehouse them indefinitely at *their* expense which is something the B&M operations can't afford to do.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

I don't know if it would be practical in the usa, because of the size and population density, but it hasn't to be so. In germany you can order a book in a shop and get it the next day most of the time. But books are a bit more pricy here and have set prices. If the retailers in the us would take a cut from their profit to have intermediate retailers that provide the books, they could beat or match amazons delivery times. Oh, and the system can be used by small shops too, so for example in the suburb where I growed up, there was a small store for pens etc. where you also could order books.

Comparing to USA, US publishers and retailers could have banded together under a common hardware platform to compete against Amazon. Like Tolino in Germany. Wonder why they didn't. Lack of will? Saw B&N failure and figured it was hopeless?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Something fishy -- at first pwalker8 wanted to know why Amazon didn't have any such feature, and now he claims he knew it existed all along, but he doesn't think it works properly.

I would have expected him to say in post #86 "Amazon isn't horrible/terrible, but they could be so much more. How hard would it be to get their author tracking system to actually work properly (rather than only sporadically emit alerts)? And there should be an option to automatically add an author when I buy one of their books."

... thus indicating his awareness of the feature, and his disapproval at its effectiveness or perceived lack thereof.
Instead, we ended up discussing whether such a feature exists or not! Rather a waste.

The fishy part is your willful attempt to spin what I said into a different narrative. It might be clever in an 8th grade debate, but who are the judges that you are trying to score points with? Constantly misinterpreting what I say in an attempt to show me up is pretty immature.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Comparing to USA, US publishers and retailers could have banded together under a common hardware platform to compete against Amazon. Like Tolino in Germany. Wonder why they didn't. Lack of will? Saw B&N failure and figured it was hopeless?

They could have.
They chose collusion.
They already had plenty of experience in that and it was cheaper than setting up a digital ecosystem.

They could also have done nothing and let a hundred epub stores bloom.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

I think we do need to give credit where it is due. He actually wrote that Amazon isn't horrible/terrible. Mind you, the glass is half empty (at least) attitude to Amazon is evident with:

Amazon will usually pull back the author, thought they do like to put in a bunch of other authors they are trying to push on you.

Amazon is certainly suggesting Authors they consider you may be interested in in the hope that you will buy. But they are certainly not in any position to push anything on you. The choice is ours.

They aren't in a position to force me to buy anything, but they can certainly push all sorts of book at me saying "don't you want to buy this". It was useful back when the suggestions weren't a bunch of Kindle Unlimited authors that I hadn't heard of. It's a bit like going to a grocery store and asking for an lime and the grocer saying "Wouldn't you like a nice lemon instead?"

[darryl]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

They aren't in a position to force me to buy anything, but they can certainly push all sorts of book at me saying "don't you want to buy this". It was useful back when the suggestions weren't a bunch of Kindle Unlimited authors that I hadn't heard of. It's a bit like going to a grocery store and asking for an lime and the grocer saying "Wouldn't you like a nice lemon instead?"

So you don't take exception to them suggesting books to you? Your objection is that the suggestions are Kindle Unlimited authors that you "hadn't heard of"?

Having said this, it would be nice to have a way to opt out of all of these types of suggestions if you really don't find them useful. Personally, I don't mind them and sometimes find them actually useful.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

The fishy part is your willful attempt to spin what I said into a different narrative. It might be clever in an 8th grade debate, but who are the judges that you are trying to score points with? Constantly misinterpreting what I say in an attempt to show me up is pretty immature.

That first sentence is just me being humorous at your expense.

My real issue came in the rest of my post, where I complained that you waste peoples' time by saying things you know aren't true, whereby they explain the truth to you, and you say the equivalent of "oh yeah, I knew that already but I was being inscrutable/obtuse".

I might as well skip over all your posts, if you are going to be in the habit of not meaning anything you say...




Unless you have some alternative explanation for:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Amazon isn't horrible/terrible, but they could be so much more. How hard would it be to have a database of authors that I want to be notified every time a new kindle ebook becomes available? Automatically add any author that I buy one of their books, but let me add and remove authors from the list. It doesn't even have to be real time. They already have most of the information, it really would be all that hard to do.

And the about-face:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yea, I remember when they first put it in and I signed up for a number of authors. A pity it didn't seem to work correctly. I think that I've gotten one or two notices over the years. Yep, just double checked. I'm following Stephen W. Sears and was not notified when The Landscape Turned Red hit the Kindle store. Fortunately, Authoralerts _did_ notify me.

[bgalbrecht]

Lovely. B&N just updated their website, and now there doesn't seem to be a way to read previously purchased ebooks from the website. Either their search engine is down or they dumbed it up, too, since my saved search for free Open Road Media books stopped working too.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

So you don't take exception to them suggesting books to you? Your objection is that the suggestions are Kindle Unlimited authors that you "hadn't heard of"?

Having said this, it would be nice to have a way to opt out of all of these types of suggestions if you really don't find them useful. Personally, I don't mind them and sometimes find them actually useful.

I actually don't object to them doing recommendations on my landing page, or after I buy a book. I do object to them placing books in a search result that have little or nothing to do with the search. For example, today if I search for Roger Zelazny in the Kindle Store, I get back a kindle unlimited book by Kathryn Le Veque and the Andre Norton Megapack on the first page. That bothers me. The first is just some Kindle Unlimited author and the second is someone trying to collect a few bucks by bundling Andre Norton books that have gone into PD. Neither has any relationship with Roger Zelazny.

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Lovely. B&N just updated their website, and now there doesn't seem to be a way to read previously purchased ebooks from the website. Either their search engine is down or they dumbed it up, too, since my saved search for free Open Road Media books stopped working too.

And the hits just keep on comin'!

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

That first sentence is just me being humorous at your expense.

My real issue came in the rest of my post, where I complained that you waste peoples' time by saying things you know aren't true, whereby they explain the truth to you, and you say the equivalent of "oh yeah, I knew that already but I was being inscrutable/obtuse".

I might as well skip over all your posts, if you are going to be in the habit of not meaning anything you say...




Unless you have some alternative explanation for:


And the about-face:

There is, of course, no about face, no matter how you try to spin it. They don't have the ability to notify me when an author that I'm interested in comes out with a new book in the kindle store. They have follow, but it doesn't work. They had something similar way back when they first started. I signed up for notification for a number of authors. It also didn't work and eventually disappeared without comment. There is nothing inscrutable/obtuse about wanting something that works.