Article about ebook readers affect on bookstores

[Kali Yuga]

Let's face it, folks. While they won't completely go away, bookstores are basically doomed.

A small bookstore may hold 10,000 to 20,000 titles; a superstore might have 50,000. In contrast, an ebook retailer who boasted of 50k titles would get laughed at for its paltry offerings. Most of those books sell in small numbers and occupy expensive real estate. Unless it's a specialty store (e.g. mysteries, art books, antiquarian books etc), physical stores can't compete with big stores on availability, price or convenience.

Keeping a physical store around so people can merely browse, and then buy online, is not going to work. It's expensive, inconvenient, and can't possibly offer enough titles to make the project worthwhile. There's also no viable way to ensure that people will even buy the ebooks you're hawking through them; what would stop a Sony user from browsing at the B&N store, and then buying the ebook from Sony?

Selling digital works on a physical media also isn't going to work. All you'd do is replicate the inefficiencies of the paper versions onto ebooks, and increase the costs. You'd also be creating yet more e-waste, which is one of the last things the world needs.

Bookstores are likely to go the way of record stores -- clean off the map, except for a small presence in big box stores, and specialty stores in urban areas. All the nostalgia in the world won't save them.

[some call me tim]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I think you're being very optimistic about the knowledge levels of sales staff there. Staff like that will be the exception rather than the norm.

I think you're more likely to find engaged and helpful staff at an independent store rather than a big national chain. Which is unfortunate, because the indies will be the first to go.

[Avarwen]

For me ebooks for now are the only way I can easily get a book. We have one small book store here. The major book store I use to work at closed in 07. The Waldens at the nearby mall closed a while back so I'm stuck. I still like regular books but I don't have easy access to them I use to have order from Amazon if I wanted a book. Now all I have to do is go to my Nook and bam I've got something to read. I love it and will only buy regular book if I can't find it in ebook format from now on.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I think you're being very optimistic about the knowledge levels of sales staff there. Staff like that will be the exception rather than the norm.

Yes: I'm assuming that the future bookstore will only be able to function with good sales staff... not minimum-wage goof-offs. So they'll have to elevate their level of employee quality, just like the fine restaurant that will only hire the best wait staff, not ex-McDonalds cashiers.

Am I assuming a lot? Well, with more competition for fewer jobs... maybe not.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Keeping a physical store around so people can merely browse, and then buy online, is not going to work. It's expensive, inconvenient, and can't possibly offer enough titles to make the project worthwhile. There's also no viable way to ensure that people will even buy the ebooks you're hawking through them; what would stop a Sony user from browsing at the B&N store, and then buying the ebook from Sony?

Stores have never been able to guarantee customers wouldn't browse here and buy elsewhere. The way you lock-in customers is by offering them something useful to them, whether it's good information, good coffee, in-store discount incentives or sales staff in sexy outfits. That positive customer service compels them to buy through the store, and not elsewhere. And we're talking about digital product... they can conceivably offer every digital title.

That is not an impossible setup for a bookstore to evolve into; it's only a matter of their willingness to accept their status in the new order and do so.

[emonti8384]

I've always had a dream that I would have my own bookstore someday, and I think it's still possible. When the time comes, I will post here, on this site of knowledge (because it will still be around) for ideas. I expect flocks of brillant (young, old, and those in-between) people to tell me their ideas so I can steal them and come up with a fantastic business model. Don't worry, I'll put the names of the contributors...somewhere in the fine print .

As odd as it sounds to us, ebooks/readers are not known to nearly as many people as we think. MP3's have been out for a loooong time and I just bought my first MP3 player a couple of months ago (for audiobooks). Just because readers are out there doesn't mean they are understood, loved, and valued by everyone. Well, except by the people here, lol.

There's a way to make it happen, you just have to be wily and opportunistic. Everyone here has fantastic ideas, it's pretty awesome to see.

[CazMar]

A sign of the times - being able to purchase some very cheap but high quality PBooks for Christmas presents for my non-techy relatives. After the way we have been ripped off in Australia for years with overpriced books, especially textbooks, I can say I will regret their passing very little. I can think of only one bookstore I would be sorry to lose, they actually carry books as opposed to trash.

[Ken Maltby]

We might consider, for the future, that there are a limited number of products and
services that can be delivered over the internet. Those products and services offered
on the internet, essentially have the whole world as their market. (The current barriers
are artificial and not likely to stand forever.) The intellectual products that can be
delivered over the internet, are not limited by a need for any physical resources. (There
is even a theoretical limit to how many books can be made from the worlds ability to
provide ink and paper. There is no such limit on the number of ebooks that can be provided.)

There is no need for a physical store, a building, for the purchase of any digital product.
With a satellite modem you can get the latest NY Times best seller while on a trip up
the Amazon, or from your fishing camp in Alaska. There are a number of services that
can be provided through the exchange of digital data. Certainly investment services,
accounting services, and such are accepted, now. Religion, Education, Entertainment
of many types, consulting of various kinds, all could be supplied to any number at any
location, world wide, with a connection to the internet.

At some point, barring artificial restraint, the market opportunities inherent in these
realities will make it so that what can be delivered by digital means, will be delivered by
digital means.

What I wonder about is what will happen when the percentage of the "Big Five's" book
sales tip over to the point where digital sales form their profit base, and they realize
that they don't need ANY book sellers, that they can do it all themselves? If they are
the only source for "their" books, the whole world over.

Luck;
Ken

[jehane]

Cazmar, it's not actually the bookshops here that are ripping us off, it's the local publishing industry. Dymocks actually pushed for the removal of parallel imports in the recent review. Unfortunately the govt caved to the publishing lobby in spite of all the evidence that parallel imports were a good thing overall. There's another thread here about a current review into ebooks - I would urge you and all Australian readers to put in a submission to counter the powerful publishing lobby.