NY Times - The Bookstore's Last Stand

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

No it won't.

Fair enough. I should have said, if you live in the US and still have a local independent bookstore, then please consider IndieBound. There, that's fixed. And if you don't have a local one you're welcome to share mine:

http://www.auntiesbooks.com/

It's a nice place. They host book clubs, book signings, children's readings and do lots of other things to support local readers. Most people in the States have something similar in their own community. Even if it's a bit of a drive to the brick-and-mortar presence the independent bookstores are still only a click away.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Those would be the only choices for most people.
(Already are, for me. There is no B&N near me and now that the local Borders are gone it's Amazon or nothing.)


Rather, my disdain is for the people who created Amazon (and B&N before
If the Glass Tower publishers *really* wanted to help B&N, they could do it in an instant. They choose not to. Because it is cheaper to do nothing.
The world the big publishers face is the world *they* created.
They created the mess, they can live with it.

My sympathy is reserved for the B&N employees stuck in this mess.

Makes the advertising fees for those "featured" or "recommended" titles we are hit with that much higher. Google probably already has a plan in place to maximize ad revenue from publishers if B&N fails. All those marketing dollars up for grabs.

I don't really know what B&N and US publishers are doing behind the scenes. Or not doing. But I have sympathy for the publisher's support staff too. They are trying to earn a modest living in one of the most expensive areas of the country.

It must be stressful for B&N employees since the last press release and financial statement.

In the end, I'm not convinced the ebook industry can earn a sustainable profit.

[jessicalynn]

Very interesting article. I thought it was funny how the publishers think that if bookstores disappear, backlist sales will be hurt. If they really wanted to increase their sales of backlist books, they would make them all available as ebooks at a reasonable price (say $5?).

I was looking into buying an ebook version of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (one of my favorite authors). The book was originally published in 1996, but the ebook version is $12.99 on Amazon. $12.99! For a book that was originally published 15 years ago! I would have bought it for $5-7, but not for $12.99! (Penguin is her publisher btw.)

[SeaKing]

Originally Posted by jessicalynn

Very interesting article. I thought it was funny how the publishers think that if bookstores disappear, backlist sales will be hurt. If they really wanted to increase their sales of backlist books, they would make them all available as ebooks at a reasonable price (say $5?).

I was looking into buying an ebook version of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (one of my favorite authors). The book was originally published in 1996, but the ebook version is $12.99 on Amazon. $12.99! For a book that was originally published 15 years ago! I would have bought it for $5-7, but not for $12.99! (Penguin is her publisher btw.)

You can get it much cheaper at Amazon.
This is a quote, though some lines are removed.
\\\\\
Practical Magic [Mass Market Paperback]
Alice Hoffman (Author)
...............azon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition -- $12.99 --
Expand Hardcover -- $9.73 $0.01
Expand Paperback -- $1.49 $0.01
\\\\

Just add $3.99 to these costs (hard or paper bound books) for shipping.
You can generally get most any book you want for $4.00 from Amazon a few months after it comes out.

One interesting thing is that the hardcover books since they come out first will for a time be lower in price used then the paperback.
I prefer the paperback since it is smaller, lighter and easier to store. I usually just read it once, and recycle it back to the thrift store, or if I really like it store it for a while until I recycle it. (I am in a culling mode right now.!)

[jessicalynn]

^I don't want the physical book. I already have it. I wanted to buy an ebook and replace my physical copy, which I would have done if the price wasn't so ridiculous. I was just illustrating another example of publishing doing something dumb and costing themselves money.

[carpetmojo]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

Fair enough. I should have said, if you live in the US and still have a local independent bookstore, then please consider IndieBound. There, that's fixed. And if you don't have a local one you're welcome to share mine:

http://www.auntiesbooks.com/

It's a nice place. They host book clubs, book signings, children's readings and do lots of other things to support local readers. Most people in the States have something similar in their own community. Even if it's a bit of a drive to the brick-and-mortar presence the independent bookstores are still only a click away.

I know this may be a daft/dumb question, but.....

Are there any of these in the UK ??

[taming]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

Checkout IndieBound. The site will help you find a local independent bookstore near you.

http://www.indiebound.org/

This site finds Canadian indie stores, too.

[markbot]

I haven't run the numbers, but I think in the long run ebooks are superior to pbooks for publishers because publishers control how ebooks can be resold, lent, and rented. Hypothetically, if publishers stopped printing books then libraries would no longer carry them (unless they allowed them) and there would be no secondary book market....this is where publishers lose a lot of money. With ebooks, they gobble up all the profits from readers. This business has a longer life cycle...payback takes much longer.

[Kali Yuga]

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....

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.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Borders is gone?
Well, they could have worked with them on inventory instead of pushing them into outright liquidation.

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.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Nobody picked up the Borders trade?

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.

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?

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.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

If the Glass Tower publishers *really* wanted to help B&N, they could do it in an instant.

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....

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Meaning what, the publishers are not supposed to distribute their books through Target and Walmart? How is that supposed to work?

Easy.
The same way electronics retailers only sell through authorized dealers.
Perfectly legal.
Apple even pulled out of Best Buy a while back.
Manufacturers always have the power to pull product away from retailers.
Just as they have the power to set prices.

Try this: bring the Agency model to print books.
If it's good for ebooks, why not print?

They can control distribution.
They choose not to and instead whine about the results.

[charmian]

Another thing the Big 6 could do about Target, Walmart, etc. undercutting B&N on print books is to institute price controls a la the agency model (in other words, force no discounting on books, and making the retailers sell them all at MSRP). Now, we all certainly wouldn't like it, but that would at least resolve the price difference issue. IIRC they do this in some countries.

However, that wouldn't help with the shoppers who buy at Target or Walmart because it's just more convenient for them to buy there.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Manufacturers always have the power to pull product away from retailers.
Just as they have the power to set prices.

The problem is that distributors exist, and are a huge part of the book business.

If Macmillan refused to sell directly to Walmart, then Walmart can just go to Ingram or B&T and order a few hundred thousand books from them.

The publishers aren't obligated to sell direct to anyone, but as far as I know they can't order distributors not to sell to Walmart.

It would likely be illegal for the big publishers to get together and collectively say "no one sell to Walmart." If 7 out of the top 10 refuse to do so, Walmart can go to the other three and say "we're the biggest retailer on the planet, let's do business" -- and those three will have a huge competitive advantage.

I.e. the publishers can't afford not to do business with the single largest retailer in the US.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Try this: bring the Agency model to print books.
If it's good for ebooks, why not print?

Because books are physical objects.

The store purchases, say, 20,000 copies of a book and sends it to its retail outlets and/or warehouses. Since they basically "own" the book, the reseller is taking some of the risk and costs, and is able to sell the book at whatever price it wants. If Walmart wants to treat the Harry Potter books as loss leaders by selling them at a loss, the publishers may not be thrilled about it but they already sold off the book; in doing so, they have effectively given up the right to set the final price.

With ebooks, the arrangement is radically different. The retailer isn't purchasing an object and reselling it; they are acting as a middle-man for the transaction. It's a different relationship based on the fact that it's a different medium.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by charmian

Another thing the Big 6 could do about Target, Walmart, etc. undercutting B&N on print books is to institute price controls a la the agency model....

See above, distributors make this effectively impossible.

On a side note, manufacturers don't dictate prices to Walmart; Walmart dictates prices to manufacturers.

[detayls]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No - you misunderstand me. I meant that I hoped that the NYT didn't really say "for it's life", as opposed to the correct "for its life".

.... or is it: eats, shoots and leaves?

This is an extremely fun book on punctuation and it makes learning the correct usages easy:

http://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-an...AG56TWVU5XWC2:)

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

The problem is that distributors exist, and are a huge part of the book business.

Distributors exist in other businesses and the producers can still control who sells what and when. Physical object or not, manufacturers restrict the minimum selling price of products all the time. That is even the fig leaf the Price Fix Six are using to justify their scam. The physicality of a product is irrelevant. There are lots of things the publishers could do there; if they lack originality, they can aways copy other industries.

If nothing ese, the publishers can window the releases to support certain channels over others, just as the music and video industries window their releases.

Nothing stops the publishers from giving bookstores a two-week or even 30-day window when they can sell the books at close to list before letting them flow to discounters. And it might even *increase* their revenue.

It is disingenuous at the least for the big publishers who created and maintain the volume-discounts policies that are squeezing bookstores, big and small, out of the market and that are reducing shelf space for mid-list and back-list titles, to now sit back wringig their hands, pretending they're innocent bystanders with no responsability for the blood-letting and their own travails.

It is like the old joke about the criminal who kills his own parents and then begs for mercy from the court because he is an orphan.

Feh!
Cry me a river!

The glass tower publishers *created* the current retailing model by action and inaction. They can change it whenever they choose to.
They choose *NOT* to because, for all their avowed fear of Amazon or the loss of ebookstores, they are more afraid of change.

To say they can't afford to do anything is to gloss over that they can afford to do nothing even less.

They are simply cowards frozen with fear watching the ship they're steering heading for an iceberg and they can't be moved to even rearrange the deck chairs.

They are not victims, here.
They are the first movers and inciters.
They are the architects of their own fate.
If they should actually vanish they'll not be missed when the smaller, nimbler, ebook-first New Publishers replace them.

The article is full of publisher spin and misinformation, the biggest being that the fate of publishing is tied to B&N, B&M bookstores, and the NY glass tower publishers. It isn't.
Rather, they are all the past.
They could still be saved if the publishers deigned to actually act and accept some small term pain for long term gain but they choose not to do anything but moan and complain. And since inaction is the most assured way to become history, the glass tower gang is well on its way to irrelevance.
They'll not be missed.

Publishing will have a prosperous publishing future regardless of what happens to the old guard. It may not be a Manhattan future but that would hardly be a disaster.