Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
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Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
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Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#2What is the future of bookselling? As much as I understand the efficiencies of Amazon, browsing through a bookstore can't be replaced by online; it's a different experience.
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#3What is the future of bookselling? As much as I understand the efficiencies of Amazon, browsing through a bookstore can't be replaced by online; it's a different experience.
Admission fees? Retail stores are increasingly losing to online services, so the brick-and-mortars might have to focus on the experience of being in a bookstore.
For more on this idea, The Experience Economy is a good read. (Skip everything but the first 2-3 chapters. After that, it gets redundant and a little weird at the end.)
http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-Theater-Every-Busin...
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#4What is the future of bookselling? As much as I understand the efficiencies of Amazon, browsing through a bookstore can't be replaced by online; it's a different experience.
They may also continue to find more and more creative loss leaders to get people into the bookstores. Anecdotally, I know when I go to Borders or BN to work and use the free wifi, more than 50% of the time I end up buying a book too, and almost 100% of the time something from coffee shop.
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#5What is the future of bookselling? As much as I understand the efficiencies of Amazon, browsing through a bookstore can't be replaced by online; it's a different experience.
I'm under thirty, but I can't stand e-books and will be reading from dead trees until they stop printing on them.
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#6I still buy printed books. I almost never buy any books at a major book retail store like Borders or BN because they carry very very little that I am interested in buying. They used to stock more that I was interested in, but their stock has changed over the years. I suppose they were aiming for a more middle-of-the-road, palatable-to-all sort of stock selection, but I for one have basically been driven away.
I initially reason, well, I must be a very unusual shopper. I buy a lot of books on programming topics, math, science, etc., and I eschew with passion anything written for dummies, idiots, fools, or morons.
But then I wonder, am I really so unusual? I'm not an expert historian, but I enjoy studying history, and I'm disappointed with the local store's selection of history books about as much as I am with their technology books. I enjoy studying linguistics, and have watched the store's linguistics section melt away into nothingness. I enjoy science fiction, but am dismayed to see shelves of fantasy displace books by my favorite authors.
I can't really speak for every subject matter, but for pretty much every topic I want to read about, the big chain bookstores seem to be dwindling their stock, and smoothing out what little they do carry to appeal to some unknown typical readership.
If this is indeed true of all (or even most) of the subjects of books they carry, then I find it hard to believe that anyone who truly enjoys reading books is content with what they carry. Which leaves... people who really aren't very fond of books to peruse the shelves? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me.
I would greatly enjoy doing more book shopping in person. I seem to be good enough at searching Amazon to come up with good books sight unseen, but I'd like to go browse in the store, if only the store had books in stock that I'd want to browse.
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#7What is the future of bookselling? As much as I understand the efficiencies of Amazon, browsing through a bookstore can't be replaced by online; it's a different experience.
Inventory: a mix between bestsellers (e.g. Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter) and the long tail, with very specific titles tailored to smaller audiences. Amazon excels at the long tail and traditional stores can't compete with that, as they're restricted to high street real estate with limited capacity. Another problem for small stores is that they don't have the knowledge and expertise to give advice to their customers on what titles to buy for niche markets (or buy the right stock to begin with beyond using the besteller lists), which Amazon does very well through user generated reviews and the recommendation system. This is a major concern for brick and mortars, because people value a trustworthy authority they can go to that will tell them what to read next (as the erudite bookseller of the past would do in nostalgic stories).
Medium: Moving towards digital, but physical books will remain relevant. Eventually digital might become so superior from a practical perspective that physical books will become collectors items in the sense that people will want to have some of them around for nostalgic reasons (e.g. religious texts, favorite authors). But people are programmed to hoard physical objects, so even when digital becomes superior they'll still want some books. In the mid-term you will see printing on demand in a reasonable quality distributed through and printed by local stores[1], allowing them to participate in the long tail segment instead of just stocking bestsellers.
Shopping experience: It's fun to go to a bookshop and browse, even if you're going to order the books you like from Amazon in the end. This will become something you do on a free afternoon as a form of leisure (as many of us do already). Successful shops will figure out a business model around this, focussing on the experience instead of the practicalities. For more practical purchases (e.g. "I need a book on Haskell, pronto") people will use Amazon instead.
Small players will remain active in niche markets, like selling collectible antiquarian books, where focus and specialization gives them an edge over big players like Borders or Amazon. This will mostly happen over the internet, which is a change that is already happening. A good friend of mine runs a high street antiquarian bookshop and has days where he sells for less than $20 in his brick and mortar store, but makes up for this by selling online. The main reasons for keeping the brick and mortar shop are nostalgic, as a warehouse for this inventory and as an avenue for people to come in and sell him new stock.
[1] That is if copyright holders will go along with this approach, because the publishing, movie and music industries are rackets that don't necessarily have the best interest of their customers in mind (customers as in consumers as well as resellers like bookshops and record stores).
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#8What is the future of bookselling? As much as I understand the efficiencies of Amazon, browsing through a bookstore can't be replaced by online; it's a different experience.
Similar to many retail sectors aka nothing very bright? When the WSJ story about in store smart phone price shopping ran there were people quite proudly commenting that they shopped at borders to find their books and then ordered them all online.
If people don't value the retail experience, it's very possible it'll disappear aside from a few niches like perishables and very expensive impulse items.
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#9I still buy printed books. I almost never buy any books at a major book retail store like Borders or BN because they carry very very little that I am interested in buying. They used to stock more that I was interested in, but their stock has changed over the years. I suppose they were aiming for a more middle-of-the-road, palatable-to-all sort of stock selection, but I for one have basically been driven away. I initi…
Not to mention, even if Borders had it, Amazon would be cheaper anyway, and Amazon's reviews are a huge source of book information to me.
Re: Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era
#10I still buy printed books. I almost never buy any books at a major book retail store like Borders or BN because they carry very very little that I am interested in buying. They used to stock more that I was interested in, but their stock has changed over the years. I suppose they were aiming for a more middle-of-the-road, palatable-to-all sort of stock selection, but I for one have basically been driven away. I initi…
i dont have the attention span for a book. that said, i read voraciously from a variety of resources using instapaper. i read a minimum of 2-3 hours per day everyday.
i haven't opened a book in over a year, and haven't finished a book in years.