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Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

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Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#51

Post by xrd »

What studies discuss how money flows internally and permanently out of an economy? This seems tangential here.

I recall an article/conversation long ago about how open source consulting projects keep money local. IIRC, the argument was that paying someone to develop open source software for a government project leads to that money being cycled around six times inside the local economy, as opposed to money leaving the local economy.

For example, if you buy Oracle's database (and associated consulting) for that municipal government accounting project for the city government of Smalltown, USA, then all that money leaves that economy permanently.

If instead the city council of Smalltown, USA can be convinved to hire a few weird local Perl programmers to build it that money will go into their bank account at the local credit union. That credit union will then loan out that money, and multiply it inside the local economy there. That Perl programmer will go down to the pub, and spend money there, and on groceries (and not Amazon), etc.

There are complications to doing it local (Perl programmers aren't great salespeople), but in Oregon we were bitten by Oracle and it turned out to not be cost effective at least: https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2016/09/post_183.html. Oregon tax payers paid $240M to Oracle. Oracle settled for $100M, but let's be straight: $75M of that is Oracle software. You cannot find Oracle software being exchanged for pizza at any brew pubs here.

It seems like buying local is keeping money local. But, I never hear people talking about it that way, other than in that random open source advocacy discussion.

I cannot find that link, and perhaps it was only a dream I had, but this makes sense to me logically.

Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#53

Post by daybreaker2 »

treebog wrote: post #37

I bought a book on bookshop last week. It was $5 more than on Amazon, and bookstores got $1.80 from my purchase. I should have just bought the book on Amazon and mailed four dollar bills to my local bookstore—everyone would have come out ahead.

How do you figure the bookstore only got $1.80?

Bookstores get 30% of every sale. Yes, it's still not as much as the 40-45% they get normally, but unless the book you bought was only $6, the bookstore got more than $1.80.

Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#54

Post by jbay808 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #39
abathur wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you disseminate free thought with a website if there were but two massive corporate hosts? Does it matter if anyone can be bothered to interact with your free thoughts, or only that you're free to post them? Perhaps it is sufficient that we're all free to shelve our free thoughts in the closet?

I don't really know what you're trying to say. Most independent bookshops don't solve the problem you're describing. They just buy the same books from the same publishers as everyone else. They don't create any variety. It's the same books!

Most of the time, I don't go to the bookstore with a particular book in mind. Instead, it's a Saturday morning and the weather is nice, so I want to go for a walk somewhere. The bookstore is a good choice, and maybe I'll find an interesting title there. If my bookstore shuts down, I lose one more important walking destination.

Unfortunately I can't buy that experience on Amazon, even with same-day shipping.

This might be a condition particular to walkable cities, though. I wouldn't drive to a bookstore.

Of course Bookshop doesn't help here either, but if it can keep their doors open then I'll be able to keep walking through them...

Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#55

Post by hantusk »

xrd wrote: post #51

What studies discuss how money flows internally and permanently out of an economy? This seems tangential here. I recall an article/conversation long ago about how open source consulting projects keep money local. IIRC, the argument was that paying someone to develop open source software for a government project leads to that money being cycled around six times inside the local economy, as opposed to money leaving the…

Don't have a link to a study, but would also appreciate a good one of anyone is into this.

From my understanding of economics, the idea is that, optimizing for local money is suboptimal. Compare that to Smalltown finding their own niches/specialization and earning more money from that to purchase Oracle software. Smalltowns will end up having more value by exporting what they are good at, and importing what they need from the area/company that is best at what they are good at.

Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#56

Post by treebog »

daybreaker2 wrote: post #53
treebog wrote: post #37

I bought a book on bookshop last week. It was $5 more than on Amazon, and bookstores got $1.80 from my purchase. I should have just bought the book on Amazon and mailed four dollar bills to my local bookstore—everyone would have come out ahead.

How do you figure the bookstore only got $1.80? Bookstores get 30% of every sale. Yes, it's still not as much as the 40-45% they get normally, but unless the book you bought was only $6, the bookstore got more than $1.80.

I shopped on bookshop.org’s main page, so 10% went to bookstores. I believe you have to shop through a specific book store’s page for them to get 30%.

Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#57

Post by hantusk »

hantusk wrote: post #55
xrd wrote: post #51

What studies discuss how money flows internally and permanently out of an economy? This seems tangential here. I recall an article/conversation long ago about how open source consulting projects keep money local. IIRC, the argument was that paying someone to develop open source software for a government project leads to that money being cycled around six times inside the local economy, as opposed to money leaving the…

Don't have a link to a study, but would also appreciate a good one of anyone is into this. From my understanding of economics, the idea is that, optimizing for local money is suboptimal. Compare that to Smalltown finding their own niches/specialization and earning more money from that to purchase Oracle software. Smalltowns will end up having more value by exporting what they are good at, and importing what they need…

Of course this requires everyone to be good purchasers and sales people (Oregon, perl programmers and Oracle alike). Individual cases can be outliers but in general we are rational (to a certain degree)

Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#58

Post by Hnrobert42 »

daybreaker2 wrote: post #53
treebog wrote: post #37

I bought a book on bookshop last week. It was $5 more than on Amazon, and bookstores got $1.80 from my purchase. I should have just bought the book on Amazon and mailed four dollar bills to my local bookstore—everyone would have come out ahead.

How do you figure the bookstore only got $1.80? Bookstores get 30% of every sale. Yes, it's still not as much as the 40-45% they get normally, but unless the book you bought was only $6, the bookstore got more than $1.80.

I think the article says they get 30% of the profit not the sale/revenue.

Edit: although I don’t understand that because why would they only get 45% if they do it themselves? Seems like they would get 100% of the profit if they do it themselves. If they have to pay some cost out of the profit then it was not by definition profit.

Edit 2: From https://bookshop.org/pages/about, it looks like it is a 30% commission, which is more like 30% of the sale than of the profit.

TL;DR: ignore me. i am talking to myself.

Re: Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon

#59

Post by WalterBright »

chrisseaton wrote: post #29
beaunative wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not all against digital seller, but at least when I was a kid, I read in the bookstore almost every day after school. I've only got the allowance of one book per week from my parents, so the bookstore was the only way for me to read though a few books a day. I'd like for bookstores like these to continue to exist.

Is that not what libraries are for?

For some reason libraries have very, very small scifi collections. I'd get my scifi from used bookstores (long before Amazon). My favorite was a hole-in-the-wall about a mile walk away. You could return the books after reading them for half price store credit. I read hundreds of books that way.

I few years ago I got into buying boxes of 50-100 random scifi books from ebay. In bulk they're about $.50 each.

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