Round up #155: what is the future of coffee table books, B&N shuns S&S

Round up #155: what is the future of coffee table books, B&N shuns S&S

Barnes & Noble stops carrying some Simon & Schuster books

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

As a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, this just makes my head spin. Well, it would if I hadn’t already done the full Linda Blair with Barnes & Noble deciding not to sell specific books to make a point in the past.

Look, for me, this isn’t complicated. If you are a bookseller, you need to sell books to people to keep them as your customers.

They aren’t going to care about why you don’t have the book they want…they are just going to buy it somewhere else.

They also will form the opinion (perhaps  irrevocably, at least for years) that you aren’t worth checking in the future.

It’s a huge hurdle to place in your own path.

Amazon did something similar with Macmillan more than three years ago. I went back and looked: I wasn’t as negative about that as I’ve been with Barnes & Noble.

However, I’ll argue that Amazon was fighting the Agency Model when they pulled the “Buy” buttons from Macmillan books. That was a hugely disruptive, industry affecting initiative…one where Macmillan (along with every other publisher in the case) eventually settled with the Department of Justice.

The issues cited in this

Wall Street Journal article

by Jeffrey Trachtenberg (and to which I was directed by a reader in a private e-mail) just don’t sound that existential.

There’s been quite a bit written about this…I thought this

Huffington Post article

by Terence Clark was a good one.

It looks like part of what is going on is that Barnes & Noble wants to charge more for the things that its stores can provide (like prominent display of specific books), now that there is a reduced supply of those services. In other words, when there were other big bookstore chains, there were more opportunities for publishers to have their books displayed prominently, and competition for the privilege. “I’ll put your books right at the counter for $25 a month.” “I’ll do it for $20!”

Now, Borders isn’t around any more to put competitive pressure on the price…and publishers still believe bookstore discovery of titles is valuable.

However, I might argue that bookstore discovery isn’t as important as it was, and that it will become increasingly less important as people get their books from other places.

Coffee table books face a challenge in the digital world

Should B&N be focusing on big, beautiful books that work better in paper?

First, let me say that I’m sure the time will come when big books with a lot of pictures (“coffee table books”) will be better consumed as e-books.

There are some similarities between glossy magazines and coffee table books, and Entertainment Weekly is now figuring out how to do e-versions to the point where my reading it on my Kindle Fire 8.9″ is a much more pleasant experience than reading it in paper, even though the screen is smaller than the page.

For example, it may be a question of tapping one in a series of images to see the “caption” for that image. While that might sound like it would be less convenient, it makes the page much less “busy”. You don’t have to mix words and images in the same space, and the text size can be bigger. I only see one caption at a time, but it’s much nicer.  Having scrollable text also means that an image can stay next to the words I’m reading as I go through a longer text piece. I find that more pleasant as well, as compared to flipping the page, and perhaps having to flip back to see the image again.

Coffee table books will probably eventually work the same way. You’ll pinch and spread to zoom in and see detail, see captions as you “roll over” images, and not have to have those confusing “opposite page clockwise from the top left” legends.

Can’t you also see throwing the picture from your coffee table book to a big screen monitor (which we might now call a TV), or to someone else’s tablet?

As this

Wall Street Journal article

by Rory Gallivan points out about the publisher Quarto, sales of those books in bookstores may have a tough row to hoe in the future.

Interestingly to me, they do sell them in non-bookstores…places like Urban Outfitters.

I don’t think that paper coffee table books will save Barnes & Noble. I think they are especially ripe for direct publisher to consumer sales through the internet. In our store, we didn’t particularly like people flipping through those books, just because they would tend to get damaged, and that’s a relatively big loss. Remember that in a brick-and-mortar store, you are always fighting rent…and a coffee table book has taken up a lot more rent than a mass market paperback before you sell it, so having “shrinkage” due to damage is a bigger deal. They also were prone to being shoplifted, despite the size (shoplifters would stack them up on a shelf, then scoot out the door with them when it was not being observed).

Daily Progress: “Literary agents discuss publishing industry”

In this

Daily Progress article

literary agents talk about the state of the industry. I found this quotation particularly interesting:

“Things are actually very healthy in terms of readers and in terms of authors,” Patrick said. “What’s sick is the business model of publishing and that’s what I’m finding is so depressing.”

Are agents hurt by a model that may incorporate more of publishers selling directly to consumers?

Not necessarily: their involvement comes before that. The publishers still have to decide which books to publish, and that’s one of the places where an agent has a function.

However, if the tradpubs (traditional publishers) increasingly look like (and therefore have more competition with) independent publishers, then it gets trickier. Ten years ago, if you wanted to sell your books, you had to get them into brick-and-mortar stores. If you wanted to get them into brick-and-mortar stores, they had to come from tradpubs. If you wanted to have your book published by a tradpub, you had to have an agent. That’s a simplification, but that’s generally how it worked.

Now, that’s not the way it works. If you want to sell your books, e-books especially, you have to get them on to an e-tailer (especially Amazon). You don’t need an agent to do that.

There is still a place for agents, certainly, but they’ll have to look carefully at the model. My guess is that the opportunities will be reduced for tradpubbed books, but the reward per book will increase. Let’s say that a tradpub currently publishes 1,000 books a year and an agent averages $1,000 per book (I’m completely making up these figures, to make the math easy). I suspect that in the future, that same publisher might publish one hundred books…but the agents might average $10,000 per book (which is being sold at a higher price and with a greater likelihood of success, because they’ll stop doing riskier titles).

That’s a big way that I can see the industry going. The risk is taken by indies, and only after the books are proven do they have a chance of being picked up by a tradpub. The tradpubs will concentrate on brand name authors and sure bets.

I would guess that will make it less fun to be a publisher. I would think that taking a risk would be part of the attraction, a place where you could show your skills in picking a winner nobody expected. I think the art part of publishing is going to be harder to justify to the stockholders as things go forward. Indies will try wild things, a few of which will succeed…and those are the ones the tradpubs will license.

What do you think? Do customers understand a book not being in a store because there are business negotiations going on? Are customers so bound to brick-and-mortar bookstores that B&N won’t lose them as long as they are the only chain in town? Will tradpubs take fewer risks? If so, what does that mean for publishing? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Round up #153: Hydra deal changes, Tim Cook may be deposed

Round up #153: Hydra deal changes, Tim Cook may be deposed

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Cook-ing the E-books in Court

What’s is Apple’s most important asset? The iPhone? The iPad?

How about Steve Jobs’ mystique?

I think that’s what might get Apple to finally settle on the Agency Model before they end up in open court.

CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Tim Cook has been ordered to testify in the Department of Justice case against Apple for conspiring with five publishers (all of which have settled now) to raise e-book prices:

Reuters article

Apple’s not happy about that, and for very good reason. Eleven Apple employees have already been deposed or are scheduled to be deposed and, hey, Cook wasn’t even in charge when the deals were made.

No, but Steve Jobs was, and the DoJ argues that Cook may be able to testify (during a four-hour session) as to what Jobs said about e-books and e-book pricing.

If I was Apple, that’s the last thing I’d want. I don’t want Tim Cook to be involved in anything that might hurt Steve Jobs’ reputation.

Apple users love Steve Jobs, and not without reason. If Tim Cook has to deal with negative allegations about Jobs, Cook can only lose. If the current CEO affirms bad things about the old CEO, it makes it look like Apple is now disconnected from the Jobs magic. If the current CEO vigorously defends the old CEO, it looks like Apple can’t grow in a new direction. If it comes out as neutral, Apple looks rudderless.

They do not want that happening in the public eye.

This first thing is a deposition, so that’s different from open court.

I actually think Apple might settle if it looks like Cook might end up on TV in the actual trial messing with Jobs’ public image.

Apple already settled in the EU. Settling doesn’t look so bad…part of the agreement could be that they don’t admit to any wrongdoing.

I really hand it to Judge Denise Cote, who has made things happen very quickly in e-book cases…while we’ve waited years for Judge Denny Chin to do things in the Google settlement.

Random House redoes the Hydra deal

I recently wrote about Random House’s new digital imprints, including Hydra, and how the S.F.W.A. (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) and its President had publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with the offering.

Random House has now changed the terms:

A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM HYDRA, ALIBI, LOVESWEPT AND FLIRT

Let me address two things here. First, the fact that it changed, and second,how the new deal looks.

I had suggested that S.F.W.A. President John Scalzi using the “F word” in a personal blog post about the Hydra terms was likely to be counter-productive.

I still think it may have been.

We have to be careful about cause and effect. We can’t say that Scalzi’s post caused the change. We can say that the change followed Scalzi’s post.

I was fascinated by the way Random House indicated the change happened:

“In response to recent constructive discussions with authors, agents and writers’ groups, including the Horror Writers Association…”

Notice that they didn’t mention the S.F.W.A.

As far as I know (I checked their website and did a quick Google search), the H.W.A. didn’t take the dispute public, or use words like “onerous”.

I know my own prejudice is that treating someone else with respect is more likely to get them to modify their behavior than publicly disrespecting them (I don’t have data that proves that, and certainly, different tactics may apply in different situations), but I will say I’m happy that it changed.

The new deal gives authors a choice of two options (and I think choice is good).

Either the author splits the profits 50-50 with the publisher, or the author gets 25% of receipts.

The profit one means that the costs of producing the book have to be met first; that’s not true with receipts. The second one also offers an advance, which was a sticking point for the S.F.W.A..

In either case, they are still licensing rights for all territories, which I think is a good thing and something I’ve predicted before. It just makes sense in a digital world that you don’t have to enter into separate negotiations for the USA, Australia, the UK, and Japan (for example).

They’ve also addressed the issue of the rights being for the length of the copyright term (which did seem ridiculously long). Now, if (after the first three years) the book fails to sell 300 “copies” in a year, the author can request reversion of rights.

Then there was the issue of derivative works, which Random House seemed to suggest they would have rights to do automatically in the first deal. In the new deal, it’s an additional negotiation if they want to, say, make a video game.

All in all, it seems like a great improvement.

Netflix stock rises on new social element

The feature I would most like to see go away in Netflix is the “recently watched” element.

Our adult kid and I both use one Netflix account, and honestly, it always seems a bit strange to see what the other person has been recently watching.

I don’t have any problem adding something to our Instant Queue to be able to pick up where I left off…I don’t need to know about something that our kid watched and finished. At least, that should be optional.

However, I am from a generation that was more concerned with privacy. My kids generation is much more open about sharing.

I’ve been repeatedly saying that Amazon would benefit from having the option to make our reading more social.

According to this

New York Times article

and many others, Netflix is teaming up with Facebook so that people can share what they’ve watched with others (it’s more than that).

Netflix stock saw a big bump following the announcement.

Now, you might think that’s just because Netflix is teaming up with Facebook (the third largest “country” in the world, by population), but remember, Wall Street doesn’t like Facebook much.

I don’t think Amazon needs to align with Facebook to get social, although they could.

January bookstore sales up 5.5%

This brief

Publishers Weekly article

says that bookstore sales in January in the USA were up 5.5%.

There are a couple of interesting things to tease out of this, even though it is fewer than fifty words.

First, yay! Bookstore sales are up.

However, they weren’t up as much as entire retail segment, which rose 6.1% in the same period. The recovery may be related to broad economics, in which case the headline could have read, “Bookstore sales lag behind”.

The other thing was the definition of a bookstore: “…all sales from stores that generate at least 50% of their revenue from books”.

I wonder if that includes Barnes & Noble.

I know that might seem odd at first, but B&N stores sell a lot of things besides books, including magazines, toys, shirts, coffee, and of course, the relatively expensive electronics (including the NOOK tablet line).

My guess is that their revenue is probably still at least 50% from books, but I’d also bet that the ratio has changed dramatically in the past ten years.

The eyes have it

By this time tomorrow, we may know that the Samsung Galaxy S IV has been announced, and that is has an eye-tracking feature:

engadget article

I’ll just say, now that it seems like eye-tracking (which I’ve written about before) is close, I really want it! I commonly do part of my morning Flipboard read with my Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless 32GB in its cover, sitting on the towel bar in the bathroom (with a towel under it…better traction), while I exercise. Several of my exercises make it hard to touch the screen to choose articles or “turn pages”. Those are times I’d love to have eye-tracking! I think we’ll all have the option to have it within a few years, and I’ll be interested to see just how robust the feature is on the GSIV (if it exists at all…I expect it will, but it is all just strong rumor at this point).

Update: here’s the video of the razzle dazzle Galaxy S IV announcement:

Unpacked Video

Start at 40 minutes, 30 seconds into it…the rest of it is just vamping for an intro.

What do you think? Does Apple want to protect the Steve Jobs’ image the way Disney protects Walt’s? Would that impact their deciding to go to court or not, in a case which has reportedly produced eight million pages of evidence…so far? Is the Netflix stock bump because of the social aspect, or because Netflix is showing innovation…including with House of Cards? Is the Hydra deal good? Did John Scalzi help make that change happen? Should I be more referring to it as the Loveswept deal? Were you surprised to hear bookstore sales rose? Feel free to let me and readers know by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

The Barnes & Noble bookstores buy back bid

The Barnes & Noble bookstores buy back bid

Right now, Barnes & Noble is sort of split into two pieces.

One of them is the digital sector, including NOOK hardware and NOOK Books. Also in this part is the college bookstore business.

The other part is largely the brick-and-mortar side, the physical bookstores.

If you were an investor, looking to buy one or the other, what would look more attractive to you?

Well, if you are Leonard Riggio, the answer is apparently the latter.

That may seem odd…aren’t e-books all the rage and the future?

Yes, that’s certainly possible…although they aren’t the majority of income being generated right now in the book business. It’s like…e-books are a candelabra sitting on a table. They are getting all the attention, but you still need the table to be able to serve dinner.

That certainly may change over time.

Why would Riggio make an offer like that?

Leonard Riggio already owns a large part of Barnes & Noble…and is really the founder of the company.

Part of this may certainly be sentimental…wanting to get back into the core business.

On the other hand, the NOOK is considered by some to have had a disappointing 2012. Getting into tablets put them into a different market, and a very competitive one.

I think it is possible that Barnes & Noble will take the deal, whatever it is exactly.

There is speculation that, if that happens, the NOOK is in trouble.

There’s been a lot of money invested into the NOOK line (including by Microsoft), and perhaps the NOOK investors really didn’t want to be in the brick-and-mortar business.

You might feel like it is all about selling books, so it should be the same market drivers, but that’s not the case. Selling paperbooks (p-books) and selling e-books may have some strong overlap, but running a brick-and-mortar store (and I speak as a former manager) and selling a piece of hardware are two very different things.

I have to say, I’m seeing a lot of talk about how heavily B&N bet on the NOOK.

That’s where I see something that feels fundamentally different to me about Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Barnes & Noble bet on a device…Amazon bets on ideas.

Three ideas, specifically: service, selection, and price.

I always picture somebody pitching an idea in an Amazon meeting (after they sat around and read the summary together…they do that).

The idea is presented, and somebody says, “Yes, but how does that deliver better service, greater selection, or lower prices?”

I think Jeff Bezos has correctly identified those as core tenets that never need to change.

The Kindle brought people amazing new service…a bookstore at the end of your sleeve.

Kindle books initially brought you better prices (compared to hardback equivalents on New York Times bestsellers, for example).

The goal was for it to eventually improve selection (“Every book ever published”) although that wasn’t going to happen at first.

It’s not that every idea needs to serve all three tenets at once…service and price can be at loggerheads, for one thing.

Barnes & Noble led in some important ways with reading hardware and service (they had peer to peer booklending first, and a frontlit EBR…E-Book Reader).

It just didn’t feel to me, though, like it was an idea that was driving the NOOK…it was “MEtooism”, trying to compete with others.

If something came along that gave better service, better selection, and lower prices than the Kindle, do I think Amazon would embrace it?

Absolutely.

We’ll see what happens (Barnes & Noble will announce third quarter results on Thursday, February 28th). I remember that some people were concerned about going with a NOOK (which I do think is a good piece of hardware) because of worries about Barnes & Noble having the long-term stability that they saw for Amazon…they may be feeling vindicated, although it’s a bit soon to tell.

I do think that, if, Riggio ends up owning the stores, it improves their chances to stick around. Leonard Riggio is able to innovate, and is clearly passionately committed to the business.

Here are some stories I found interesting on this:

• Barnes & Noble press release
• Reuters article
• TechHive: “Scaling back the Nook e-reader would be bad news for book publishers”
• SFGate on the stock: “Barnes & Noble Gains on Founder’s Plan to Buy Retail Assets”

What do you think? Is the NOOK a mature enough device to stand without the trade bookstores? Is Riggio doing this just because it makes good business sense, or is there an emotional component to it? Am I painting too nice a picture of Amazon, and not a nice enough one of Barnes & Noble’s motivations and vision? Could the bookstores survive without the NOOK for, say, ten years? Feel free to tell me and my readers what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

WSJ: “B&N Aims To Whittle Its Stores For Years”

WSJ: “B&N Aims To Whittle Its Stores For Years”

I saw this in my morning Flipboard read, and then several people alerted me through private e-mails.

WSJ article

You may not be able to read it by clicking or tapping on the above link, due to the WSJ’s paywall. If that’s the case, search for

B&N Aims To Whittle Its Stores For Years

through Google, and I think you’ll find the full article.

The article is by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, who, as I’ve said before, is my favorite mainstream writer on e-book issues (although this isn’t specifically e-book, it has an impact). Trachtenberg is accurate, insightful, and entertaining: a great combination.

The basic point is that Mitchell Kipper, “chief executive of Barnes & Noble’s retail group”, has said that they will close something like 20 stores a year, getting down to 450 or 500 stores in ten years.

I strongly recommend that you read the article: your interpretation may be different from mine, and certainly, mine doesn’t match everybody else’s who is commenting on this.

First, I think that projecting a steady closure rate is…optimistic at best. Unless they significantly change their inventory (which they could do), I’m guessing that it will happen in lumps, and may certainly accelerate. Leases may be staggered somewhat, but I would think 100 closing in a single year is not unreasonable.

Second, Kipper says that most stores are making money, and why would you close a store when it’s making money? Well, the simple answer is, “Why would you keep a store open until it is losing money?” It makes more sense to close a store that is making a marginal profit, than to commit that store through another lease if it looks like it might be losing money in three months. Even if leases are month to month, it can still make sense. Let’s say a store is making a $100,000 profit in a year…and will start losing $250,000? in three months? You don’t want to wait until the losses start.

My last point before you take off to read is the one that seem the strangest to me.

“Mr. Klipper said that bookstores serve a different purpose than many other retail outlets. “You go to Barnes & Noble to forget about your everyday issues, to stay a while and relax,” he said. “When you go to Bed Bath & Beyond, you don’t sit down on the floor and curl up with your blender and your kid.”"

Certainly, people like going to a bookstore and relaxing. Is that a viable business model, though? As a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, I can tell you that you are always fighting rent. If you have taken up a couple of square feet for an easy chair, that’s space you don’t have for a popular book. The concept is that somebody browsing a book is more likely to buy it…but what are the odds now that they browse it, and then buy it online? Becoming a bit hyperbolic, wouldn’t more people hang out in your grocery store if you put a swimming pool in it? Sure, but that doesn’t make sense for a grocery store to do…it’s too expensive for the amount of return.

I have said that bookstores that changed to a luxury sales model could work, and that could certainly involve “reading rooms”. However, I don’t see your typical Barnes & Noble becoming that. That would be a lot fewer stores with a lot higher prices, and much more customer service.

Investors may like this in the short run, because I don’t think anybody is seeing having all those stores as a good investment. However, people may also see it a red flag indicator, which could create a spiral of sell-off.

It’s interesting to me that people have reacted so strongly to this story, since it isn’t really much of a surprise…and B&N isn’t exactly confirming all of this. It feels like it is because it has such cognitive resonance: it confirms for people what they already think is true (but hidden from them), and that feels good.

What do you think? Can Barnes & Noble close stores on a steady rate? Is this an overreaction? Do you think B&N will be here for ten years? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Round up #144: Kanada, Amazon pulls an Ursula

Round up #144: Kanada, Amazon pulls an Ursula

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

E, eh?

In this

press release

Amazon announced yesterday much greater Kindle integration in Canada. Canadian customers have been able to buy books from Amazon.com in the past, but this sets up a solid localized presence, such as we see in some other global locations. The Paperwhite and Mindle (my name for the “entry level” Kindle) are now available directly to Canadians, they can now access a Canadian Kindle store from their devices (as opposed to buying from Amazon.com), and Kindle Direct Publishing expands as well.

While generally a big positive, this may have some people seeing takeaways also (which seems to be always the case). It may be necessary now to have the appropriate credentials (a Canadian address and payment method) to get some e-books and other media. Canadians living  in the USA may see books they would like to purchase, but not be able to do so because of their now American credentials.

On the other hand, this may bring more contemporary books in French and on topics of more interest to Canadians into the USA store as well…if they are produced for the Canadian market and Canadian Kindle store, they can also be sold in the USA (if they have the rights).

I haven’t heard yet, but my guess is that KDP authors’ books will automatically be made available in Canada if you have stated global rights, but I’m sure we’ll hear shortly. Yep! I just checked and my latest book, The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations, is available in the Canadian store, and priced at CDN $0.99.

This also, by the way, goes right after Kobo, which is headquartered in Canada (but owned by a Japanese company).

Amazon buys Ivona text-to-speech

As regular readers know, I use text-to-speech for typically hours a week in the car. I love that driving is no longer “wasted non-reading time”. I do drive quite a bit, and it lets me enjoy that much more than I did with music or talk radio.

I’ve been using TTS on my Kindles since my Kindle 2, and I’ve written about how I find Ivona, the TTS on my Kindle HDs, to be much better than the RealSpeak, Vocalizer, or Pico (which we have had on other devices with the Kindle name).

In this

press release

(and a private e-mail), Amazon announced that they have acquired Ivona (“I liked it so much, I bought the company”).

It’s interesting that the press release notes that

“IVONA offers voice and language portfolios with 44 voices in 17 languages and more in development.”

Does that suggest that we may be getting additional voice options for our Kindle devices?

Well, not necessarily, although I think it increases the likelihood. When Amazon buys a company, they don’t buy it just for their own use, but for its position in the market. Ivona will undoubtedly continue to sell  licensing to other companies, and perhaps even direct competitors to Amazon.

The ability to have a different voice on your machine is important, though. It’s not just that it sounds different, but that it can do a different language. The way text-to-speech works is that it doesn’t just sound out every letter, but makes use of phrases and sentences. If it had to sound everything out, it would be pretty incomprehensible (“campaign” might pronounce the “g”, for example). For TTS to do good French, or Russian, it needs to have been initially created in those languages.

TTS takes up memory, so I don’t think you will suddenly get the choice of 44 languages on your Kindle Fire HD. I do think you may be able to download different voices from the Amazon Appstore in the future (and they might or might not be free).

I think this also means that we might get Ivona on our Kindle Fire generation 1s, but I’m not sure about that.

One more thing: Amazon’s vast resources, and willingness to invest in the future with a present loss, suggests to me that they might do celebrity voices. Recording the voice for TTS (which is then reassembled as needed by the software) is labor intensive. However, can’t you see them paying for Samuel L. Jackson or Jane Lynch to become a voice option? Sure, I could have picked some other people, but have you heard Samuel L. Jackson doing Taylor Swift? (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEIQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fallthingsd.com%2F20130121%2Fviral-video-samuel-l-jackson-channels-taylor-swift-oh-goody%2F&ei=llYBUc_mNtHZigLcvoCwDQ&usg=AFQjCNF2EYKFHNK0PYG3OQpzM3c3iJr_9g&bvm=bv.41524429,d.cGE)?

There’s a lot of investment in having a star do this, but that could be an Amazon exclusive while Ivona continued to serve its other commercial uses.

Pew Internet: “Library Services in the Digital Age”

Major research firm Pew has placed on line this

summary

of a recent survey they did on library usage.

I know that I have readers that are passionate about public libraries and their current and future role in society, and I strongly recommend reading this piece.

They asked patrons and employees about current use and possible future use, and provide some very interesting statistics.

I don’t want to take too much away from them, so I’ll just cite a couple of things:

• More than half of the respondents thought that public libraries should “definitely” or “maybe” move some printed books “…out of public locations to free up space for tech centers, reading rooms, meeting rooms, and cultural events”
• I was fascinated by the apparent lack of impact of the Kindle on library goes. They asked how public library usage had changed in the past five years (the Kindle is a bit over five years old). 52% said it hadn’t changed. 26% said it had increased…and 22% said it had decreased. That’s not that big of a net change (although the change is positive). I would have expected something which revolutionized the way serious American readers read books to have more of an impact. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was a positive impact: I’ve borrowed public library books on my Kindle much more recently than I’ve borrowed a public library p-book (paperbook). Perhaps restrictive publisher policies on public libraries and e-books has dampened the impact?

The Guardian: “WH Smith plans to open more stores after Christmas boost”

Guardian article

W.H. Smith is a very well-known and influential UK bookstore chain (although they do much more than that, and in more places…I’m sure I’ve bought something in a W.H. Smith store in the USA, probably in an airport). They were influential in the creation of the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) system that we will use.

So, it’s interesting that they plan to open more brick-and-mortar stores in the future.

Barnes & Noble shouldn’t see that as too much of a ray of hope, though, and it’s certainly not all about paperbooks. Just as B&N has done, Smith’s has expanded other product categories in the stores, including stationery. They have invested online, which can provide support to the brick-and-mortars.

They had one the Guardian calls a loss in “underlying sales”.

Still, I”m impressed that anybody is opening more brick and mortar stores that carry the same products you can get online.

What do you think? If you are a Canadian, are you seeing any impact on what’s available to you? If you have both US and Canadian credentials, how will you decide which store to use (or will you have two accounts?)? Does it concern you that Amazon bought Ivona, or is that a good thing? Oh, and did you get the reference to Ursula? That’s the sea witch in Disney’s The Little Mermaid that “bought” Ariel’s voice. It wasn’t stolen, and you might commonly hear…it was a bargain (although Ursula certainly used underhanded methods…er, “undertentacled?). Whose voice would you pay to have reading you your books? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Round up #139: how tablets and bookstores did at the holidays, Color Purple for $1.99

Round up #139: how tablets and bookstores did at the holidays, Color Purple for $1.99

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

NOOK sales down 12.9% 

While I don’t see the press release yet at

http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/newsroom/press_releases_list.html

I expect it will be there later today.

Update: the press release is now posted here.

Barnes & Noble has announced holiday sales, and I’m glad they didn’t try to obfuscate the results.

Putting it simply, they weren’t good.

Here is one of the key things:

“The NOOK segment, which consists of the company’s digital business (including Readers, digital content and accessories), had revenues of $311 million for the nine-week holiday period, decreasing 12.6% as compared to a year ago.  Digital content sales increased 13.1%, while NOOK device unit sales declined during the holiday period as compared to the prior year.  Digital content sales are defined to include digital books, digital newsstand, and the apps business. “

Yes, digital content sales increased, and that’s good, but the offset for hardware  resulted in a significant decline. They sold fewer of them this year, despite having new (and generally well-reviewed) models.

I commend CEO William Lynch for honesty, saying they “…will adjust our strategies accordingly going forward”. That might mean fewer models this year.

Did Amazon do better with multiple models?

Thanks to a reader who alerted me in a private e-mail to this

Seeking Alpha post

The author, Adam Levine-Weinberg, makes a reasonable point that the Kindle Fire 8.9″ doesn’t sit atop the bestseller list at Amazon, and may not have done as well as might be expected. While I use mine daily, I would have to say it is the Kindle with which I have been least thrilled. It’s a lot more money for what doesn’t seem to me to be a lot more value over the 7″, at least for me. I got the 4G model, mostly so I could write about it, but I almost haven’t used 4G at all, except for testing it. The larger screen doesn’t seem worth the increased bulkiness, but that might be just me.

I recommend the article, so you can see the methodology.

$50 off KF8.9 for Amazon Students

Amazon is giving

$50 off KF8.9 for Amazon Students

this month, lowering the price to $249 for the least expensive.

For the wi-fi only model, that gets it down to a more reasonable price. You still have to decide if 2.9″ of screen size is worth $50 extra for you, and you do get X-Ray for Textbooks (which I have not tested yet).

Read the details at the above link before buying. You need to be a qualified member of Amazon Student (a type of Amazon Prime, basically), and that includes being a free member. You need to enter a code (KNDL4STU) at check-out.

KDD: The Color Purple for $1.99

Among today’s Kindle Daily Deals is The Color Purple by Alice Walker for $1.99. This is the Pulitzer Prize winner which was adapted into a movie direct by Steven Spielberg, and is currently a musical. If you haven’t read it, be prepared for it to be emotionally challenging.

As always, check the price before you click or tap that Buy button. This deal may not apply in your country, and it is for a limited time.

The Millions: “My New Year’s Resolution: Read Fewer Books”

Thanks to Publishers Weekly for the heads-up, through my morning Flipboard read, on this

The Millions essay

by Michael Bourne.

I think people very often read because they set goals for themselves, and that’s not a bad thing. One person might want to read a book a week, and another might want to go through a “books you must read” list.

I’ve done it myself. When I managed a brick and mortar bookstore, I read a book in each section (and encouraged my employees to do the same).

That wasn’t because I thought I’d enjoy and learn from each one, necessarily, but I thought it could make me a better person (and bookseller).

I also always finish every book I start…even though that can sometimes be tough slogging.

In both of those cases, it wasn’t reading for reading’s sake…it was, in a sense, to prove something. It was to have a sense of accomplishment.

Bourne relates it to running a marathon. It isn’t because you are trying to get somewhere, it is because you are trying to do something.

Certainly, there can be benefits to running marathons and to “reading marathons” (although on the former, I always want to point out to people that the marathon distance isn’t famous because it was healthy, but because it killed the first person).

It can also, though, be selfish. It can take time away from other things (and people) in your life, and if it isn’t really benefiting you (and them), is it worth it?

I thought the essay was a fascinating perspective, and I do recommend it.

Publishers Weekly: “Indie Bookstores Have Big Holiday Sales”

Speaking of PW, this is a heartening read

PW article

It is a report on their annual holiday sales survey of independent bookstore owners, and things look good. That included both long-established businesses and newbies.

That doesn’t mean that there weren’t and won’t continue to be significant closures. However, it does suggest that there isn’t a direct causative relationship between more e-content selling and local bookstores doing worse.

Asus gives up on netbooks

On the other hand, I do think tablets, like the iPad and the Kindle Fire, are directly impacting sales of netbooks.

This

gigaom article

makes it clear…after five years, the netbook is pretty much going away.

Simply, tablets are a better fit for the same functions.

It’s similar to the way that e-books are mashing the mass market paperback segment. Mass markets had the niche of being cheaper and more convenient than hardbacks or larger paperbacks. That role now goes to e-books (which also don’t decay in the same way), so MMPs are in real trouble.

What do you think? Will we see fewer new tablets and EBRs (E-Book Readers) introduced this year? Will B&N’s stock tank for the next couple of days (and then, perhaps, recover)? Are you still using a netbook? Should indie bookstores be supported just because they are indies? Why do you think people choose to shop there, rather than buying online? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Hey, bookseller: sell the book!

Hey, bookseller: sell the book!

Sell the book.

Sell the book.

Sell the book.

Look, this drives me crazy!

I’m a former brick-and-mortar bookstore manager, and every time I hear about bookstores refusing to stock a book in order to strike a blow at Amazon, it just makes me want to run into a store, point at the books on the shelves, point at the cash register, look at the poor person behind the counter who can’t make the decision anyway, shrug my shoulders in a big exaggerated cartoon way, and walk out again.

However, I’m too nice a person to do that.

Physical bookstores can survive in an internet world.

They can do it by being places people prefer to shop.

People won’t prefer to shop there if you don’t have the things they want to buy.

People won’t prefer to shop there if they think you are using them as pawns in some battle they either don’t understand or understand too well to want to be a pawn.

This

New York Times article

has the latest example of what I consider to be self-destructive behaviour.

Timothy Ferris is a super successful author, and the upcoming book

The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life

should have been a guaranteed hardback bestseller.

Trust me, it’s the kind of book a bookstore manager wants. It expands your customer base beyond the typical serious reader, and it will make a great gift this holiday season.

Get them in the door, satisfy the minimum (you have the book at a price they’ll pay), and make the shopping experience superior to what they get on line. If they like you, they will want to support you and will be willing to spend more money than they would spend on line to do so.

Customer service oriented stores (and a bookstore better be one) like to say that they are “Making customers, not sales”…but you can’t make a customer if you can’t make a sale. You can’t make the sale if you don’t carry the book.

Sell the book.

The part that really gets me about this, as detailed in the article, is that they will sell you the book (despite what is presumably a principled stand against giving Amazon money)…but only if they make it as unpleasant as possible to buy it in the store.

For example, you can special order it.

Yes, that’s going to get people to want to shop in your store instead of on line. Tell them it will take them longer to get it than it would if they bought it with 1-click…and they’ll have to get in the car, and drive through the seasonal weather twice to get it.

You know that second time they come into the store to pick up the special order? I’ll bet they don’t tend to shop as much that second time. Picking up the book is a chore, not a pleasure. They want to get in, get in line, and get out.

That’s very different from if they had walked into your store, seen a “wishing well” of the book on the floor (those stacks of books we used to make with a hole in the middle), or walked past it on an end cap. Bam! You’ve satisfied them, and as long as they are there, they might as well browse a bit. They didn’t know if they would have to go to another store, so they haven’t allotted a specific amount of time in your store. When they come to pick up a special order, they can budget the time (“I’ll just pop in for five minutes on the way to the dry cleaners”).

Sell the book.

The stores are also selling these Amazon-published books on their own websites: yes, that will clearly encourage people to shop in your store instead of on line!

Customer: “Do you have the 24-hour Chef?”

Bookstore: “No, but you can get it from our website.”

Customer: “Why did I even come in here then?”

Bookstore: “I really have no idea…”

Oh, good: I made a smiley face. My passion is winding down.

I don’t like it when emotions drive a post: I’d prefer to look at things logically.

“I can’t afford the luxury of anger.  Anger can make me vulnerable. It can destroy my reason, and reason is the only advantage I have over them.”
–Dr. Robert Morgan (played by Vincent Price)
Last Man on Earth (1964 movie)
screenplay by William F. Leicester, Richard Matheson*

It’s just that I’m passionate about books and bookstores. I want them to survive and I think they can. There is still a special experience to browsing in a bookstore with a knowledgeable and friendly staff. Even thought that vision of it may be partly just nostalgia for me, I still think it is possible.

But not if you don’t sell books.

What do you think? Should brick-and-mortar bookstores refuse to carry books published by Amazon? If they do, should they still sell them by special order and on line? If this book doesn’t do well, will that drive other megabooks away from Amazon as a publisher? How long can bookstores maintain a policy like this before it creates a death spiral of disappointed customers not shopping there any more?  Is it Amazon’s own fault for saying they love to “mess with normal”? That doesn’t tend to make the people who depend on normal happy. Will the longer sales cycle for e-books make up for a short-term loss at boycotting bookstores? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

*One of hundreds of quotations in The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations…not available in any brick-and-mortar bookstore.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Bookstores that won’t carry books

Bookstores that won’t carry books

What is the raison d’etre for bookstores?

It’s to sell books, right?

If a bookstore refuses to sell books, that seems self-destructive.

One of my regular readers and commenters, Harold Delk, directed me to this:

Publishers Weekly article

The Judith Rosen piece quotes several owners, managers, and other executives of brick-and-mortar bookstores explaining why they won’t carry books published by New Harvest.

Those are paperbooks published by Amazon imprints, and distributed by venerable (founded in 1880) publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

I have to say, there is some of the most upside down and backwards reasoning I’ve seen…at least, that’s the way it appears to me.

Let me address first the basic principle of not selling books. Absolutely, bookstores have the right to choose their merchandise (I’m a former bookstore manager). You don’t want to carry a book because it won’t sell? Perfectly reasonable. You don’t want to carry a book because you think it will offend your customers? Makes sense.

You don’t want to carry a book because you want to hurt the publisher? That’s just bizarre.

Who does it help and hurt?

The Customers

In the short run, this clearly hurts the customer. They can’t buy a book from you that they want. In the longer run, you might think you are helping them, by changing somebody’s else’s business practice…but the customer is likely to just buy the book somewhere else (like Amazon). If the customer doesn’t hear of the book, yes, that could hurt the publisher’s sales, which could encourage that company to change some practice, I guess.

The Store

Again, clearly a short term negative impact. The store loses sales. Perhaps more importantly, they could lose customers. You shop in a local store because you like their service (and maybe selection, although the internet beats that). It’s not good service to not have the book the customer wants. One thing that makes you return to a bookstore: you got a book there you loved. Fewer books, fewer chances for that to happen. Think you can explain it to the customer? “Yes, I know it has great reviews, but Amazon has business practices that we don’t like, so we aren’t going to carry it.” Customer’s response: “Who does carry it?” or “What practices?” Store: “They are selling books for lower prices than we can match.” Customer: “Um, okay…” Harold says that he won’t shop at any store that refuses to carry books like that…I would guess he won’t be the only one. Of course, many customers will have no idea about what is happening.

The Authors

They get hurt. Fewer sales, fewer royalties. Less discovery, fewer future sales. That even gets mentioned in the article.

The Publisher

They probably lose some sales, but this also weakens the power of the brick-and-mortar stores to influence the market in the future.

Other Publishers

They potentially win, but if this leads to fewer people shopping in brick and mortars, it means the tradpubs (traditional publishers) have to compete online…with Amazon.

Seriously, this is a lose/lose/lose/lose/lose. Of course, there are times it makes sense to hurt yourself. You see a little kid in the street, about to get hit by a car. You run out there and throw the kid to safety, getting hit and breaking your leg. That’s worth it. I can applaud the bookstore magnates for taking a moral stand. I just honestly think it’s hard to justify from a business standpoint.

Take this short quote excerpt from Vivien Jennings of Fairway Books in Kansas:

“Even if I’m super busy,” says Jennings, “I explain to [CreateSpace authors] about the sales tax thing and the DoJ.”

Let’s go through those two, and how I would explain them.

Amazon favors having a national sales tax policy. They want all internet retailers to be compelled to collect sales tax. Amazon’s Paul Misener has testified before Congress in favor of equal collection legislation.

What they don’t want is states making up their own (and very different) rules about who has to collect sales tax.

Amazon’s stand (and efforts to make it become reality) would likely benefit brick-and-mortar bookstores, because all (well, at least one that met a sales minimum, most likely) internet and mail order places would collect sales tax the same way those neighborhood stores do.

Is that what Jennings explains?

As to the DoJ (Department of Justice) thing…

There has been a real effort to spin this into an anti-Amazon case, when it is the opposite.

Does Jennings say, “Amazon was discounting e-books to customers, even though they were paying the same amount to publishers, and authors were therefore getting the same amount. Apple colluded, according to the Department of Justice, with five of the six largest US publishers to raise the prices that customers were paying…and to eliminate price competition, by making the e-books the same price regardless of what outlet was selling them.”

That’s what is happening.

I’m not saying that the DoJ couldn’t go after Amazon for anything…the e-tailer does have a “most favored nation” requirement in their contracts with independent publishers using their Kindle Direct Publishing , saying that the publisher can’t sell the e-book cheaper somewhere else. That one concerns me.

However, the current DoJ action says that Apple and the publishers were the bad guys and hurt consumers. Some of the publishers, without admitting wrongdoing, have already agreed to settle.

Maybe Jennings is explaining that, I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like it, though.

Here’s the hard part for me in this.

I think running a bookstore is a noble pursuit. Many bookstore owners/managers really want to help people find great things to read. I’ve spent many a wonderful time in bookstores.

These complaints, though, mostly sound like they are about money.

Clearly, if the goal was to help connect readers with books, you wouldn’t do it by keeping books out of the hands of readers.

Are bookstore owners/managers/CEOs upset because Amazon is doing that  better?

Sure, that makes sense. You want to make a profit, you want to stay in business.

It just doesn’t sound like the goal here is the enrichment of the reading community.

After you’ve read the article, I’d love to hear what you think. I’d be more than happy to discuss these points with any of those bookstore folks. Book people, as I’ve mentioned before, tend to be empathetic. While there are certainly passionate discussions around books (nowadays, you can find those online, in the “bookstream” inside a book on a Kindle Fire, and so on…and yes, probably in some bookstores), I think readers tend to be able to look at things logically and from many viewpoints.

What do you think?

If you have more to say to me and my readers, feel free to make a comment on this post.

Thanks again to Harold for the heads-up on this!

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.