dear publishing industry

[dr_memory]

Today it finally happened: on my way out of the house this morning, I realized that I’d just finished the last book I was reading, and it was therefore time to pop the next one off the to-read stack.  The next one being a luscious-looking hardcover volume.  I looked at it, looked at my backpack, felt my shoulders a bit, took a deep breath…

…and

Comments

[cos]

Publishers aren't going to save bookstores. Bookstores can save themselves only through becoming something other than merely a place people go to find and buy books, because people can find and buy books so much more conveniently without going to the store in person - even if publishers do all the right things and people keep wanting to buy printed books. Bookstores will do other things:

- go out of business

- sell food and become spots for people to go out on dates

- have owners and/or staff who are both very knowledgeable and want to chat with you, so you go there for that (very few bookstores will survive on this model, but some will for a time)

- have a theme that combines well with some other thing for which it's useful to have a space - for example, a scifi/gaming bookstore where people can get together to play games

- whatever else they think of that focuses on making a space people have a reason to go to, that also ties in to having books there to sell

Eventually for most "bookstores" I think the bookstore identity will be secondary.

Edit: I should add that a few bookstores will become online booksellers with a physical store you can visit. That's working out quite well for Powells and for the Harvard Bookstore (which I'm very glad for, because it means that place will remain for me to visit in person whenever I want), though I don't know if this will turn out to be viable for more than a few. One nice thing about having a local bookstore that is also an online bookseller is that I can still search for and buy books from my desk, but choose to pick up in person, which still gets me into the store when I otherwise would've just had those books mailed to me.

[huaman]

As far as keeping a local business from closing down, the answer to that is pretty straightforward regardless of what the business is. People have to spend money there. It's easy to cite obstacles to doing so; I would contend that if an individual does not in fact spend his or her money at a given business, he or she does not actually value its existence as highly as all that.

[cos]

The relationship is indirect enough that people make a lot of decisions that don't quite line up with how much they actually value things. In theory they wouldn't do that, if the feedback were more direct, but that's a complicated problem.

I know that part of the reason I usually buy books online from Powells and Harvard (rather than Amazon or B&N) is because I like the physical stores and want them to stay, but that takes conscious thought and is a deliberate habit I developed for a reason after some consideration. I have no faith that enough people will take enough thought to reflect what they value comprehensively; I'm sure I miss on many other things I haven't considered enough.

[huaman]

So if you lack that faith, what do you think is gonna be the long-term result? "Now all restaurants are Taco Bell?" Or something else?

[cos]

I think this is tangential to what I was saying, because I don't actually know (nor does anyone else, as far as I'm aware) to what extent people value bookstores as bookstores, like in the past. So regardless of whether people would value bookstores enough to keep lots of them alive if only there were enough direct feedback to make them express that in how they spend, or if people actually don't - either way, I think what will actually happen is that bookstores will either go out of business or transform in the ways I described in my earlier comment. I don't know how successful those transformations will be and how many bookstores we'll still have after another decade passes, but I do think the ones we'll have then will mostly be the ones that have transformed in those ways, and that most bookstores will be something else, with a bookstore component.

[awfief]

The point that everyone seems to have missed is that in his original post, N isn't saying "I want electronic media INSTEAD of a book", he's saying "I want and love the physical media AND I want a digital copy, please."

[dr_memory]

Yes, that. Or perhaps more precisely: if you make me choose between the two formats by pricing them separately, I'm going to (in many/most cases) regretfully choose the digital one (if it's available), and you're really not going to like the long-term implications of that for your bottom line.

[huaman]

I don't think it's nearly the impact on the bottom line that you think. This isn't like music, already.

[huaman]

I'm not missing that point. I'm asking what on earth makes him think the publisher would have any interest whatsoever in sweetening the deal for print... let alone doing away with a status quo (even a temporary one) that results in someone buying *two* copies of the same product.

[awfief]

Because he specifically says he won't be buying both in the future, hinting that he'll only buy the digital one because the format is more convenient.

[cos]

I am thoroughly puzzled as to what this reply has to do with my comment.

dr_memory was clearly talking about wanting to preserve print books. But he also said, "But I’d really like to see my local awesome specialty bookstore not go out of business as a result of your general incompetence." My comment is a response to that: I'm making the case that continued demand for print books isn't going to make bookstores survive.

[awfief]

I was replying to the whole thread -- including earlier comments and such.

It's kind of like in an actual conversation, other folks have had time to make their points and I only got a word in edgewise now, so I may be backtracking a bit.

Certainly if the product they are selling is no longer desired, though, bookstores will go out of business much sooner.