Entries tagged with “retailers” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Publishers Need to Get In on the Conversation
Peter Brantley
November 19, 2008
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Kassia Krozser has a Cluetrain-like manifesto for publishers. From Booksquare:
It's time to get your hands dirty, to dig into the real-world conversation. It's a weird thing, and sometimes awkward and uncomfortable, especially if you're accustomed to public relations-speak and the cheerleader behavior that accompanies marketing messages. When you talk directly to real people who read and buy books, they tune you out when you try to stay on message. If they wanted to rehash cover copy, they'd read the back of the book.
Change Always Leaves Someone Behind
Mac Slocum
November 11, 2008
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Seth Godin discusses the realities of digital change and free distribution in an interview with HarperStudio's The 26th Story:
... the market and the internet don't care if you make money. That's important to say. You have no right to make money from every development in media, and the humility that comes from approaching the market that way matters. It's not "how can the market make me money" it's "how can I do things for this market." Because generally, when you do something for an audience, they repay you. The Grateful Dead made plenty of money. Tom Peters makes many millions of dollars a year giving speeches, while books are a tiny fraction of that. Barack Obama used ideas to get elected, book royalties are just a nice side effect. There are doctors and consultants who profit from spreading ideas. Novelists and musicians can make money with bespoke work and appearances and interactions. And you know what? It's entirely likely that many people in the chain WON'T make any money. That's okay. That's the way change works.
(Via Differences & Repetitions and Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter Stream.)
Tracking Amazon's Dominance in the Book Industry
Mac Slocum
October 17, 2008
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Morris Rosenthal says retail figures point to Amazon eclipsing Barnes & Nobles in U.S. book sales this year:
The book selling wars that began four decades ago with the rise of the mall chains, followed by the growing power of the Barnes & Noble, Borders and BAM superstore chains, has been won by Amazon. Amazon sales are on track for double-digit gains again this year, aided in part by high fuel prices discouraging trips to the regional superstores that have replaced so many local bookstores. Amazon's North American growth in media sales (books, music and movies) may exceed the incredible 23% gain they turned in last year. Amazon is on pace to sell more books in the US than the entire Barnes & Noble chain in 2008, even allowing for a higher music and video mix. If you add Amazon's international stores to the mix, they will easily sell more books than Barnes & Nobles plus Borders this year.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
October 16, 2008
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In Defense of Piracy (Lawrence Lessig, Wall Street Journal)
The return of this "remix" culture could drive extraordinary economic growth, if encouraged, and properly balanced. It could return our culture to a practice that has marked every culture in human history -- save a few in the developed world for much of the 20th century -- where many create as well as consume. And it could inspire a deeper, much more meaningful practice of learning for a generation that has no time to read a book, but spends scores of hours each week listening, or watching or creating, "media."
Where is everybody? (Joe Wikert, TeleRead)
"If you build it, they will come" only works in the movies. If they really want to succeed Borders needs to do something beyond just making all this technology available in the store. Where are the in-store events (e.g., come let us help you research your family name, come see the latest e-book technologies, etc.)? How about signage in other areas of the store that promotes the tech kiosk area?
Mass book digitization: The deeper story of Google Books and the Open Content Alliance (Kalev Leetaru, First Monday)
Both projects offer the ability to search within a particular work, but only Google offers the ability to search across its entire collection. A search across the OCA archive only searches titles and description fields, not the full text of works. The OCA system thus offers a document-centric model, while Google offers both document and collection-based models, allowing broad exploratory searches of its entire holdings: the equivalent of being able to "full text search" a library. The importance of this difference cannot be understated in the limitations it places on the ability of patrons to interact with the OCA collections.
10 Things Ebook Merchants Should Offer
Peter Brantley
September 29, 2008
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Jane at Dear Author has a wonderful list of 10 things ebook merchants should be providing as a matter of course. Here's just one example, but read the whole list:
Buy a for a friend. The only site that offers this feature is Fictionwise. Amazon does not even offer this for Kindle which makes no sense. When a reader wants to buy a book for a friend, she wants to buy a specific book. She doesn't want to send a generic gift certificate and hope her friend uses it for said book.
Kindle vs Sony Reader: Battle of Distribution Channels
Mac Slocum
September 17, 2008
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The face-off between Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Reader is broadening beyond tech specs and ebook formats. Now it's a battle of distribution channels.
Sony started selling its PRS-505 e-reader and related accessories in Target stores earlier this week. Sony Readers are also available through Borders, Waterstone's, and Web retailers, including third-party sellers on Amazon.
Amazon's Kindle push is limited to one very large Web channel: Amazon. But will that be enough to seize the e-reader market? Joe Wikert recently touched on this topic:
... Amazon has an awareness problem. They might be thrilled with the device's sales rate up to now. It may have exceeded their greatest expectations. They apparently insist on capturing 100% of the revenue for it though, hence their direct-only sales model. Meanwhile, Sony is chipping away by embracing the EPub format and striking distribution deals with Borders and now Target.
The Web has a tendency to amplify messages beyond their natural boundaries, sometimes to the point where Web hits are incorrectly projected as surefire mainstream blockbusters -- be they devices or movies or anything else that generates ample Web interest. Amazon's reach and the Kindle's technology -- especially its wireless capabilities -- have painted the Kindle as the dominant device in Web circles. But hit products need to resonate with the millions of people who don't pour through RSS feeds on an hourly basis, and Sony knows a thing or two about nurturing the mass market. Assuming we eventually receive confirmed e-reader sales figures, it'll be interesting to see how Amazon's mix of online publicity and Amazon-only distribution stacks up against Sony's traditional approach.
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
August 28, 2008
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Transforming American Newspapers (Part 1) (Vin Crosby, Digital Deliverance)
Contrary to myopia of many newspaper executives, advertisers aren't newspapers' primary customers. Although advertising revenues may be sunshine for newspaper executives, the roots of their business are readers. A newspaper with readers will attract advertisers but a newspaper without readers will not. Readers ultimately support and sustain the newspaper business.
(Via E-Media Tidbits)
The Customer is Always Wrong (Richard Nash, Ecstatic Days)
... there is a real tendency in our business to treat the customer as this perverse, mysterious, gullible, arrogant, narrow-minded, slightly thick, imperceptive lug. We largely talk down to him, dumb down for her, expect the least, fear the worst, and generally leave it up to the retailer to figure out how to reach him or her -- we'll get the book onto their shelves, we'll pay them some payola, and then it's their problem. Of course it's not, and not just because we're in the only business where 100% of the product can be returned for full credit. It's because fundamentally a publisher's job is to connect the writer to the reader. Not the book to the retailer, but the writer to the reader. (Via Jose Alonso Furtado's Twitter stream)
On Writing For "Free" (John Scalzi, Whatever)
... the point to make, again, is that "free to the reader" is not the same as "unpaid to the writer." I have gotten paid for the fiction I've put online. I do get paid for it. And, barring a sudden windfall of cash that obviates the need of me having to worry about money ever again, I will continue to make sure I get paid for it. And naturally I encourage other writers to make sure their own economic interests are served when they have stuff put online that is free for readers to view.
(Via TechDirt)
BookTour and IndieBound Make Author Events Hyper-Local
Peter Brantley
August 26, 2008
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BookTour, which provides author-generated pages and a listing of author tour events, has integrated their database with IndieBound. This is an interesting model, which obviously could expand in its breadth. From the BookTour blog:
... the trouble is neighborhood bookstores are all different (that's what makes them great). That made it hard to dump all their data into our hoppers in one go ...
Now, throughout BookTour, events taking place at IndieBound-represented bookstores will be added automatically to our database. Equally important, on both author and venue pages, when an event is taking place at an IndieBound-repped store, you'll have the option to purchase the book directly from that store.
News Roundup: The Crowdsourced Cat Book, Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book, EBay vs. Amazon (Round 2)
Mac Slocum
August 22, 2008
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Amazing but True Cat Stories is a 38-page coffee table book born from the combined efforts of Mechanical Turk contributors. The creator/editor of the book, Björn Hartmann, describes the genesis of the project on his blog:
The idea for this book was born in Terminal A at Washington Dulles, where I was stranded for some hours in late July 2008. To spend my time, I posted the following two tasks on MTurk:
1. What's the craziest thing your cat has ever done? Write at least one paragraph about a funny, unbelievable or otherwise memorable incident involving your cat. This should be a real story that happened to you or your family.
2. Sketch a cat. With or without an environment and toys. The cat can be drawn in software or on paper. Do not upload photographs of cats. Have fun! (Continue reading)
Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book
James Bridle discusses the near infinite malleability of digital books. From booktwo.org:
Imagine a book that told a different story every time it was opened. The story might change depending on the gender of the reader, or the sex. It might depend on the location of the reader, or the position of the book in time; the time of day, or time in years. Centuries might pass before the book tells the same story again. (Continue reading)
EBay is moving into Amazon's territory. Citing reduced consumer interest in online auctions, eBay is refocusing on fixed-price "Buy It Now" products. From the New York Times:
Among the changes being announced Wednesday [8/20/08] is a new pricing plan for sellers who offer fixed-price items in eBay's "Buy It Now" format. Starting in mid-September, sellers will pay only 35 cents to list an item for 30 days, a reduction of about 70 percent in upfront fees. EBay also announced that it would no longer allow most customers to pay by check or cash, a change aimed at curbing fraud. Users will need to pay with a credit card or through eBay's PayPal online payment service.
Direct competition between eBay and Amazon is nothing new. Amazon tried to capitalize on eBay's success by launching its own auction business in 1999, but by 2001 it had scaled back its auction efforts.
EBay Wants You to Buy It Now
Mac Slocum
August 20, 2008
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EBay is moving into Amazon's territory. Citing reduced consumer interest in online auctions, eBay is refocusing on fixed-price "Buy It Now" products. From the New York Times:
Among the changes being announced Wednesday [8/20/08] is a new pricing plan for sellers who offer fixed-price items in eBay's "Buy It Now" format. Starting in mid-September, sellers will pay only 35 cents to list an item for 30 days, a reduction of about 70 percent in upfront fees. EBay also announced that it would no longer allow most customers to pay by check or cash, a change aimed at curbing fraud. Users will need to pay with a credit card or through eBay's PayPal online payment service.
Direct competition between eBay and Amazon is nothing new. Amazon tried to capitalize on eBay's success by launching its own auction business in 1999, but by 2001 it had scaled back its auction efforts.
News Roundup: B&N Won't Buy Borders, Kindle Roadblocks and Sightings, Pirates Convince Game Developer to Drop DRM
Mac Slocum
August 15, 2008
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Report: No Borders Bid for Barnes & Noble
It looks like Barnes & Noble won't acquire Borders after all. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) says B&N is changing course from earlier this year and will not submit a bid for Borders.
Kindle Projections, Roadblocks and Sightings
Theresa Poletti from MarketWatch comments on the relative absence of Kindle sightings, particularly in Silicon Valley:
The biggest problem is the fact that the Kindle is only available online, via the Amazon.com Website. For many consumer electronics products, potential buyers need to touch and feel the device, to pick it up and play with it, before making any kind of purchasing commitment ... (Continue reading)
Pirates Convince Game Developer to Drop DRM
"Why do people pirate my games?"
Game developer Cliff Harris recently posed this question on his blog and the onslaught of responses caught him (and his blog host) by surprise. Harris offers some interesting conclusions, but most notable is this passage on digital rights management (DRM):
People don't like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood. If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it. These gamers are the low hanging fruit of this whole debate.
Harris says his company will no longer use DRM on its games.
Report: No Borders Bid for Barnes & Noble
Mac Slocum
August 14, 2008
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It looks like Barnes & Noble won't acquire Borders after all. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) says B&N is changing course from earlier this year and will not submit a bid for Borders.
Reinventing the Book and Killing It are Separate Things
Mac Slocum
August 11, 2008
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Richard Cohen has a bone to pick with Amazon, the Kindle, digital books, and anyone who threatens the welfare of bookstores, children and unknown literature. From Cohen's Washington Post column:
... over at Amazon they are inadvertently thinking of ways to make the world worse for children and for the grown-ups who love them to pieces. What Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon's founder, wants more than anything is to do away with the book as we know it. "Jeff once said that he couldn't imagine anything more important than reinventing the book," said Steven Kessel, one of Bezos's top guys. Kessel is in charge of digitizing everything in sight.
Nothing more important than reinventing the book? Not ending world hunger? Not taking Rush Limbaugh off the air? None of these? What's wrong with the book? I understand that it's bulky and expensive to ship and that it entails the consumption of paper, which is probably not green, but then what is? The book has been around for a very long time (Google the exact number of years, please), and I love it so.
Cohen's column adheres to the "book lover overreaction" we've discussed previously. Market forces and changing consumer tastes may indeed signal the end of traditional bookstores, and that's something to lament and fight against. But this idea that digital books have been set loose by entrepreneurial masterminds -- diabolical sorts intent on destroying the print universe -- is overwrought. "Reinventing" the book is not synonymous with "killing the print book." Digital books are nothing more than alternative delivery mechanisms for content. Their intent (if ebooks can have intent) is to expand choice, not eradicate the printed volume.
I can't tell if Cohen is saying goodbye to print books or bookstores or some combination of the two. His column is clearly a cathartic exercise, not a market analysis, but the association he seems to make between a downturn in bookstores and the rise of digital books is incorrect. Bookstores are in decline partly because consumers are purchasing their core product -- print books -- through online retailers like Amazon. Ebooks may eventually achieve widespread adoption and, by extension, lead to the shuttering of traditional bookstores, but that's not currently the case.
A Broad View of Amazon's Influence
Mac Slocum
August 8, 2008
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Neil Denny looks at Amazon's positive and negative influences on book publishing's constituencies. From The Bookseller:
The web, if not Amazon, can't be uninvented: retailers and publishers need to find ways to make it work for them or they will face an increasingly difficult future.
Mobile Barcode Scanners and Retail Stores on Collision Course
Peter Brantley
July 15, 2008
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Ilya Vedrashko points out a near-term future scenario in which retail sites are going to have to entirely rethink what integration into online services means:
The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and where the same product is available for a lower price. Brick-and-mortar stores become little more than showrooms for merchandise bought elsewhere.
This future just got one step closer today [July 12] with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, "a shopping assistant meant to help you find online and local prices when you're out and about shopping." For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.
Indiana's "Explicit" Law Struck Down
Mac Slocum
July 2, 2008
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An Indiana law requiring retailers who sell explicit material to register with the state was struck down by a U.S. Federal Court on First Amendment grounds. From the Indianapolis Star:
The law would have required anyone who intended to sell sexually explicit materials -- which plaintiffs say could have included classic literature, as well as pornography -- to register with Indiana's secretary of state, pay a $250 fee and submit a statement with details about the materials. It would have applied to new businesses and existing ones that relocated or began selling the materials after June 30.
As the article notes, the law's intent was to restrict businesses that sell pornographic content from moving into areas with limited zoning regulations, but the legislation's broad framing of "explicit" material put other retailers -- including booksellers -- at risk.
Update 7/3 -- Indiana's attorney general says the state will not appeal the ruling.
Amazon's Road to Profitability: Toll Booths on Your Road to Readers
Andrew Savikas
June 17, 2008
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Though mentioned here back in May, some recent strong-arm tactics by Amazon UK have been picked up by the New York Times, which is referring to the removal of the "Buy Now" button as "the literary equivalent of a nuclear option for rebellious publishers who balk at its demands":
“Amazon seems each year to go from one publisher to another, making increasing demands in order to achieve richer terms at our expense and sometimes at yours,” Mr. Hutchinson said in the letter. “If this continued, it would not be long before Amazon got virtually all of the revenue that is presently shared between author, publisher, retailer, printer and other parties."
This kind of aggression from Amazon is becoming commonplace, but it's worth a step back to try and understand the broader strategic context that might underlie these moves.
Read more…Borders Cuts 274 Positions
Peter Brantley
June 3, 2008
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Borders is cutting 274 jobs, with most of the hit being absorbed by corporate groups within the company's Ann Arbor, Mich. headquarters. From Publishers Weekly:
Borders stressed that with a few exceptions none of the cuts came at the store level and a spokesperson said there are no plans to reduce the number of store employees. The cuts represented about 20% of Borders's corporate positions but only 1% of its total workforce.
The cuts are part of Borders' move to reduce expenses by $120 million over the next year and a half, PW reports.
Late last month, Barnes & Noble said it is studying a possible acquisition of Borders.
Borders Goes Solo on New Web Site
Mac Slocum
May 27, 2008
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Borders has separated its e-commerce offerings from Amazon and opened its own Web site. From the New York Times:
The new Borders site offers plenty to like, such as the Flash video-based "magic shelf" on the main page that recreates the experience of browsing the tables of new books at the entrance to stores. The site also ties in with the Borders reward card program and the physical book search kiosks in most Borders outlets, and offers video of author book signings and book discussion groups.
The launch of Borders.com comes as the retailer tries to navigate through unsettled conditions. In March, the company hired outside firms to explore business alternatives, including a sale. More recently, Barnes & Noble said it is studying a possible Borders acquisition.
B&N Considering Borders Acquisition
Mac Slocum
May 21, 2008
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When Borders announced its exploration of "strategic alternatives" in March, speculation marked Barnes & Noble as a possible suitor. The Wall Street Journal says B&N is taking that speculation seriously -- it's assembled an advisory team to study an acquisition of its brick-and-mortar competitor. From the WSJ:
That Barnes & Noble is contemplating a bid illustrates how competitive book retailing has become ... Not only have Amazon and other Web retailers taken a significant portion of the $15 billion consumer book business, but also book sales have shown little real growth in recent years.
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