Lower E-Reader Prices Make Them More Tempting

I've said this before: I'm a book guy. Good old fashioned paper books, complete with the smell, the weight, the feel. Yet, as the prices for e-readers like the Nook and the Kindle come down to earth, I find them tempting. It's not that I want to toss away my library and clear my bookshelves for knick-knacks, but I like the idea of a library in a slim piece of electronic gadgetry.

I don't think of books as consumables. I don't read books and then dismiss them. I like knowing they still exist on my shelf (in a tangible, physical form) for me to reference. I know that if I want to go back to a particular story in Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, the book is there. E-readers are good for folks who might read a book once and be done with it, but I'm beginning to think that they might be good for reference too. Might not be bad, when I'm sitting down to write several pages tonight, to pull out a Kindle and reread "Car Crash While Hitchhiking." And I think they might be very good for non-fiction, for the important books that come out in hardback and make a stir but you don't necessarily need them on your bookshelf for all of eternity (I still need to get around to Nassim Taleb's Black Swan).

And what about magazines? I am definitely a magazine reader, thought I rarely seem to get through them. Wouldn't an e-reader be the best place for The New Yorker or Business Week?

So, I'm tempted.

I did put my hands on a Nook a couple of weeks ago, and I wasn't impressed. It felt clunky and the model on display at the store was stuck loading a page. The sales person had to power it off and back on to get it working again.

But then I wonder if I would be doing damage to two industries I'm fond of, publishing and bookselling. I'd rather not aid in the demise of either.

I'm not convinced that I'm buying one of these things yet, but with more reasonable pricing it is worth considering.

The Future of Books and Bookselling

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article this morning on the effects of ebooks on books and bookselling, but the tone is particularly negative. The general assumption is that digital books will kill bookstores in the same way that digital music has killed music retailers. I don't think it is quite that simple.

Books are a particularly tangible thing. In music, the CD or vinyl LP was was a medium only--a way to get to the music. For books, though, what we're after is more than just the words. The book experience is key. Holding the book, flipping the pages, dog-earing, underlining, annotating, sharing, and having that physical asset on the bookshelf is all part of what makes up the book experience. I don't think this is only true for book lovers, but I will admit that for those who consume and then dispose the mass market beach read things might be different. It may be these readers who make up the target market for ebooks. The question, then, is what share of the book buying market is made up of these consumers.

Maybe I just want to hold onto the past. Maybe I just want to believe that there is a future in the physical book and bookstore. What share of the market is made up of people like me?

Another book sale (darn professionals)

Friday was the opening day of our county library's spring book sale (never mind that it's really summer now). I stood in a line of probably a hundred people, waiting for them to open the doors. Once inside, we all scattered to our various corners. I went to what they called "adult fiction."

Now, I like used books as much as any book lover would, but I was not pleased to realize that so many in that line were professionals, booksellers (on eBay or elsewhere) with their little hand-held scanners scanning any book that looked valuable. Not only was stepping over these people a pain, but I can't help but resent that these people are trying to capitalize on this book sale in order to resell the books and make a profit. I'm a good capitalist, too, but a book sale is for book lovers, for those looking for a good find, looking to complete a collection, looking to find new reads. If it were up to me, I'd ban those damn scanners and let make those folks scan the books with their eyes like the rest of us.

Despite this frustration, I came away with a decent haul. And I'm looking forward to going back on Sunday, when they charge by the bag.

Here's part one of the haul:
Ask the Dust - John Fante (I've seen this book come up in many discussions, so I'd better add it to my list)
White Teeth - Zadie Smith (Award winner, right?)
The Confessions of Nat Turner - William Styron (Another one that appears on all "the best" lists)
Delta Wedding - Eudora Welty (It's Welty and I haven't read it, so I'd better)
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford (Probably already have this one)
The Tortilla Curtain - TC Boyle (could've grabbed about a dozen TC Boyle books, so just one this time)
The Easter Parade - Richard Yates (this one's supposed to be more depressing than Revolutionary Road, so it's definitely on my list)
Like Life - Lorrie Moore (short stories by a modern master)
Nausea - Jean-Paul Sartre (my other New Directions edition is so well-worn it's lost its cover)
In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway (Scribners paperback)
Ulysses - James Joyce (classic Vintage paperback)
Hunger - Knut Hamsun (another one it's hard to believe I've never read)
The Trial - Franz Kafka (the cover keeps falling off my other copy--I say that's why I haven't read it yet)
Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth (some day I'll have and have read the entire Roth collection)
The Human Stain - Philip Roth (add another one)
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway (another old Scribners paperback)
Winner Take Nothing - Ernest Hemingway (and again)
The Colossus - Sylvia Plath (a 1968 paperback)
Walden - Henry David Thoreau (with a handwritten inscription: Readings in Am. Lit., Denver University, Winter Qr '59)
Built to Last - James Collins and Jerry Porras (the one business book -- I don't really like Jim Collins, but this one's now a business classic)

Franchising Booksellers

I'm always thinking about ways to resurrect/save/reinvigorate the bookselling business. So, when I heard this week about Starbucks' trouble (closing 600 company-owned stores), I begin to wonder about their troubles and translating it to another retail industry


I am one of those hypocrites who complains about the big-box bookstores killing the industry while simultaneously shopping there myself. There's a Barnes & Noble gift card in my wallet right now. There are maybe two main reasons people like us shop at these stories. First is their ubiquitousness. These stores are everywhere. Certainly much closer to me than my nearest (decent) independent bookstore. The second reason we frequent these sorts of places despite our moral qualms is that we know what to expect.

The retail franchise model supports these two explanations, but does something more. It puts the success or failure of the store in the hands of the franchisee. This is why I think it could succeed as new model for bookselling.

The corporate office in the franchise provides branding, which may be the most important element of what they do, but they also offer support. Support is much different than mandates. I'm not sure how much liberty the buyer at the local Borders has, but I'm relatively certain the books they chose to promote, what ends up on the stores displays, in their windows, are directed from some corporate office far, far away. An independent owner/operator, though, would have freedom to respond to his/her individual market, absent of corporate mandates.

Now, since the time my mind crossed this possibility, I've been imagining many different scenarios, many different ways the relationship between franchiser and franchisee could work. I just want to put the thought out there. I know little about the industry in detail, and my knowledge of the franchise set-up comes from my time as a manager at a pizza delivery chain. So, I'm no expert, but maybe someone out there knows more and could help build the business case--or, tell me I'm just wrong.

Do you ever feel bad for the books in the bargain section?

I do. I admit it. Not for the schlocky books that of course they over-bought. But I feel bad for the quality books sitting there, with their marked down $5.98 price tags, being ignored. It is the first section I go to, before even the new releases. But, did I buy anything there on my most recent trip to that big-chain-box-store? No.

What Makes a Book Successful

In the New York Sun, David Blum writes in "How Not to Write a Bestseller" about how the highly praised novel Then We Came to an End by Joshua Ferris was not a success because it never appeared on the NY Times bestseller list. The hardcover book, though, is already on its fourth printing. That sounds like success to me. Bestseller status isn't required for a mid-list book to be successful and profitable. But expecting it, a book by a first-time author, to sell like James Patterson is idiotic.

The fact is that there are difference audiences for books. Smart audiences don't drive the bestseller lists. They don't. The majority of books bought and sold are very predictable and tested books. James Patterson does not require a good review in the NYTBR to sell a lot of books. People who read Patterson or David Baldacci (numbers 1 and 2 on the NY Times Bestseller Hardcover Fiction list as I write this) are not turning to the NYTBR to read about new books. The reviews that praised Ferris's book certainly garnered it more sales than it would have seen otherwise, but a review also let's people know something about the books (besides the subjective thumbs-up or thumbs-down) that helps them decide whether they might be interested in reading it. Ferris's book is written in that annoying "Rose for Emily" collective perspective. My guess is that this turned some readers off and, I'll admit, has made me a little reluctant to read it.

Blum's article goes on to make some great points about bookselling that I absolutely agree with:

What if bookstores created sections devoted to that week's best-reviewed books? Or posted positive reviews alongside the books themselves? That way, book reviews (even those that appeared only online) would be easily accessible to those most likely to buy books — people already browsing in the bookstore. Right now, bookstores place all their marketing muscle behind bestseller lists, meaning that prize positions get awarded to those who've already won the horse race. Even movie theaters operate according to more democratic principles than that. Shouldn't good bookstore placement go to good books? Just a thought.

But that would require that bookstores care more about selling interesting books more than they care about selling what they know will sell. They don't. Yes, this idea would likely sell more mid-list books, and more books I'm interested in, but they might sell less books overall.

Used vs. New

There's nothing in the world like a library book sale. I had the pleasure and luxury of going to one twice last weekend. Once when hardbacks were $2 and paperbacks were $1, then again on the last day when a bag stuffed full of books was only $4. I know, I know, I should be supporting publishers and authors by purchasing new books, but it also makes me a little sad to see a really good book out on the table along with twenty dusty copies of really bad popular books. I came home with over forty books and part of me wonders why I would ever go to a book store again.

As much as I love used books, I have never bought as many new, hardcover books as I have this year (D'ambrosio, Woodrell, McCarthy, Ford, and more). And not just as gifts. I'm more than pleased to help out their numbers and shell out the money for books I'm dying to read. When books get a little older, I wonder why I should being paying full price for a book that's been sitting there on the shelf for a couple of years or more when I can go to a book sale or used bookseller and pick up the same book at a considerable discount.

I have always loved used book stores. Dark aisles, shelves crammed with books. I'm always looking for the rarity, the special first edition or out of print book I can't find elsewhere. And then there are classics, public domain books or not, in mass-market size that I really should own and read. How can I rationalize paying full-price for these?

I don't really think I can take a side on this. I'm cheap and I love a good bargain, but I want to support authors and the industry. So, if I want To the Lighthouse, I'll look for it used, and if I want the next Litblog Co-op pick (I'm particularly interested in Sidney Thompson's collection Sideshow), I'll buy new.