Four months ago, it mattered if libraries were or weren’t a direct threat to booksellers. Today, this question is irrelevant. What matters is that the participants in the industry aren’t innovating at the pace readers are seeking and expecting solutions v. reading’s alternatives.

When looking specifically at traditional publishers and booksellers, two questions arise:

1. Could it just be that traditional booksellers and publishers aren’t innovating quickly enough to meet the needs of today’s authors and readers? (Absolutely)
2. Could it be that traditional booksellers and publishers are being out innovated by, of all parties, cash and funding-strapped libraries? (Absolutely)

Libraries have, for a very long time, been battling competition from not reading. They’re experts in this area – which is why they made such consistent inroads as an early competitor to booksellers and a thorn-in-the-side of publishers.

What I don’t understand from this article is exactly what changed so drastically in the last four months. It seems to me that getting people to read instead of doing other things (like Angry Birds) has always been part of the issue…

(Source: twitter.com)

William Lynch, chief executive of [Barnes & Noble], told Fortune magazine Tuesday that he planned to have near-field communication installed in Nook e-readers as early as this year. The technology would make it possible for browsers to touch books in the store with Nooks to get more information, such as reviews, and then purchase titles in whatever format they want.

This will be worth watching, and may even provide some ideas for libraries in terms of providing information about electronically available content to the people browsing the shelves. (Though, as I understand it, some libraries are already pointing to their e-content through things like QR codes and shelf signs.)

(Source: lisnews.org)

Lengthy, but an interesting read that pieces together some of the developments in the booksellers vs. Amazon tale.

(Source: twitter.com)

Sue Little of Jabberwocky in Newburyport, Massachusetts, one of New England’s longest-running indie bookstores agrees. “People who love books are feeling fiercely protective of their books and booksellers.” Her customers travel from farther away than ever, she adds, because they’re seeking that unique bookseller’s experience. “It’s like people wanting to pay farmer’s market prices not only because they want fresh produce, but because they want to keep local farmers in business. They see value in bookstores.”

On the other hand, Little has jumped into the e-reader market with both feet to stay afloat. Customers can now download e-books at her store or through her web site via a new IndieBound app. “If we can replace physical sales with sales of downloads, we’ll be fine,” she says.

(Source: twitter.com)

Instead of getting in fights with Amazon, publishers get in fights with libraries, and they don’t even understand what libraries do. Not only do libraries create future writers, they create and nurture readers. In fact, statistically, library users are publishers’ best customers. Despite all this, publishers claim borrowing ebooks from libraries makes it too easy to get around paying for books, and they fear their profits are being hurt. Random House is the only publisher left who doesn’t impose strict sanctions on the ebooks they allow libraries to lend. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster don’t allow any library copies of their ebooks.

(Source: lisnews.org)

Unrelated to libraries (though there are some points that also relate to libraries, like the expectation that the person at the desk knows what every single book is about), but fun to read.

(Source: scienceblogs.com)

Booksellers should not expect to be visited by a friendly Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Publishing sales rep anytime soon. Rather, in an agreement announced today, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish the print versions of all of the adult titles from Amazon Publishing’s New York-based division (run by publishing industry vet Larry Kirshbaum), and will distribute them everywhere in North America outside of Amazon.com.

…

A possible wrinkle: Barnes & Noble could still refuse to carry Amazon Publishing titles—as could any anti-Amazon independent bookstore. Barnes & Noble does carry the print version of The Hangman’s Daughter and other HMH-distributed Amazon titles, however. And the line from independent bookstores has tended to be that if their customers request Amazon Publishing titles, they will stock them, though they might be reluctant to do so otherwise.

(Source: twitter.com)

Booksellers and publishers are worried that Amazon is going to devour their industry. The giant online retailer seems to have its hands in all aspects of the business, from publishing books to selling them — and that has some in the book world wondering if there is any end to Amazon’s influence.

Publishers have a problem when it comes to discussing Amazon: They may fear its power, but they are also dependent on it, because like it or not, Amazon sells a lot of books. But lately, the grumbling about Amazon has been growing louder, with some in the book industry openly describing Amazon’s tactics as “predatory.”

(Source: lisnews.org)

1. Let me subscribe to my favorite authors.
2. Keep books updated for one price.
3. Buy a print copy, get an electronic copy, too.
4. Give more of my money to authors.
5. Indie bookstores should sell e-books.

(Source: lisnews.org)

want to show how this entire argument pitting local book stores against online-bookselling juggernaut Amazon is based on profoundly flawed premises. It misses the significance of Amazon’s transformation of retail — not just books — as well as the transformation of literary culture that’s been wrought by the web. And not just Amazon.

These arguments, reducible as they are to the back of a 3-by-5 card, are almost always actually symptoms of something much more complicated that’s harder to wrap our heads around. It’s like being given an advanced calculus problem and not knowing where to begin — so you treat every letter “x” as if it were a multiplication symbol instead of a variable, because that’s a problem you know how to solve.

Another reaction post to the Slate piece is on Salon: What Slate doesn’t get about bookstores (via)

(Source: twitter.com)

Some interesting arguments are made in this piece. Not sure I agree with everything, but as one who is very attuned to how much things cost, I can sympathize with some of the reasoning. (Ultimately, I use my library rather than buying my reading material—that’s even cheaper than Amazon. ;-) )

What rankles me, though, is the hectoring attitude of bookstore cultists like Russo, especially when they argue that readers who spurn indies are abandoning some kind of “local” literary culture. There is little that’s “local” about most local bookstores. Unlike a farmers’ market, which connects you with the people who are seasonally and sustainably tending crops within driving distance of your house, an independent bookstore’s shelves don’t have much to do with your community. Sure, every local bookstore promotes local authors, but its bread and butter is the same stuff that Amazon sells—mass-manufactured goods whose intellectual property was produced by one of the major publishing houses in Manhattan. It doesn’t make a difference whether you buy Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs at City Lights, Powell’s, Politics & Prose, or Amazon—it’s the same book everywhere.

[…]

But say you don’t care about local cultural experiences. Say you just care about books. Well, then it’s easy: The lower the price, the more books people will buy, and the more books people buy, the more they’ll read. This is the biggest flaw in Russo’s rant. He points to several allegedly important functions that local booksellers play in fostering “literary culture”—they serve as a “gathering place” for the community, they “optimistically set up … folding chairs” at readings, they happily guide people toward books they’ll love. I’m sure all of that is important, but it’s strange that a novelist omits the most critical aspect of a vibrant book-reading culture: getting people to buy a whole heckload of books.

(Source: twitter.com)

Encouraging news. I would’ve posited that maybe people are giving print books as gifts for the holidays because they can’t afford to give an ereader, but some of the books mentioned cost as much or more than some of the basic ereaders, so I’ve got nothing. :)

But the initial weeks of Christmas shopping, a boom time for the book business, have yielded surprisingly strong sales for many bookstores, which report that they have been lifted by an unusually vibrant selection; customers who seem undeterred by pricier titles; and new business from people who used to shop at Borders, the chain that went out of business this year.

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookstore chain, said that comparable store sales this Thanksgiving weekend increased 10.9 percent from that period last year. The American Booksellers Association, a trade group for independents, said last week that members saw a sales jump of 16 percent in the week including Thanksgiving, compared with the same period a year ago.

(Source: twitter.com)

Although Anobii’s founding CEO, Matteo Berlucchi, tells an imaginative and persuasive story about converting the social aspect of books into a commercial proposition (which has been the effort of independent start-up Copia for the past year), I think the challenge for them and for Bookish, the US version of a publisher-sponsored online book retailer, is steep. The problem for them is the same as B&N’s; Amazon brings resources and ammunition to this competition that stem from a much bigger base than the book business alone. They can use books as loss-leaders to sell more movies or computers or groceries. (By the way, this is exactly what brick book retailers coped with competing for bestseller business with mass merchants who could sacrifice margin on books that brought people into their store because they could make it up on other items.)

(Source: twitter.com)