Sunday, September 4, 2011

The Uncertain Future of Bookstores...or Books For that Matter

A recent trip to a Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Medford--just one of 700 of these megastores in North America---  confirmed for me that times were changing faster than I thought.

On one hand, the place still looked Iike a Barnes and Noble, the biggest chain of brick-and-mortar book stores in the USA.   I hadn't been in my local B&N in a while, preferring the cozier and admittedly cheaper air of a used book store or one that has fairly recent titles in a more human-sized form. Barnes and Noble offers row upon row of books of course and most of them are still very overpriced in my view. The "fiction and literature" section of the store featured new reissues of older  novels going for fifteen dollars--in paperback!  

 

 Some hard cover compendiums of works by certain writers like Douglas Adams, John Steinbeck, Jane Austen, Maya Angelou were available.  These often came with little other than the text of the books themselves.  No forwards or biographical background on the author, no criticism from top-flight authors or afterwords by the writers themselves. 

Many of the "classic" works were available but were published by Barnes and Noble's printing house.  Nothing wrong with that, per se, but I found it sad that they often went with a very old English translation of a book like "The IIi-ad" or "The Three Musketeers" by Dumas that was obviously in public domain. And the font  for some of their other classic books appeared to be not been reset in the last fifty years!  Only the covers were new.       

If you go into one of these places you can't miss right up front its big display for hand-held electronic gadgets for reading novels and such without buying an individual product.  It's called a Nook. The Nook is the new big thing, the little gadget you carry around to order books and read them on an electronic slate with a viewer.

Has anybody out there ever read a whole book on a computer?  I have no interest in that way of long-term reading.  It's one thing to read an article or an essay, but a 300 page book? Some journalists see this as a generational thing, but part of the fun of books is that you have them at home or office to refer to when you like. They are part of the decor as well, part of what makes a home a home  or a business office personal.  Does one really need to lose "the Nook" and with it the better portion of your library?  

And yet while independent and well-stocked bookstores are increasingly hard to find outside the major cities  and university towns, it appears that even the chain-leviathans of high cost books are losing their stores. Borders Books is no longer in business, as is Walden Books and a few others I could name.        

Most of us have seen products like Nook on television and the malls and such. . Now  while I don't fancy myself a Luddite it does also concern me that the consumer is being stampeded toward a way of reading that may be cheaper per unit for the publisher, and even the reader, but will also discourage new book-length works of fiction and non-fiction. An article in the London-based "Guardian" outlined that the cost of publishing would become more like the cost of everything else in media like music downloads and such--much cheaper.  This might be all right, as the author, Lloyd Shepherd suggests, or maybe Mr. Shepherd is a Pollyanna.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/30/death-books-exaggerated

 

 This would spell the end of major advances for news or "mid-list" authors, those who aren't household names but have a niche with readers who are loyal to a certain writer who might be talented but hasn't a mega-following of a Stephen King or a James Patterson.   The prospects for more literary authors might be even more dire. 

Advances by publishers that may be reduced by up to two-thirds soon.   So this sounds to me like the number of book titles will go down. Is this good for a literate society?  Will all serious writing be down to a few proven authors who cut their opinions to match the ever-bigger corporate entities that publish these fewer books?  

 

 How does an off-beat financial or sociological writer get published in an environment where no "small presses" exist to get the word out?    And how does that effect the "marketplace of ideas" that Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes spoke about in 1917 in his Supreme Court defense of first-amendment guarantees. How can an new paradigm of economic or scientific or theological importance be nurtured if you make the "gatekeepers" of our book selection ever more mindful of fulfilling a giant corporate agenda, an agenda that says in effect--"we will allow one or two ways of looking at a political problem or a historical time or a figure of controversy like Ronald Reagan or Margaret Sanger or Jesus Christ or Fidel Castro or  whomever.

Great writers of the past whom we revere today were sometimes mid-list writers for most of their careers. F. Scott Fitzgerald published little successful work in the last fifteen years of his life. Jane Austen was not a huge seller in her time, and now her work is globally recognized.  Graham Greene and Steinbeck struggled for years in the 1930s as newspaper writers until their fiction work began to capture public imagination.  More recently Don DeLillo, author of the acclaimed American novel "Underworld" was a midlist writer. 


And will great novels or non-fiction essays by new and dynamic non-English language writers even bother to be translated, or would that hurt the bottom line?  

Will the lack of even a mega-bookstore like Barnes and Noble as a bricks and mortar place in a town change the way we see books we might not have seen otherwise.   Some see this is already happening as  online book sellers like Amazon take away market share from the regular book stores, as well as evading paying the state taxes that regular commercial businesses have to charge.  Oh yes, Amazon will 'recommend' books FOR you.  But what about old school browsing yourself in a shop and finding your own "recommendations"?   

http://www.bnet.com/blog/publishing-style/why-barnes-nobles-nook-subscription-sales-may-spell-the-end-of-its-stores/1286

It seems the new way to publish books that is upon us is fraught with consequences people should think long and hard about before we all start relying on a few e-book spots for our book purchases.   

25 comments:

  1. Certainly not me but then I have a desktop pc still. I suspect reading a book electronically would be a much more comfortable experience with a handy little hand-held gadget, and I can see a place for the gadgetry of study books if you are a student for example. Lugging home satchels overflowing with heavy books from uni is not the most fun experience (and I always took out more than was required) so loading one's texts into a gadget would be pretty useful in that context I reckon.

    That is my most positive offering though. I'm thinking having to buy books in e-book form is going to to become so much more expensive for poorer people - first one has to buy the technology. Even to borrow "books" from a library would be made more difficult if people are going to have to own e-book technology first. And presumably have the electricity to charge the batteries on the appliances (tricky for people from some developing countries). And what about families? Do we have baby-version nooks for babies and wee kids? I'm thinking second hand bookshops would become a thing of the past also.

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  2. I think that is certainly one case--university book loads and NOT carting them around-- that a device might be 100 % useful, Iri Ani. And since the books are assigned for class, ll the better that a student wouldn't have to pay the full costs of the books.

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  3. I think that is certainly one case--university book loads and NOT carting them around-- that a device might be 100 % useful, Iri Ani. And since the books are assigned for class, all the better that a student wouldn't have to pay the full costs of the books.

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  4. Yes, that's what worries me about the libraries--that localities would try to save money by selling off books or storing them away so as not to pay employees.

    If a book is not published in traditional form, or only available in a limited edition in a traditional form, that would not be good. The child-friendly version is another matter I don't know much about but its a good point.

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  5. Yes, that's what worries me about the libraries--that localities would try to save money by selling off books or storing them away so as not to pay employees.

    If a book is not published in traditional form, or only available in a limited edition in a traditional form, that would not be good. The child-friendly version is another matter I don't know much about but its a good point.

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  6. Yes, that's what worries me about the libraries--that localities would try to save money by selling off books or storing them away so as not to pay employees.

    If a book is not published in traditional form, or only available in a limited edition in a traditional form, that would not be good. The child-friendly version is another matter I don't know much about but its a good point.

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  7. Yes, that's what worries me about the libraries--that localities would try to save money by selling off books or storing them away so as not to pay employees.

    If a book is not published in traditional form, or only available in a limited edition in a traditional form, that would not be good. The child-friendly version is another matter I don't know much about but its a good point.

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  8. Yes, that's what worries me about the libraries--that localities would try to save money by selling off books or storing them away so as not to pay employees.

    If a book is not published in traditional form, or only available in a limited edition in a traditional form, that would not be good. The child-friendly version is another matter I don't know much about but its a good point.

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  9. Yes, that's what worries me about the libraries--that localities would try to save money by selling off books or storing them away so as not to pay employees.

    If a book is not published in traditional form, or only available in a limited edition in a traditional form, that would not be good. The child-friendly version is another matter I don't know much about but its a good point.

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  10. Doug I recall Barnes and Nobles all so well - when Amazon started it was a newly wed couple which had an idea of people just ordering books from a website. Amazon started with one computer and a couple which made a contra marketing deal with several publishers. Many didnt think at that time that there would be a demand. Within one year from books in a basement they went to 4 10,000 sq.ft storage buildings - then Barnes and Nobles and so many others followed suit. Amazon then went into other venues. But here there is one large bookstore which was founded by a Paul McNally - he went from six tremendous bookstores to one huge one in Manhattan. Now he has had to close all his stores as there has been an impact with buying online and reading online.

    I myself still enjoy the feel of a read. I believe that reading entirely by a computer has pros and cons. Unfortunately society at large has come to be less literate - perhaps for the very reason that there is not that dedicated time within a read. As well, I believe that there are pros and cons for authors.
    I will never forget walking into the law library here within the university and I looked for the card catalogue and it was gone....Doug I could never read more than a short story by way of any form of gizmo. As well, three years ago I was sitting in the waiting room in the oncology department - there was a chap there whom was doing the same - he was a rep. for a book seller and back at that time we discussed exactly what you have brought up here.

    Many say within the next five years there shall be a uturn within all of these applets if you asked me five years ago - I would fancy the idea of the technology which is out there but now I have come to understand that there are upside and downsides to reading in length on here. Now could I read on a tablet, Henry Fielding's - Tom Jones the answer is no.

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  11. Doug, if you ever journey north to Portland, look me up. We'll go to Powell's.

    That's a bookstore.

    The last time I went to a B&N, they'd shoved the real literature to one-quarter of the store; the rest was chock-full of games, puzzles, trash-lit, and other junk. To me, it's not a bookstore - it's a junkshop in cahoots with McCoffee (aka Starbucks) to provide an 'entertainment experience'.

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  12. I asked for a kindle for my birthday and my friend Mark bought me one and I love it. I think some of your concerns are legitimate but I think there are advantages to an e-book. I can no longer lay down and read before I go to bed with a regular print book. That line in my glasses makes it too much work. I can bump the font up a notch on my kindle and all is well again. I now have my thirty minutes of reading time at bedtime back. As more and more things arrive in e-book format - magazines and newspapers and books - think of the trees that won't be cut down for the paper for those items. As I browse online at the free e books available (check out not only Project Gutenberg (.org) and also Open Library (.org)) I see many classics available for no charge at all. In my kindle store at Amazon there is an area called bestsellers on kindle that has free e-books that rotate through a list. Many of these are less known authors. I am currently reading one that I plan to get more of this authors work in the future and I am sure I will have to pay at that time for them. Sure it is sad to see book stores go out of business and people have to retrain to have jobs. But no one thinks we should go back to our 33mm cameras and film. I am sure Kodak people lost jobs and film developers lost business with the arrival of digital photography. Oh and one more advantage to my kindle. I live in a condo and space is limited. I don't have room for a personal library like I did when I lived in a larger home.

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  13. I bought Marianne a Kindle and we both love it. It is great to travel with. You have a plethora of books at your finger tips. It remembers your place and it does not weigh anything. I like the feel of books but I do not like lugging them around on planes.

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  14. Thanks for bringing so much information on Amazon I didn't cover, Jack. i don't think I could ever get farther than a short story myself on one of those things.

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  15. Thanks for bringing so much information on Amazon I didn't cover, Jack. i don't think I could ever get farther than a short story myself on one of those things.

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  16. It's a deal Will. I haven't been to Portland in donkey's years. I like to see Powell's. I hear its one of the biggest in the country.

    Yes, the B&N in Medford seems to be ghettoizing the books as well in favor of the do-dads. There was more room for calenders of course "The Nook" display And, yes, there's a Starbucks there.

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  17. It's a deal Will. I haven't been to Portland in donkey's years. I like to see Powell's. I hear its one of the biggest in the country.

    Yes, the B&N in Medford seems to be ghettoizing the books as well in favor of the do-dads. There was more room for calenders of course "The Nook" display And, yes, there's a Starbucks there.

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  18. It sounds like this Kindle works great for you , Mary Ellen. I've gone into Project Gutenberg but I really can't read anything other than essays on it. I still like to feel a book in my hands.

    Maybe more people can adapt. What worries me is that, unlike film photography, there is no way of knowing how much won't get published because the book industry will be swallowed up into the e-book trade. That may be okay for established authors, but a lot of new voices from different cultures will face obstacles.

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  19. It sounds like this Kindle works great for you , Mary Ellen. I've gone into Project Gutenberg but I really can't read anything other than essays on it. I still like to feel a book in my hands.

    Maybe more people can adapt. What worries me is that, unlike film photography, there is no way of knowing how much won't get published because the book industry will be swallowed up into the e-book trade. That may be okay for established authors, but a lot of new voices from different cultures will face obstacles.

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  20. It sounds like this Kindle works great for you , Mary Ellen. I've gone into Project Gutenberg but I really can't read anything other than essays on it. I still like to feel a book in my hands. And its really uncertain to me how the pricing will stay lower when the regular book industry vanishes.

    Maybe more people can adapt. What worries me is that, unlike film photography, there is no way of knowing how much won't get published because the book industry will be swallowed up into the e-book trade. That may be okay for established authors, but a lot of new voices from different cultures and lower economic places may face obstacles.

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  21. I guess there are advantages for traveling there with these things. I'd like to have both book and this electronic option available, Fred, but it seems likely from what I've read that the paper versions will be squeezed out of the market.

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  22. I have had a Nook (their low-end, black-and-white model) for a couple of months now and love it. It's not like reading off a computer screen. It's not backlit or anything--it's just like reading off high-quality paper and printing. Plus, as said before, lots of titles to be stored and not lugged about.

    We are in kind of a transition phase with the technology. I am not pleased with the way eBook providers (especially Kindle) seem to think that lending is the enemy of sales...ignoring nearly two centuries of practice that demonstrate otherwise. I also see the digital divide between access to technology and the works themselves. You all make a great point: eBooks can be cheap as dirt, but if you can't afford the delivery device, you're still stuck. However, I am pretty confident that the devices will come down in price over time, similarly to the way cellphones have become ubiquitous, even amongst poor folks.

    I, too, like physical books but I think eBooks are great as well. As a community college librarian, I totally see the use of the technology for textbooks--making them cheaper and more portable (and more update-able) for students is nothing but good.

    David Weber, a well-known military sci-fi author, spoke to this at a library conference I attended this summer and really made a great point. The printed book is not dead and probably won't die--especially the hardback. What may die is mass-market paperback. Because eBooks address the exact needs that created the mass-market paperback in the first place: the need for cheap, easily portable, books. Hardbacks will continue to be bought and enjoyed by those that like the feel of a physical book.

    Anywho, it's an exciting time for publishing and for reading right now. I think it's going to be a bumpy ride until we get a lot of these fundamental questions ironed out.

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  23. Thanks Shedrick (and to everybody else) for contributing so much to my understanding of what to me was a rather cloudy and precarious issue in this "new wave" of publishing.

    I am heartened to hear librarians and authors speaking well of this new system, and not forecasting the end of all types of non-digital book publishing. The changes brought about with the introduction of the trade paperback is of course a useful benchmark for what's going on today I suppose.

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  24. "Now while I don't fancy myself a Luddite it does also concern me that the consumer is being stampeded toward a way of reading that may be cheaper per unit for the publisher, and even the reader, but will also discourage new book-length works of fiction and non-fiction."

    On the one hand, they have this bunch of really neat gadgets to take reading from page to screen.
    On the other, reading is so 20th century. It doesn't even have pictures.
    Ideas matter more than the format they are presented in, don't you think?

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  25. Yes, in the final analysis we need as many ideas in all venues as we can get, Heretic.

    That's why I'm for as many venues as possible.

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