“When I was growing up, record stores were a place you could hang out. In a really great store — one of those big city leviathans spread over several stories — you could spend the best part of a day flipping through the racks looking for hard-to-find records, obscure titles, things you’d never even heard of.
“Teenagers today probably have no idea what I’m talking about. Who goes to a record store? Why don’t you just download your music onto your iPod?
“As recently as 2001 there were music stores everywhere. As many as 80,000 people worked in them, according to the Labor Department. And that was a number that had been steady for years.
“In 2002 the iPod took off. Today the number working in music stores is 20,000 — a 75% collapse.
“As for the book industry: About 125,000 people still work in book stores and news dealers, according to Labor. How many of them will still have jobs in two years? Another 75,000 work in book publishing. When writers self-publish in electronic format, how many publishers will still be left?”
Get ready for the bookstore massacre
Commentary: E-books are the future and Amazon dominates, by By Brett Arends, August 17, 2010 (via PWxyz)
I think the model is changing to POD bookstores. Places where you browse the models (like haute couture), pick out what you want and have a cup of tea while it’s printed and bound in the back. There’s a bookstore with an Espresso machine like that in NYC right now, I just read about it at PWxyz last week. I think what will survive in the future are small bookstores, used bookstores, bookstores that sell other things or services, concert venues with bookstores, whatnots with bookstores, etc. Full disclosure: I never go to bookstores, but I would like to be able to if I’m ever so inclined. One of my favorite bookstores on Earth is at Beyond Baroque, but I never get there unless there’s a poetry reading I drag myself out to, which is seldom. But they have books, chapbooks, zines, and other cool book-like things of poetry that I can never find online and that I wouldn’t buy if I wasn’t able to flip through it standing in the store. I buy a lot of poetry there that way; it’s wonderful. So Long Live the Bookstore – Adapt or Die.
PS. I also don’t think eBooks are going to destroy print books. Unless we all end up living in sterile underground chambers where we read from screens suspended over our biochambers (or something – who knows?) I believe print books will be around for quite a while yet. We’re not hardwired to read books (books haven’t been around long enough) but the habit and the kinetic experience of reading paper books goes deep most readers. Shopping in bookstores is a luxury. The physical/emotional/intellectual experience of reading a paper book is almost a need. Childrens books, for example, how many copies of Goodnight Moon have been lovingly mauled over the years? Pop-up books will become museum pieces because there are no pop-up books in eBook format.
Lastly, if you drop your book in the bathtub, that’s one book. Drop your iPad, that’s your whole library, the iPad and whatever else you had on the iPad. So there!
(Also possibly of interest: Paper Freaks in the Digital Age, by Ginger Mayerson, J LHLS, Fall 2004)
And a world without excess inventory and waste in general.
“For over a decade we have had before us a technique for publishing books called print on demand. Those who witnessed its introduction at a book expo in 1998 declared the process revolutionary. Though it’s taken a decade or so to refine the technology, they were absolutely correct. The delivery system has matured and begun to make serious inroads on the traditional one. Though representing only 2.5% of all book production in 2009, it is expected to grow at 16% per annum according to David Taylor, president of Lightning Source, the nation’s biggest POD firm. The first generation of Espresso POD machines, now being installed in libraries and bookstores, promises to expand the technology’s popularity even further. As anyone who has seen a demonstration of the Espresso can testify, the process itself is a technological miracle and will most certainly be miniaturized. It is easy to imagine a day when POD kiosks – in bookstore or non-bookstore venues – will issue books from an infinite inventory of digitally stored titles.
“But it is not just the technology that is so exciting to contemplate. It’s the business principle underlying the process that promises the invigoration and perhaps even the salvation of printed books.”
Publishing 3.0: A World without Inventory Part 1, by Richard Curtis, [e-reads], April 18, 2010
I’m glad I’m not the only one saying this. Also see the comments on the [e-reads] webpage.
“Q: If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have 3 things, what would they be?
“A: A fully outfitted frigate, a skillful crew and a satellite phone. I’d sail the high seas, rescuing people marooned on desert islands with only three things. I’d be known as the Dread Pirate Mayerson, the Scourge of Silly Interview Questions. And if I had an internet connection I’d blog about my adventures.”
Review & Author Q&A: Electricland with Ginger Mayerson, YouSayToo.com, July 10, 2010
“PHOENIX (AP) — Minutemen groups, a surge in Border Patrol agents, and a tough new immigration law aren’t enough for a reputed neo-Nazi who’s now leading a militia in the Arizona desert.
“Jason ‘J.T.’ Ready is taking matters into his own hands, declaring war on ‘narco-terrorists’ and keeping an eye out for illegal immigrants. So far, he says his patrols have only found a few border crossers who were given water and handed over to the Border Patrol. Once, they also found a decaying body in a wash, and alerted authorities.
“But local law enforcement are nervous given that Ready’s group is heavily armed and identifies with the National Socialist Movement, an organization that believes only non-Jewish, white heterosexuals should be American citizens and that everyone who isn’t white should leave the country ‘peacefully or by force.’”
Man with neo-Nazi ties leading patrols in AZ, BusinessDailyReview.com, July 17, 2010
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…
“We’re here to discuss the best use of the weapons and explosives you got this morning, sir, and don’t try to tell me you didn’t,” Isabella said. “You know as well as I do that a semi rolled up here at six and unloaded crates marked as heating and plumbing supplies, and was gone by nine. The Imperial Wizard appreciates your efforts on behalf of a more secure and pure America.”
“And who might you be?” he asked, reeling a little from how much this woman knew about his day, but still playing it cool.
“I’m Mary Anne Evans and this is Marlene Lamarr,” Isabella said.
“Our people also appreciate the efforts of the Minutemen for a more secure and pure America,” Kate’s voice was monotone and her posture ramrod straight. “And your efforts for the White Race have not gone unnoticed by those in authority. Our organization contributed to this morning’s shipment and I am here to offer what assistance is needed.”
“The Aryan Nations have sent you one of their best advisors,” Isabella told Martin, who was looking a little pale. “Maybe we could sit down someplace and talk.”
Page 63, Electricland, review copies available upon request.
Weird, huh?
“… Between 2002 and 2008, annual sales had grown just 1.6 per cent, and profit margins were shrinking. Like other struggling businesses, publishers had slashed expenditures, laying off editors and publicists and taking fewer chances on unknown writers.”
~snip~
“Good publishers find and cultivate writers, some of whom do not initially have much commercial promise. They also give advances on royalties, without which most writers of nonfiction could not afford to research new books. The industry produces more than a hundred thousand books a year, seventy per cent of which will not earn back the money that their authors have been advanced; aside from returns, royalty advances are by far publishers’ biggest expense. Although critics argue that traditional book publishing takes too much money from authors, in reality the profits earned by the relatively small percentage of authors whose books make money essentially go to subsidizing less commercially successful writers. The system is inefficient, but it supports a class of professional writers, which might not otherwise exist.”
Publish or Perish. Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business? by Ken Auletta, The New Yorker, April 26, 2010
Hm.
