Yay Failing Book Stores?

[Mistwell]

Those prices are as low as they are because they are competing with the convenience of brick and mortar stores. Once competition is removed, do you really think they're going to keep those prices low?

Short term thinking is why our economy periodically goes "Boom!"

Once brick and mortar competition goes away, yes the prices will still remain low on the internet. Because if they do not, someone else will start another internet company that undercuts the prices of the bigger internet company.

Books will always remains cheaper on the internet than they are in brick and mortar stores, and you will always be able to buy them on the internet. It's one of those things that just works well with the net.

 

[Mistwell]

The last time I bought books in Borders (or any brick-and-mortar bookstore, except my FLGS) was Christmas Eve 2008, when I picked up a couple of novels for the holiday. At the checkout, I was given a voucher good for 15% off any single purchase in January.

I was quite pleased about this until I remembered that Amazon routinely offer 15% or more off every book, all of the time.

Ironically, Borders routinely sends me 30% off any one item, and sometimes 40% off any one item, coupons. They come in email, as a result of joining the borders reward club thing (which is free). So I routinely buy my D&D books at Borders, rather than on Amazon. They are the same price (exactly the same most of the time), but there is no shipping delay, nor shipping cost, and I can look at the book before I buy it, and pick my copy to make sure it's in the condition I want it.

 

[Mark]

Right, but cultures don't do this forecasting well. If we did we would have put a lot more effort in the the space program for the last 30 years. We would have been looking for a replacement for gasoline (petrol) in the 30's. It is not just the western culture it is every culture. Humans as a group just don't predict things well.

We've gone from steam to oil and are on the brink of going toward solar/wind (which we will) in about a century and a half. After 10,000 years of walking, we went from Kitty Hawk to the Moon in less than seventy years. Communications tech has bounded forward in the last two decades. I'd say modern cultures forecast relatively well.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So with all of these draw backs of which only a couple can be over come with technology why would people as a whole choose to give up paper. I think people are over reacting.

The main reasons, IMHO are:

1. The convenience of being able to tote around hundreds or thousands of titles in the space of a single hardcover book.
2. The ability to have access to eBooks that may not be available in physical form locally.
3. The ability to zoom text- both very convenient for those whose eyesight is weaker than average, and cheaper than the usual solution of buying lots of hardcovers.

Those reasons matter to anyone, but may be more important in developing nations or nations with repressive regimes.

 

[Krensky]

4. That when I go for lunch, a cigarette break, am waiting for a scan to finish or an image to load, or for bathroom break no one thinks it's odd I have my smartphone with me or that I'm looking intently at it. A paper book would attract attention.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

While your other points are valid (not sure I agree it's that big of a deal though) these aren't true.... At least as far as the Kindle is concerned.

The pages aren't anymore straining on the eyes then regular paper (which actually surprised me) and a magnet won't erase the memory in a kindle. It's flash memory- so it's not based on magnetics.

How old are you?

Me? I'm 42, and I find the eReaders slightly more of a pain than a physical book...and I read all the damn time: I'm an attorney who is currently pursuing yet another degree.

My mom is in her 60's, and the only saving grace of the eReaders we've sampled for her is the ability to zoom the text. But even so, its not easy for her.

As for the threat of magnetics, I'm no engineer, so I could very well be wrong on that.

I'm sorry, that makes absolutely no sense. B&M stores are perfectly capable of selling e-books. Online retailers already sell massive amounts of paper books. One type of retailer isn't intrinsically tied to one product or the other. If people want paper books in the future, the answer is to buy paper books instead of e-books right now. Where they buy those books doesn't make a bit of difference.

Oh wait, I take that back. Since the number of paper books sold will have a direct impact on how likely it will be that paper books will remain available in the future, buying more books at a cheaper price through the online retailers will do more for keeping paper books on the market than buying fewer books at more expensive prices at B&M stores.

Yes, it does make sense: I didn't say not to buy eBooks, I said to shift the bulk of your purchases away from online retailers.

A B&M retailer simply cannot compete with an online retailer on the basis of costs- their physical plant makes this impossible.

Assuming, arguendo, that Amazon and similar retailers drive all major B&M bookstores out of business, you will have what is called oligopsony- a market of purchasers (in the B to B market) so small that they dictate the structure of what is supplied by the market suppliers. To drive their already low costs even lower, Amazon and the like could demand that the bulk of books sold to them be electronic only (further minimizing their already nearly non-existent storage costs). With the B to B demand for physical books sharply in decline, it becomes more expensive per unit to produce physical books (as economies of scale break down)- like previous recent examples include cassettes and LPs, and soon the CD- making them less profitable for the publishers.

Even if they continue to sell physical books, Amazon, etc.- operating as an oligopoly to the general public- can price those books at almost any price they care to...further strengthening the market appeal of the eBook.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

4. That when I go for lunch, a cigarette break, am waiting for a scan to finish or an image to load, or for bathroom break no one thinks it's odd I have my smartphone with me or that I'm looking intently at it. A paper book would attract attention.

LOL!

OTOH, its a lot more likely to have a smartphone slip out of your hands *ker-plop* as opposed to a book...which would likely not fall further than your lap.

I was on a trip to Russia, and with only 3 days left before we were to go home, one of the guys on the tour had exactly that happen to his digital camera.

 

[Nai_Calus]

The main reasons, IMHO are:

1. The convenience of being able to tote around hundreds or thousands of titles in the space of a single hardcover book.
2. The ability to have access to eBooks that may not be available in physical form locally.
3. The ability to zoom text- both very convenient for those whose eyesight is weaker than average, and cheaper than the usual solution of buying lots of hardcovers.

Those reasons matter to anyone, but may be more important in developing nations or nations with repressive regimes.

...Many of which speak languages that don't have hundreds of thousands of ebooks, many of whom have spotty electricity, many of which are simply too poor to afford dropping 260 bucks on a Kindle, let alone having internet access to download books with or ten bucks a pop for a book. And an oppressive regime isn't going to allow stuff anyway.

I know I sure as hell can't afford a kindle/any other kind of e-reader, and I can guarantee you that even with being unemployed for two years I still have more money than people in truly developing nations typically have.

(But I am anti-ereader, so take things as you will.)

 

[Stormonu]

*shrug*

In this day and age of e-mail and electronic deposit, I'm still surprised people send hand-written letters by snail mail or mail checks to pay bills. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop with e-readers becoming the mainstream way of getting and reading books, alongside cell phones, mp3 players and even laptops/netbooks.

For every reason against e-readers, there are as many reasons paper books are bad. It just generally costs more if it happens to the e-reader. I've had spines break and pages fall out of books from wear and tear, books ruined from having juice/degreaser/water spilled on them, pages torn, hardcovers bent and the like. On the other hand, I once dropped my Palm PC into my kid's (full) pool and it still works, several years later. I still use it to store my core books & run a character sheet database program for my D&D games, actually.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...Many of which speak languages that don't have hundreds of thousands of ebooks,

Nai, I don't know where you live, but most of the non-Americans I know have learned English as their second or third language, and many learn it well enough to read at a fairly decent level.

many of whom have spotty electricity

True, but many of them, in an effort to improve that, have adopted alternative energy sources, either as a national effort or from certain altruistically-minded individuals or organizations. Solar power cells for powering small appliances- especially including TVs, radios and computers- are becoming increasingly common in the developing world.

many of which are simply too poor to afford dropping 260 bucks on a Kindle, let alone having internet access to download books with or ten bucks a pop for a book

An excellent point.

Still, I wouldn't be surprised to find people pooling their resources to get one (or more, if they can swing it) to have what would essentially amount to a mobile library for their community.

As for the Internet access, I know few Nigerian priests who tell me that, while Internet access can be unpredictable outside of African cities, its not non-existent. The reason? Most of the developing countries of Africa have found it to be cost-prohibitive to invest in the buried cable networks that form the main structural investment of traditional phone service and have gone straight to cellular to improve their country's infrastructure. And just like in first world nations, those wireless networks are carrying more than just phone calls.

And an oppressive regime isn't going to allow stuff anyway.

True, true.

When I went to Russia, there were restrictions on what kind of electronics I could carry into the country without filling out pages and pages of paperwork.

So I just left all of my electronics at home. AWESOME. QUIET. VACATION.

But don't underestimate the ability of people to smuggle. An eReader packed with a few hundred "subversive" works could be quite valuable...and whatever is valuable is viable for sale on the black market.

In addition, don't forget the impulse of certain regimes to get their hands on the technology themselves, either to retro-engineer the tech for their own purposes or in the form of state-subsidized industrial espionage for producing their own counterfeited tech.