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today's folksy advice for modern people
Aug. 26th, 2009 07:20 amIt's hard to climb out of a hole when you keep looking down to text message.
Aug. 26th, 2009
Borders, books and e-books
Aug. 26th, 2009 08:24 amOne of the interesting things I read this morning is a discussion about where Borders is financially. I don't shop there even though it's one of the most convenient bookstores to me. I stopped when they made half the store into a music store. No one should buy a CD from them since their prices were so egregiously high ($18.99 for a CD regularly priced for $11.99 at Best Buy and that wasn't the best price) ... and plus it was right at the beginning of online music sales, even if the downloads thing didn't go anywhere, Amazon was selling CDs.
In the course of reducing shelf space, the science fiction section was cut by 50%. Then about two-thirds of the remaining shelves were devoted to graphic novels and tie-ins. Functionally they now had 1/6th the selection. They were happy to look something up for you and to order it from their warehouse, but it took 7-10 days to get it. It was faster to order from Amazon.
I miss being able to browse for books, I cannot seem to get from one book I liked to another book I might like when using Amazon. People who liked one book "also liked" lawnmowers and crates of fruit leather. So it's really difficult to find anything new there even without the skewed recommendations engine which seems to think I will like something merely because it is being heavily promoted.
But it wasn't functionally any different than shopping at Borders. When Borders noticed their sales were dropping, they increased the size of their children's nook and eliminated the science fiction section entirely---except for the movie tie-ins.
As a bookselling business, they deserve to fail because they don't sell books as their primary business anymore. It's about the children's toys, the cafe, and the music sales. Books have become an afterthought for Borders.
The original poster's answer to booksellers struggling has been that everyone should be handling e-book sales. I don't agree with that because I don't buy e-books. The problem with all the digital formats is that the purchase price is not a purchase price, it's a term-unspecified lease. If you buy in e-pub format, you don't have rights to other formats. Converting it between formats is possible using Calibre, but a violation of the DMCA. If you bought in e-pub and put it on your portable device and the device gets stolen, you have to buy it again. Theoretically people keep copies on their base computers, but there are a lot of publishers claiming having 2 copies is illegal under DMCA. The problem with that particular law is that violating it makes you a terrorist and subject to indefinite detention, rendition, and a complete suspension of your rights as a citizen and your rights as a human being. It's not a huge leap to see that buying e-books means you can be seriously harmed for relatively minor infractions of rules no one tells you apply.
The other thing I have against e-books is lack of durability of contents. Sure, that would be convenient if the revised version of the book you bought fixed the typos or corrected errors in instructions instead of making you go out and fetch errata and try to kludge them into your bound copy. But without the ability to compare to the original, how would you know what they were changing?
The fic I just finished reading has the same author, the same title, and the same premise as the one I'd thought was abandoned. But there are distinctive differences that I happen to remember because they were so very specific, like if it said, "He was 5 feet 7 and a half inches tall." Then in the revised story, it says "moderate height". It's not hard to notice that kind of change. But I would not have noticed if it went from "average height" to "moderate height"-- at least not after 3 years, unless I could diff.
So the only way I want an e-book is if I own the paper copy as well. And to do that, I'd have to buy it twice.
But the real reason I don't like e-books is because you can't give your copy away when you're done with it because it was never yours. The publisher was just lending it to you.
In the course of reducing shelf space, the science fiction section was cut by 50%. Then about two-thirds of the remaining shelves were devoted to graphic novels and tie-ins. Functionally they now had 1/6th the selection. They were happy to look something up for you and to order it from their warehouse, but it took 7-10 days to get it. It was faster to order from Amazon.
I miss being able to browse for books, I cannot seem to get from one book I liked to another book I might like when using Amazon. People who liked one book "also liked" lawnmowers and crates of fruit leather. So it's really difficult to find anything new there even without the skewed recommendations engine which seems to think I will like something merely because it is being heavily promoted.
But it wasn't functionally any different than shopping at Borders. When Borders noticed their sales were dropping, they increased the size of their children's nook and eliminated the science fiction section entirely---except for the movie tie-ins.
As a bookselling business, they deserve to fail because they don't sell books as their primary business anymore. It's about the children's toys, the cafe, and the music sales. Books have become an afterthought for Borders.
The original poster's answer to booksellers struggling has been that everyone should be handling e-book sales. I don't agree with that because I don't buy e-books. The problem with all the digital formats is that the purchase price is not a purchase price, it's a term-unspecified lease. If you buy in e-pub format, you don't have rights to other formats. Converting it between formats is possible using Calibre, but a violation of the DMCA. If you bought in e-pub and put it on your portable device and the device gets stolen, you have to buy it again. Theoretically people keep copies on their base computers, but there are a lot of publishers claiming having 2 copies is illegal under DMCA. The problem with that particular law is that violating it makes you a terrorist and subject to indefinite detention, rendition, and a complete suspension of your rights as a citizen and your rights as a human being. It's not a huge leap to see that buying e-books means you can be seriously harmed for relatively minor infractions of rules no one tells you apply.
The other thing I have against e-books is lack of durability of contents. Sure, that would be convenient if the revised version of the book you bought fixed the typos or corrected errors in instructions instead of making you go out and fetch errata and try to kludge them into your bound copy. But without the ability to compare to the original, how would you know what they were changing?
The fic I just finished reading has the same author, the same title, and the same premise as the one I'd thought was abandoned. But there are distinctive differences that I happen to remember because they were so very specific, like if it said, "He was 5 feet 7 and a half inches tall." Then in the revised story, it says "moderate height". It's not hard to notice that kind of change. But I would not have noticed if it went from "average height" to "moderate height"-- at least not after 3 years, unless I could diff.
So the only way I want an e-book is if I own the paper copy as well. And to do that, I'd have to buy it twice.
But the real reason I don't like e-books is because you can't give your copy away when you're done with it because it was never yours. The publisher was just lending it to you.
