ARCreader; or, ARE YOU LISTENING, SONY?
Quick post to link to advanced.reader’s post suggesting the potential for publishers to help pay for e-readers for booksellers, with the understanding that they would primarily be used for reading ARCs (and thus cutting down on the ARC mountain). She calls it a modest proposal and I think it’s definitely something that should be considered. In fact, in my case, I think it would lead to increased sales–books I really loved I would go out and buy, instead of just keeping the ARC. Lots of pros and cons discussed in the post.
I will definitely second the shout-out to Sony at the end.
Sony, if you’re listening? Get a booth at BEA if you don’t already have one. If you can’t, get a sidewalk permit and sit next to the falafel stands outside the Javitz Center. Offer anyone with a badge $100 or $150 off an online purchase of a Sony Reader in the next two months. You’ll never have a better opportunity to get in good graces with some of the most prolific readers in the country. As a side bennie, all the indie booksellers attending have a vested interest in your reader becoming and staying more popular than the Kindle. And we read A LOT.
Thinking the unthinkable
This blog entry by Clay Shirky, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable,” was floating around Twitter all day today, and I just can’t get it out of my head. I’ll post some of the quotes that I’m really fixated on, though you really owe it to yourself to read the whole thing.
“The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several.”
“Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know ‘If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?’ To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.”
“The hard question Eisenstein’s book asks is ‘How did we get from the world before the printing press to the world after it? What was the revolution itself like?’
Chaotic, as it turns out. The Bible was translated into local languages; was this an educational boon or the work of the devil? Erotic novels appeared, prompting the same set of questions. Copies of Aristotle and Galen circulated widely, but direct encounter with the relevant texts revealed that the two sources clashed, tarnishing faith in the Ancients. As novelty spread, old institutions seemed exhausted while new ones seemed untrustworthy; as a result, people almost literally didn’t know what to think. If you can’t trust Aristotle, who can you trust?
During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller octavo volume along with italic type. What seemed like a minor change — take a book and shrink it — was in retrospect a key innovation in the democratization of the printed word, as books became cheaper, more portable, and therefore more desirable, expanding the market for all publishers, which heightened the value of literacy still further.
That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.”
“Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.”
Shirky is very clearly talking about newspapers and journalism here, but I have to say, some of these quotes cleanly struck me as things that we might be saying about books someday soonish.
In particular, in the first quote I selected, I’m struck by the truth that newspapers did, in fact, see change a-comin’, and they spent a lot of time thinking about how to deal with it, and they failed anyway. This reminds me a lot of the conversations the book industry is having within itself right now—how much do we charge for e-books? should TPBs have a simultaneous release with HCs? are large advances totally and completely insane, or are they just a necessary-evil level of insane? &tc. We know things are going to change and for the most part, we’re trying to figure out what we need to change in order to keep the jobs we love. But this quote makes me wonder: are we so busy devilling with the details that we’re not considering that our jobs as we know them now might not exist someday? Perhaps we’re not considering that trade paperback originals may not be the full answer—the full answer might involve a wholesale change in how booksellers, editors, writers, and other book people do their jobs. Keep in mind that I’m in my twenties. If I stay in bookselling until retirement age, whatever that’s going to be after Social Security nosedives, that’s at least four more decades. I can’t even concieve of what the book industry will look like in one decade, let alone four. Will it include the opportunity to make a living selling books to other people? What sort of changes will I have had to make to get there? What things can’t I see from my seat inside the inside of books?
Shirky: “Society doesn’t need papers. What we need is journalism.”
Would it be too much of a stretch to say:
“Society doesn’t need books. What we need are stories.”
Books have been around longer than newspapers, and I personally don’t think they’ll go away soon, or ever. (For proof I offer up the sheer joy on a kid’s face when you hand them a new book.) But reading Shirky’s entry did make me think that, if even for a little bit, I need to sit with the notion that books are not, in fact, crucial to existence. This is nearly impossible to fathom, especially living in New York, where everyone I meet is connected to books in some way, I read twice as much, and I’m pretty sure there’s something in the water that is causing me to have dreams related to the publishing industry every night. However, it might be the sort of thinking I need to open my mind to the possibilities that could keep my job around, in one form or another.
The world has proven it doesn’t need newspapers. Will it do the same thing to books?
You know you’re a bookseller when…
I wasn’t going to post this originally, but my new co-worker assures me that it is funny rather than sad. I hope you agree.
You know you’re a bookseller when…the end date on your weight-loss plan is “BEA.”
LinkIndie is about keeping your eyes open
Filed under: book thoughts, bookselling, meta, read review linkindie |
Comments(2) Thought I’d share a little success story. Time Out NY recently linked to a WORD employee’s trailer for an upcoming film and talked about a great event we had last week. He also referred to our selection as “solid,” which is awesome, and talked about the two books he bought here. All of which is great, except–he hotlinked the two books he bought here by sending readers to the Amazon page. Ack.
So, I wrote to the email listed on the page:
“Hello,
I’m writing to thank Drew Toal for his mention of WORD yesterday. We appreciate the publicity and are always glad to hear that people have had a great experience in our store!
However, I do have one small favor to ask. In the future, when your blog writes stories about any of the fantastic independent bookstores in NYC, would you consider sending any book links to IndieBound? I’d hate to think that someone might have seen the books you bought at our store by clicking on the Amazon link, and then bought them on Amazon instead of with us or another indie bookstore. For example, the link to HOME LAND would have gone here.
Thanks for your consideration, and thanks again for the shout-out!”
Another reason to love Joe Hill
Filed under: book links, book reviews, bookselling, read review linkindie |
Comments(2) I thought I only loved the guy for his fantastic fiction, including what may be one of the creepiest ideas I’ve ever read in a book. The crazy scribbled-out eyes on dead people in HEART-SHAPED BOX still haunt me. *shiver*
But now I also love him for declaring March “Love-Your-Small-Bookstore Month.” He says, go pick up a mass market paperback—I say, pick up HEART-SHAPED BOX, if you haven’t already. It’s in mass market paperback and totally worth it, even if you think you don’t like horror (I thought I didn’t, and this book just knocked that perception away completely).
Thanks, Joe!
Why indies can’t ignore online shopping
Filed under: book links, book thoughts, bookselling, read review linkindie |
Comments(19) I know there are a number, perhaps even a lot, of independent bookstores that are very reluctant to take part in e-commerce—the reason is usually something like: “we want people to actually come IN the store” or “this is a neighborhood bookstore.” Which are both very good reasons, and independent stores generally have a strong sense of mission and purpose that drives the people who own and work in them. Many stores have, even though they feel like it’s giving in, put up an e-commerce website. But very few indies (although there are notable exceptions) have done a solid job of harnessing their websites to really increase sales. IndieBound has been helping with this in terms of getting the word out, but it feels to me like there are still a lot of booksellers who are on the fence about being online in a serious way.
I have been thinking for some time that this is causing indies to lose business, even among their best customers. People who love to read tend to spend more time online—and most of online is littered with Amazon links. In fact, there are a number of compelling reasons why people choose to shop online, whether we like them or not. Of course, I am just one person and there’s no compelling reason to believe me, so instead, I invite you to listen to your (potential) customers. Read the comments on this post on litpark, “Question of the Month: Amazon, B&N, or Indie?“ Resist the urge to chime in for a minute—I think this post is better off with customers stating their true preferences and booksellers not jumping in.
You’ll see that the majority of the commenters, as of this moment, really like indie bookstores, and do shop there when possible; many consider Amazon “a backup,” as Susan puts it. They seem aware of how awesome a good indie store is, the benefits of shopping local, and the joy of browsing a well-stocked bricks & mortar store. We talk a lot about needing to educate customers about the good things about keeping it local and indie, but these folks could teach a course in it.
They also almost all buy books on Amazon. Why? Well, there’s a lot of reasons—read them.
Too many customers don’t know that they can have essentially the same experience on your website, if you have one. They can have the instant gratification of BUY IT NOW and also support their favorite indie bookstore–why don’t they know that? They can order a book online for in-store pickup, so they never have to worry if the book they want is in stock. They can have all the convenience of shopping online AND all the things they are telling you they love about our stores. Why aren’t we telling them?
The bricks & mortar experience is an important one, and I’m confident that with the right tools, we’ll get through this latest downtrun, and we’ll keep having the stores we love to go to every morning. But it’ll be a lot easier to keep those stores open if we start re-capturing sales that we are losing everyday by stubbornly over-emphasizing our physical presence. Show people how our in-store presence and service will extend to online purchases—show them they can have convenience AND service AND curated selection AND support their communities even when they’re too tired to go downtown—and we’ll see a change. Go read the post. You’ll see why I’m convinced that this cannot be ignored.
As an aside, one of the ways we can work towards this is to keep encouraging bloggers, publishers, authors, and other bookish folk to LinkIndie. Utne Reader blogged about it yesterday—how cool!
(h/t @AnnKingman for bringing the link to our attention on Twitter, h/t also to many various tweets I’ve been reading by people who like indies but also use Amazon–I appreciate getting a peek at your thinking!)
Tween books HELP
I was just looking through my blog stats and I realized that there are three searches that lead to my blog almost everyday:
1. bookavore. Shocking, que no?
2. book tattoos (or some variation thereof). Also not shocking.
3. tween books OR books for tweens OR is [TITLE] good for tweens OR please god help me I don’t know what book to buy for my 12 year old daughter OR something like that.
People, searches are turning up at my doorstep everyday looking for a good list of books for tweens and I am failing them, dismally.
So, help me out here. Leave in comments the best/your favorite books for tweens, and if so, why and which tweens. For the purposes of this list, tween means 10-13, and any books with “mature content” are excluded because so many parents of tweens are looking for books without it. If you’re so inclined, please offer a link (remembering, of course, to link indie).
Go!
Of blogs and blogrolls
There’s a whole lot of fantastic floating around the book blogs lately. Let’s start with a guest post by Patrick of Vroman’s at Booksellers Blog. As I have been saying in person quite a lot, Patrick and Vroman’s are, I think, the best example in indie bookselling of how to best use the internet to promote your store. I don’t know if I will ever get to Pasadena, but I feel like I just KNOW what Vroman’s is like from their web presence (primarily the blog and Twitter, for me). Even if you’re already clued into the fun and importance of blogging, I highly recommend reading this post. And ladies (and gay men), even if you don’t give a honk about blogging, I recommend clicking through to look at the picture of Patrick, who is a very nice-looking man. And then maybe read the post too.
Booksellers will also be interested in the latest post on Kash’s Book Corner. We are all good at being cranky about the hoards of self-published authors out there (I’ve been tweaking an essay about self-publishing that I may, one day, develop the cojones to post)–this post is an important reminder that there are great writers out there who self-publish because they run headlong into the corporate structures of publishing. And booksellers, you know you can sympathize with running headlong into the corporate structures of publishing.
Finally, I’ve been slowly but surely revamping my blogroll. Fellow bookavore are book people, honorary bookavores are not book people. Well, they might like books, but that’s not the gist of their blog. Mandatory warning that most if not all of those links are absolutely NSFW, especially if you work at the RNC.
You don’t have to take my word for it!
Today the first of my new column, Namastechnology, appeared in Shelf Awareness. The column–which was named by a fellow bookseller who I will mostly definitely be crediting next month, because he deserves for people to know how clever he is–will be about bookselling and technology, trying to bring them into balance with each other. This first one is a guide to Twitter, and even if you’re not a bookseller, I hope it might help make Twitter make a little more sense.
I wanted to add something here, though–the article got long and we had to cut something, but I love it too much to let it go completely. And we’re supposed to be adding value to everything now, right? So here’s the added value for this month’s catalog. It’s a quote from LeVar Burton, who has been dear to my heart since my PBS-riddled childhood, from a blog post about his discovery of Twitter:
“After lurking for a while (not in a creepy context, simply observing) it occurred to me that I had encountered in Twitter a bona fide community of individuals bound together by common interests and occasionally, ideals. Which brings me finally, to my point. If we are to get through these trying times in which we live, and I definitely believe it our destiny to do so, it is important for us all to remember that none of us is in this alone. It makes sense to me that we are going to need each other to get through this! During a time such as this when monetary resources are scarce, the one commodity we have unlimited access to is the currency of our compassion. It is, I believe, incumbent upon each of us to be willing to extend ourselves to those around us, to support one another through these interesting times. It seems to me that our willingness to engage one another on that level is as good a way as any, to bring a blessing from a curse.”
I love it because I think there are so many echoes of what indie booksellers have been saying for the last year or so—”individuals bound together by common interests”—I mean, you’d swear the man had read the Declaration of IndieBound!
Have you been using Twitter? Why or why not? Any good stories to share?
LinkIndie update: IndieBound comes through in a big way
You spoke, IndieBound answered. If you are on the list to get updates from IndieBound, you know that this morning (or was it afternoon? now that I work somewhere that opens at 11am, my sense of time is a little messed up. anyway.) they sent out an email with several great updates. But the one that I am most excited about is Book Info Pages. From the email:
“Now it’s easier than ever to link to IndieBound and support independent bookstores on your own website. Just click on any book link or book result from our site search, and you’ll be presented with a separate page with cover art and a brief book description.
“Included on each page are links to buy the book online directly from a store near you, locate a store on the Indie Store Finder Map, and add the book to your Wish List, as well as a widget for linking to the book on your own website, if you’re an IndieBound.org affiliate. You can also just copy and paste the book info page’s URL–it’s a permanent link to the book.”
(Update: If you did not see the email, Matt has posted the same text on his blog, you can read it there.)
They suggest, and I do too, that you try it out with the Indie Bestsellers.
I will admit that I held off sending my emails because I was hoping this would happen. This is exactly the first step we needed to make IndieBound links more internet-friendly. Major kudos to IndieBound and the ABA not just for doing this, but also for doing it at least partially in response to requests, and for doing it so quickly. Even if I hated books, my job would be worth it just to have such a supportive and responsive trade organization.
Perhaps you were holding off too? No more excuses! Send them today! Or perhaps you did not. Anybody have any stories to share?
