From Pat Holt, on Holt Uncensored, comes a blog post which begins with the tale of a rather boorish couple who act like entitled three year-olds in a Barnes & Noble. I didn’t pay much attention at first–after all, there are a lot of boorish people in the world–but then this caught my attention:
What I can’t figure out are bookstore customers who blatantly use cell phones to compare prices with Amazon’s while they walk around the New Release table, or worse, take cell phone photos of books they might want to read so they can buy them on Amazon later.
I won’t go into Kindle owners who actually bring … well, you get the point.
This is not just rude behavior; it’s profane. A bookstore offers browsing opportunities and instant camaraderie with staff and authors that we never find on the Internet. There’s something sacred about a place where censorship is fought routinely, unknown authors are welcomed and introduced and young adults who’ve inexplicitly stopped reading are lured back to books they’ll treasure forever. For a customer to interrupt this kind of sacred exchange because they’re so entirely self-involved seems tragic.
This seems like an odd attitude from a bookseller: reader as enemy (or at least unpleasant inconvenience: rude, profane, tragic, and self-involved). It strikes me as counter productive.
The reader is not the enemy. The reader is the customer. Our business depends upon them.
It seems to me that these customers with their smart phones and Kindles are looking for something they’re not getting. I think people in the book business–writers, publishers, retailers, all of us–would gain more from figuring out how to better serve such customers than from pouring scorn upon them from a great height.
These readers are shopping. They are in the bookstore. They’re a walking opportunity. But we have to work for it. We have to give them what they want. Their custom is not our god-given right.
Every single person who makes a living from books does so only when we give our customer what they want. We must never forget that the reader is a shopper. We are in the second decade of the 21st century. Why should these shoppers not take advantage of technology that gives them a better deal? If I see paper towels in QFC and realise I could get them delivered to my doorstep for half the price, why on earth would I buy them from QFC? (But perhaps that would make me “stupid or cheap”–another of Holt’s descriptioins.)
Customers of all kinds live in an information and experience-rich world. Booksellers and publishers should be figuring out how to enhance a reader’s shopping experience, creating a relationship with them rather than making demands. It’s difficult to form a relationship with a potential customer if you view them with contempt (rude, profane, tragic, and self-involved…).
What I’d take from the description of these readers and shoppers is that the urge to shop in person, even among those who read on Kindle, is something online retailers don’t yet quite have a handle on. It’s a magnificent opportunity. Why don’t independents install WiFi and partner with publishers so that readers with Kindles can download DRM-free books in .prc format from them? Why don’t publishers club together to build experience kiosks in public spaces where people can fondle the merchandise, get ideas for books, then download them? Why not hire booksellers to talk up their product to these shoppers? Why doesn’t Amazon sponsor book parties to tempt non-Kindle users into giving it a go? Why don’t writers band together and hire customer reps to staff kiosks in bars or cafes selling their books (digitally or paper) at the best price?
No one owes booksellers (or writers, or publishers) a living. We have to earn it. We have to give the customer what s/he wants. We have to start adapting and stop complaining. The world has changed. Bookworld has to change with it.
Well, sure. Except– well, what would you say to someone who was like “Oh, can you tell me what other books you've written? I want to download them off Pirate Bay!” You'd tell them to go get stuffed. The customer who comes in to browse a curated collection at a bookstore– only to use it as a tool for buying the books used off Amazon– is doing the same thing. That bookstore has done work– buying, curating, & managing their stock, paying rent, all that jazz– which the reader is subverting. Frustrating.
Second-hand book sales aren't illegal. (Also, many booksellers rely on them–and the writer doesn't see a cent. Do we complain? Not often.)
'New Fiction' tables are not so much curated as paid for by publishers.
Reading series are curated, absolutely. So independents could team with, say, Amazon to run series, sell some books, act as funnel for books via Kindle. Get a cut.
My point, I suppose, is that we shouldn't knock the customer for taking advantage of a system that works for them and not for us. Perhaps it means our system is broken or hurtling towards obsolescence.
Sure, but ethically, the customer who uses a bookstore to browse & then buy used online is appropriating labor.
& Amazon's whole Kindle model is to deny ebook sales to any competitor– hence their under pricing & proprietary software. They want the reader to only be able to buy from them, no where else.
I hear your point– that places need to evolve. I think they will, but I think a big part of it is that people need to realize that bricks & mortar locations provide a service. People who take advantage of that without supporting their bookstore will be sad when that option vanishes.
I'm not disagreeing with you. But ethics and shopping rarely march hand in hand.
Yes, bricks and mortar are vital. But how will we keep them dynamic?
It is a quandary. I don't think ebooks will be as overwhelming a tide as some– I think the hardcopy format has value, for a lot of reasons. The being said, indies being able to sell ebooks is a big deal, & the Google ebooks might help with that, if it keeps working. I think emphasis on bookstores are locations of value, where the opinions & discernment of the staff are respected, is going to happen– the artisinal bookstore. I guess I'd say that bookstores need to become like bars. Places you go as thirdspaces, places that sure, have a mark-up over buying cheap plonk or domestic swill, but that mark-up BUYS you something.
The best bookstores–the ones that offer their customers something they can't get anywhere else–will survive. Here in Seattle, the University Bookstore and Seattle Mystery Bookshop serve *communities*. While those communities (not the general book-buying populace, but specific communities within that populace) are having their needs met, the bookstores will thrive. When the bookstores stop providing value, they'll fail.
Ditto publishers.
I don't see anything wrong with compairing prices in a bookstore using some igadget or other. People do it at walmart, at best buy, at the mall. The amount of money I can spend on something is limited and I neither make nor offer any appolgies for wanting the best price on the same item.
I have 0 sympathy for a business that doesn't offer what I'm looking for.
Recently I went to Barnes & Noble, some thing which I hadn't done in a few years as I shop almost exclusively from amazon these days. But my father had come down for a visit and wanted to go. He offered to buy a book for me since it was near x-mas.
Before we left, I wrote down a list of books I had up on my amazon wishlist that I hadn't picked up on my last big book purchase from amazon. It was a long list and I had only intended to pick up one maybe two.
Here are jsut a few names off that list:
Nicola Griffith
Kelley Eskridge
Bentley Little
James Tiptree Jr.
Jane Fletcher
Richard Matheson
Malinda Lo
Most of those names had more than one book attatched. I couldn't find any of them. I have 0 sympathy for any store that doesn't offer what I want. As much as I love books, I will not buy from a bookstore because of some ideal.
I wont support any business that doesn't work for me. While amazon may be the big evil company slowly killing off the competition, as long as they sell what I want and sell it for less than everyone else they will continue to get my money. It's a no-brainer.
tranceptor, so many people see Amazon as The Enemy. I think it's an agent of change and we're not keeping up…
It's 2011. I am not getting a cost-of-living increase on my disability again this year. I am still getting benefits as if it were 2008. Gluten-free food prices have gone up dramatically since then. The cost of medications and doctor visits has risen significantly as well. At the same time, I want to support authors that are important to me because I am stuck in bed and don't have a whole lot I can do but read. Ergo I buy mega-wealthy authors' books secondhand, and buy other authors' books new and at full price. This means I have to do some comparative shopping, whether anyone likes it or not. I feel it's as fair an arrangement as I can work out at this time.
And BTW, Nicola, the child alters have voted that you should be running the world. They say you can take over at any time :P.
S.ZenT, sounds like a reasonable approach to me.
And here I was thinking I *was* running the world…
:P!
I understand what you say, but let me give you an example of this angst from a different industry.
Back when I worked retail in a camera shop, the independent camera stores endured this problem: customer comes in, wants to know about the new Nikon FXWWT whatever. You, the informed, savvy counter person, spends a good hour with said customer, showing him/her how it works, what the features are, how it stacks up against other models—giving of your expertise, because you do this, you know this, this is your thing. Customer thanks you, then goes and buys the damn thing at the big box discount house for a hundred dollars less. Why did they come to us? Because the minimum wage intern at Big Box couldn't find the lens with both eyes and a manual. The customer pumped you for the expertise and spent the money elsewhere.
Yes, the price was better, but we could never meet that price because the manufacturer discounted by volume, and the mom-and-pop camera shop couldn't buy 50 of every model.
It's business. It's not fair. But it is understandable when the bookstore owner gets pissed because he/she can't compete with either Big Box or Amazon, but feels like a fifth wheel on a blind date when the customer uses their establishment to make choices and then spends the money elsewhere.
Back at the camera store, we had a few customers who paid the extra because they appreciated the expertise, but that was one in twenty. Can't keep the doors open that way.
Wow, you're right, you were, what were we thinking?!
And ha! SZenT. I've been name-shopping since I was created from J and Zack a few nights ago. We've had a Zen already so I've been trying to come up with something else that fits me. Szent it is :P.
Mark, yes, I know all that. But the photography industry (in the way you describe it) was doomed, and then died. I understand feeling pissed off. My point is that acting pissed off and not changing doesn't help anyone.
Um, the customer is always right, and I mean that, sincerely. As soon as one loses respect for the customer, then it is time to do something else. So these folks take advantage of a brick and mortar store…perhaps they will buy something they didn't intend to buy. Or…god forbid…the store help were so…helpful…the shoppers decided to come back and to spend their money there. Almost anything one wishes to purchase is available lots of places. The seller has to give the shopper a reason to leave with a little less cash. Not saying these things don't piss me off, too, but I am in sales and my job is not to be indignant but to provide something someone else wants, and to give them reasons to buy it from me.
I'm Australian. I can buy a book from the bookdepository.co.uk for a fraction of the price -with free shipping- compared to the cost of buying a book in a brick-and-mortar store. This is because our government has had a long-standing import tarriff on books from overseas, supposedly to help protect Australian authors.
[If only they instead got Australian authors to publish something worth reading.]
I've also got the problem someone else mentioned about my local 'stores not having what I want. Galaxy Bookshop, one of the largest and best speciality SF bookstores in Australia doesn't stock Catherynne Valente, or Nicola Griffith, or Ursula Vernon.
I love browsing through a bookshop, but so long as they fail to stock what I want, have ridiculous prices, and generally suck in every way imaginable, I'm sticking to the internet.
This is somewhat tangential, but what you said about independents installing WiFi and facilitating downloads of ebooks really caught my eye. I really mourn the loss of all the independent bookstores I used to shop at. Not a single one of the several stores I went to in the 80's and 90's still exist now. After a move I have Third Place Books close enough and it's a fantastic bookstore!
But as a complete ebook convert, I keep wondering how long they'll be able to continue to compete. They've had the big chains like B&N and online discounting from Amazon to worry about for a long time, and now comes the ebook explosion. They've installed one of those POD Espresso machines, which is a step in the right direction of trying to offer new things and keep on top of technology.
But I keep thinking that independents need to start being innovative where digital books are concerned. If they don't, can they still be in business in 10 years? A store like Third Place has a chance because it's pretty unique. But, I'm not convinced in regards to other general bookstores.
I'll also agree with what tastedthefruit said. Pre-Kindle I had started to shift more and more of my book buying to Amazon because that way I could get the specific books I wanted. Driving to a store and then not finding what I went there to buy gets very frustrating after a while. Sure they'll order it for you, but then you have to wait and make a second trip.
I guess that's a long way of saying that even when it comes to paper books, maybe new delivery systems need to be contemplated in order to keep customers.
Nicola,
No argument, the industry was doomed in the way it was practiced, and of course acting pissed off won't change it. My point is that in that instance, there was nothing we could do to offer the customer what they wanted. We didn't have it—the much lower price. Pointing out how the situation destroyed something which many people then missed once it was gone isn't, to my mind, acting pissed off, but putting the onus where it belongs—the market.
In my specific instance, the company I worked for got out of selling cameras altogether and turned into a lab.
People—customers, some of them anyway—claim to love and appreciate brick-and-mortar bookstores. That ambience they're appreciating necessarily costs more than a strictly mail order business.
So bookstores started putting coffee shops in, hosting reading groups, sponsoring author events—stuff you can't get on-line or by mail order. At the end of the day, though, for a lot of people, it's that twenty percent or more discount that matters, and if the bookstore goes away they shouldn't act pissed off about—unless they're pissed at themselves for not spending their money where they claim to prefer.
Amazing… this is an amazing post. As a reader, and one that's been reading and discussing ebooks since well before ereaders showed up, I can honestly say this is the first time I've read an author speak for readers and for treating them with repect instead of distrust. And it had to be you (Slow River is one of my favorite novels of all time).
Mark, again, no argument: customers will be sorry when bookshops go away. I think we'll be poorer for it. Some will survive, but probably in the way horse and carriage survive today: for tourists.
Thiago, I'm not the first writer to say this (I don't think). I think a lot of us think this; I just got pissed off enough–because of that blog post–that I came out and said it.
Nicola, I've tried approaching lots of authors about issues which concern me as an ebook reader (poor quality, geographical restrictions -I live in Brazil, DRM, availability of titles within series, etc) and the responses I usually get from them range from telling me to contact the publisher (which I have tried several times – no response so far) to saying I should buy the print version, or the DRMed ebook, or the badly edited version, or the format I'm not interested in… believe me, your post treating readers as customers is a breath of fresh air.
OK, so maybe I exgerated a bit in saying it was the only one saying so, but among those (very) rare ones, it's the best I've read so far.
Thiago, writers published by big trade publishing companies have very little say in how their books are then presented by the publisher. If it were up to me, the ebook formatting on for example, Always, would be much, much better. But my hands are tied until the book goes out of print. Which it won't. So if you wrote to me complaining about its availability or DRM etc, sadly I'd have to give the same answer you've had from other writers: apply to the publisher.
But I bet those other writers were just as pissed off about it as me. And because of that, things will change gradually.
Nicola, if you had said to me “ask the publisher” before I had read this post, I might have felt a bit hurt, but reading a writer say the words “readers are our customers” explicitly and showing that she understands what that means makes a whole lot of difference to me. And to be honest, the “talk to the publisher” doesn't even bother me that much. It's the other ones, suggesting that I should just get what they're giving me and shut up about it that gets to me the most. Not all writers seem to grasp the reader=customer thing, incredible as it may seem.
I should probably say that the reason I'm so excited about your post is that I'm not new to the whole ebook debate. I've been at it for almost a decade now and the accumulated frustration of years of being largely ignored needed to go somewhere. I'm just real glad your post helped me see some light at the end of the tunnel. I do think things will change gradually, and reading this gives me a little more hope that they'll change for the best. So, really, all I wanted to say is: Thank you :)
Thiago, it's my pleasure. I'm sorry you've had bad experiences with other writers.
@Thiago and all,
Please allow me to point you to Weightless Books (http://weightlessbooks.com/). Totally DRM-free ebooks, available to any reader in the world, with payment through PayPal. They are slowly but surely adding publishers to the store, and they already have some great selections (full disclosure, including my novel). I am absolutely delighted that my book is now available to anyone on the planet who wants to read it in English. It's the wave of the future, and I'm glad my publisher (Small Beer Press) gets it.
People are notoriously self-centered and short-sighted — see below — but ultimately it's the responsibility of the retailer to compete in the current economic environment. What worked 50 years ago doesn't work now, and what works today probably will be gone 50 years from now.
The city of Austin did an Economic Impact Study back in 2002 that showed that local booksellers make a much greater economic impact than chain bookstores. For every $100 that Borders takes in, only $13 is returned to the local economy; meanwhile, an independent local bookstore returns $45 of every $100 receipts to the local economy. Amazon meanwhile returns nothing to the local economy (unless you live in Seattle or one of the cities where Amazon has a distribution center). By buying at a chain or online, we're basically hurting our local economy (and ourselves).
http://www.amiba.net/pdf/Economic_Impact_study_tx.pdf
Great post; I'm very much on your side. On the ethics point, I'll push back a bit against Mordicai & Mark: the relevant ethical judgement isn't separate from, but has to incorporate, considerations of how desirable is the institution/practice at issue (book/camerastores as curators), and how it fits with others in the same ecology (used bookstores, libraries, etc.). The principle 'no enjoyment without compensation' is simply too strict; human society is largely about the benefits of uncompensated positive externalities.
Getting specific: it may simply not make sense to have a large number of small or medium sized curated-bookstores, socially speaking, relative to (say) more intensively-used libraries on the one hand, stocks-everything-warehouses on the other, and for-profit general cultural spaces (bars/cafes that make it *convenient* to one-click support X or Y) on the third. There are some very good bookstores, such as the ones Nicola listed, but there are and were many thoroughly mediocre mom-n-pop ones, and these are the ones that are feeling the most competitive pressure (or have already lost out to it, and good riddance).
Keep in mind, too, that the blogosphere as a whole, & the cultural web/fandom generally, are being transformed in a wonderfully positive way by some of the same economies of scale driving the competitive pressure. Things that were once bundled don't have to stay that way–the camera-store story is a bit sad, but customers these days have *far* more information about cameras at their fingertips than did the few who lived near such a store back then.
Sorry for longwindedness. Glad to read what you wrote on this, Nicola.
XTrap, no apologies necessary. I like thoughtful discussion.