5 ms·

When we talk about missing the bookstores, it's more about missing the librarians running them, at least in my opinion. They'd stock the shelves with the discov

When we talk about missing the bookstores, it's more about missing the librarians running them, at least in my opinion. They'd stock the shelves with the discoveries they had made over their life and be able to give very opinionated advice over various books. Talking to them to find your next coup de coeur is better in my mind than browsing the recommended section on Amazon.

skookumchuck 9y ago
I find the reviews on Amazon to be far more helpful. Besides, just today I was reading HN and saw a reference to a book. I popped over to Amazon and bought a copy. I never would have heard of the book by any bookstore proprietor (and it was published in the days before those bookstores vanished). Amazon has hardly eliminated serendipity.
- bamboozled 9y ago
  Everyone reading only the perceived best will have a strange affect on society over time. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” -- Haruki Murakami
  - mseebach 9y ago
    There's no way Amazon isn't going to make that particular situation better, not worse. The vast majority of the bookstores of yore stocked a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand, titles, and those were necessarily the ones "everyone" was reading. Today everyone (not just those near a well-stocked bookstore with a good librarian) can browse and order from literally millions of titles. The (relatively few) people who used to have a well stocked bookstore with a good librarian nearby are probably a bit worse off under Amazon. Everyone else is a lot better off.
  - mc32 9y ago
    I'd would disagree with that quip. Not everyone interprets things the same way. Two examples, religious texts and the corpus of laws.
  - taeric 9y ago
    I always find it interesting to read quotes like that. The point is to read everything. But, why a famous author for the quote? This one, in particular, would be a lot more powerful from a librarian.
    - bamboozled 9y ago
      I just didn't want to pretend it was my quote.
      - taeric 9y ago
        Absolutely fair.
microcolonel 9y ago
The other day I went in to check a bookstore, and it was run by an unabashed fan of bolshevism and FARC. I got the feeling that if this guy ran my country, I would probably be killed by the state. I've seen other bookstores which at least have a quiet librarian, but frankly I don't know how half the bookstores in Toronto stay afloat. Amazon has way more selection, including cross-listings from self publishers (which for some obscure topics and authors, is the only way). They don't try to bundle a communist manifesto with your order, and they actually list some details about the book which even somebody who's read it might have missed. One thing I maybe miss a little is being able to feel and see the print quality of the book in advance, but I think that's more a matter of bias than a judgement of the quality of the contained words.
imgabe 9y ago
But we still have libraries, with librarians running them. And those are free.
mc32 9y ago
There were mainly two types of bookstores, both adversely affected by Amazon, chains like Barnes & Noble on the one hand and independent (i.e. proprietor owned and operated). Chains could have knowledgeable staff, but most of the time they were kids working their first job. Some independents had very knowledgeable owner and staff, but many were just so-so.
IanCal 9y ago
In the spirit of HN then: It seems like if the key value added is talking to the people, requiring a whole bookstore to do so was useful when you needed the bookstore itself but now it's a huge add on cost and hassle. Effectively they were bundling two reasonably distinct services into one. One of which is now served (generally) better by Amazon. So with that in mind, could a business be built entirely around the extra value added? Real, personalised recommendations that come from speaking to someone who loves the topic. Pay for some time to speak to them, and get recommendations. This could be extended into other fields too, films, tv series and games are the main ones that spring to mind.
- finnh 9y ago
  I doubt many people would pay someone $50/hour to optimize their next $9.99 kindle purchase. The one-on-one approach does not scale. We already have the many-to-many form of this (goodreads, for example).
  - IanCal 9y ago
    The hourly cost sounds high, but as an honest question, how long would it take? You likely didn't speak to the proprietor of the book store for an hour every time you visited to get a single book recommendation. Would you pay $5 for 5 minutes and a set of recommendations? It's worth noting that what we had previously was effectively a store manager working part time as what I'm suggesting. Your hourly cost there is also (if full time) equivalent to well into the top decile of earners in the UK. > The one-on-one approach does not scale. Does it need to scale? The previous setup was already a one on one approach. The advantage of it now is that location is not important and I could talk immediately to a recommender pretty much anywhere rather than only the one at my local book store.
    - finnh 9y ago
      > Would you pay $5 for 5 minutes and a set of recommendations? You'd probably need more than 5 minutes for the first set of recommendations, right? If they can give you 5 recs in the first 5 minutes of talking to you, then those recommendations aren't necessarily so personalized (or, at least, the nominal lift above crowd-sourced recs is dubious). > what we had previously was effectively a store manager working part time as what I'm suggesting. Good point. Let's call it $20/hour, then? Starts to sound a little better. (but, of course, without a physical footprint & actual books to sell, you need to spend more on marketing, so you need to charge more). > The advantage of it now is that location is not important and I could talk immediately to a recommender... I get the appeal. If I was provided reliable, way-better-than-crowdsourced recommendations, then that would be worth a lot to me - easily enough to justify a one-time fee (say, $30) and then $1 per book or $5 per series. I doubt that's possible, though =( Even really close friends with really similar tastes to mine, with whom I have regular long conversations about books, still have occasional misses when the recommend books to me, and vice-versa.

skookumchuck 9y ago

I find the reviews on Amazon to be far more helpful. Besides, just today I was reading HN and saw a reference to a book. I popped over to Amazon and bought a copy. I never would have heard of the book by any bookstore proprietor (and it was published in the days before those bookstores vanished). Amazon has hardly eliminated serendipity.

bamboozled 9y ago
Everyone reading only the perceived best will have a strange affect on society over time. “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” -- Haruki Murakami
- mseebach 9y ago
  There's no way Amazon isn't going to make that particular situation better, not worse. The vast majority of the bookstores of yore stocked a few hundred, perhaps a few thousand, titles, and those were necessarily the ones "everyone" was reading. Today everyone (not just those near a well-stocked bookstore with a good librarian) can browse and order from literally millions of titles. The (relatively few) people who used to have a well stocked bookstore with a good librarian nearby are probably a bit worse off under Amazon. Everyone else is a lot better off.
- mc32 9y ago
  I'd would disagree with that quip. Not everyone interprets things the same way. Two examples, religious texts and the corpus of laws.
- taeric 9y ago
  I always find it interesting to read quotes like that. The point is to read everything. But, why a famous author for the quote? This one, in particular, would be a lot more powerful from a librarian.
  - bamboozled 9y ago
    I just didn't want to pretend it was my quote.
    - taeric 9y ago
      Absolutely fair.

microcolonel 9y ago

The other day I went in to check a bookstore, and it was run by an unabashed fan of bolshevism and FARC. I got the feeling that if this guy ran my country, I would probably be killed by the state. I've seen other bookstores which at least have a quiet librarian, but frankly I don't know how half the bookstores in Toronto stay afloat. Amazon has way more selection, including cross-listings from self publishers (which for some obscure topics and authors, is the only way). They don't try to bundle a communist manifesto with your order, and they actually list some details about the book which even somebody who's read it might have missed. One thing I maybe miss a little is being able to feel and see the print quality of the book in advance, but I think that's more a matter of bias than a judgement of the quality of the contained words.

imgabe 9y ago

But we still have libraries, with librarians running them. And those are free.

mc32 9y ago

There were mainly two types of bookstores, both adversely affected by Amazon, chains like Barnes & Noble on the one hand and independent (i.e. proprietor owned and operated). Chains could have knowledgeable staff, but most of the time they were kids working their first job. Some independents had very knowledgeable owner and staff, but many were just so-so.

IanCal 9y ago

In the spirit of HN then: It seems like if the key value added is talking to the people, requiring a whole bookstore to do so was useful when you needed the bookstore itself but now it's a huge add on cost and hassle. Effectively they were bundling two reasonably distinct services into one. One of which is now served (generally) better by Amazon. So with that in mind, could a business be built entirely around the extra value added? Real, personalised recommendations that come from speaking to someone who loves the topic. Pay for some time to speak to them, and get recommendations. This could be extended into other fields too, films, tv series and games are the main ones that spring to mind.

finnh 9y ago
I doubt many people would pay someone $50/hour to optimize their next $9.99 kindle purchase. The one-on-one approach does not scale. We already have the many-to-many form of this (goodreads, for example).
- IanCal 9y ago
  The hourly cost sounds high, but as an honest question, how long would it take? You likely didn't speak to the proprietor of the book store for an hour every time you visited to get a single book recommendation. Would you pay $5 for 5 minutes and a set of recommendations? It's worth noting that what we had previously was effectively a store manager working part time as what I'm suggesting. Your hourly cost there is also (if full time) equivalent to well into the top decile of earners in the UK. > The one-on-one approach does not scale. Does it need to scale? The previous setup was already a one on one approach. The advantage of it now is that location is not important and I could talk immediately to a recommender pretty much anywhere rather than only the one at my local book store.
  - finnh 9y ago
    > Would you pay $5 for 5 minutes and a set of recommendations? You'd probably need more than 5 minutes for the first set of recommendations, right? If they can give you 5 recs in the first 5 minutes of talking to you, then those recommendations aren't necessarily so personalized (or, at least, the nominal lift above crowd-sourced recs is dubious). > what we had previously was effectively a store manager working part time as what I'm suggesting. Good point. Let's call it $20/hour, then? Starts to sound a little better. (but, of course, without a physical footprint & actual books to sell, you need to spend more on marketing, so you need to charge more). > The advantage of it now is that location is not important and I could talk immediately to a recommender... I get the appeal. If I was provided reliable, way-better-than-crowdsourced recommendations, then that would be worth a lot to me - easily enough to justify a one-time fee (say, $30) and then $1 per book or $5 per series. I doubt that's possible, though =( Even really close friends with really similar tastes to mine, with whom I have regular long conversations about books, still have occasional misses when the recommend books to me, and vice-versa.