8 ms·

Why the Seattle Mystery Bookshop Must Close

80 points by fern12 9y ago

exabrial 9y ago
I quite enjoyed riding the bus in London. I can't say that for many other cities. It was very clean safe and the integration with Google Maps was awesome.
HalfwayToDice 9y ago
There are an unbelievable amount (BILLIONS!) of printed books out there, and no-one wants them. There is no solution to this.
moonka 9y ago
Wow, Seattle's been all over HN the last couple days. Not that I mind, but it's a little strange.
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Maybe someone ordered a bunch of submarines (stories). http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    If so, they are doing a poor job: this makes Seattle look less interesting to me. It is a great slice of the times though
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      > If so, they are doing a poor job: this makes Seattle look less interesting to me. Perhaps not. It could be Portland doing it. :-)
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    He's not wrong, but Jesus it's depressing to read 12 years later: > the readers are leaving, and they're not coming back. Why? I think the main reason is that the writing online is more honest. Ahahaha oh God. > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think. "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."
- usr1106 9y ago
  Right, noticed the same. How many programmers are there in Redmond? Some of them might be HN contributors...
Gargoyle 9y ago
The employees can undergo retraining for a higher-skill industry and move to where the jobs are.
- scandox 9y ago
  And you can go to charm school and learn to conceal your obtuse cruelty behind an urbane facade.
  - farnsworth 9y ago
    I read it as sarcasm/satire of a typical HN position - impossible to tell.
    - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
      Poe's Law is a bitch these days.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  One, two, three--done! It's just not that easy for a lot of us. I do know this, a little part of me dies when I hear any bookstore closed. It was the only retail experience I looked forward too.
dsr_ 9y ago
I can only point to one quibble: * Those who have benefited from the exposure and attention of little shops, who are so grateful for our help launching them into bestsellerdom suddenly do not wish to use their power and leverage to help those who gave them attention and benefits. “I contacted sales and all the tip-ins went to Barnes and Noble. I have no control over that…” Well who the hell has more control that a major bestselling author? * As far as I can tell, neither Tom Clancy nor Stephen King have any control over their publishers' marketing departments; certainly nobody less exalted can hope to do anything with them.
- AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
  > neither Tom Clancy nor Stephen King have any control over their publishers' marketing departments Are you joking? If Tom Clancy or Stephen King or a JK Rowling-level said "Add Seattle Mystery Bookshop to my next signing tour" it would get done. They might hem and haw about how wanting to do B&N instead, or some other excuses and they might try to talk them out of it, but if the star wants it, they're going to get it. Nobody wants to be responsible for losing the rights to Stephen King's next book. Small authors can obviously go wherever they want, nobody cares enough to stop them. It's the mid-level guys who are under control by the publishers but aren't large/influential enough that they can dictate their own schedules.
- na85 9y ago
  Tom Clancy died in 2013.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    These big shot writers always have some excuse.
georgeoliver 9y ago
I thought this was a sharp observation: > All those new millionaires and billionaires might be good for investment bankers and real estate developers, but they can only buy and read so many books.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  It is astute, but they can only wear so many shirts too. I suppose the trick is that same, sell them something you've convinced them is appropriate for "someone of their standing" - something overpriced - a first edition, with a mounting case, second reading copy, and platinum plated personalised bookmark?
brandonmenc 9y ago
> That’s what publishers did. They allowed a far less expensive version of their books to be available right away, undercutting the sale of hardcovers with the cheaper e-version. And...? Is the author seriously trying to convince me that getting books into the hands of poorer people immediately is a bad thing? > Those who couldn’t afford the hardcover price knew they could get it at the library or get it in paperback in a year. All so that a funky little book stores can exist as middlemen? I'm sorry, but as much as I loved the small independent book (and music, etc) store, that model is done - and if the result is that books are cheaper, and more widely accessible, it's a fair trade.
- didibus 9y ago
  I also hate hardcover, always preferred paperback, much easier to hold while reading.
  - Simon_says 9y ago
    I always felt that way, too. Hardcover is a status symbol. Paperbacks are for reading.
- adventured 9y ago
  Indie book stores are doing fine actually. The model is closer to thriving than done. https://www.voanews.com/a/indie-booksellers-hold-steady-tough-us-retail-market/3878105.html https://www.voanews.com/a/indie-booksellers-hold-steady-toug... http://publishingperspectives.com/2016/01/independent-bookstores-thrive-in-digital-age/ http://publishingperspectives.com/2016/01/independent-bookst... http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_edgy_optimist/2014/09/independent_bookstores_rising_they_can_t_compete_with_amazon_and_don_t_have.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_edgy_optimist/201... http://theweek.com/articles/573874/4-reasons-why-independent-bookstores-are-thriving http://theweek.com/articles/573874/4-reasons-why-independent...
  - warbucks 9y ago
    This is what I don't understand about this blog post. It goes directly against this narrative that I've been hearing for a while now (and which you are pointing out with sources), that independent bookstores are thriving. What makes them different than this place? I've never been to the store in the article. Maybe its because they're still trying to sell new books, and the thriving stores are all selling used books? So many people I know (anecdotal, for sure) seem to still prefer to read physical books. Even younger people, in their early 20s. Beyond that, some people will still want to collect the physical representation of something they really love. Certainly, this will not be as many people as before ebooks were around. Still, there has to be more to the story with this one store. It doesn't seem to add up.
mdlowman 9y ago
I'm deeply saddened to hear that the Seattle Mystery Bookshop is closing. This feels like something easily missed in today's automation-based economy; the ability to go to an expert and get quality recommendations is not to be missed. Seattle Mystery Bookshop was only one of many excellent book stores in the Seattle area, but it seems that their number is diminishing by the day. I can only assume that that trend holds firm in other cities, and we are the poorer for it.
- MartinCron 9y ago
  Agreed. I found SO MANY of my favorite authors based on recommendations from that place.
- lighthazard 9y ago
  Is the major benefit an expert to give you recommendations? How is this different from any online medium like Reddit or Facebook where an expert can do the same thing, without a local constraint?
  - setr 9y ago
    Reddit and facebook offer the ability for anyone to recommend to you, with no real way to filter their actual authority on the subject except by the one post itself (scowering through each person's history to get a better sense is beyond unreasonable). With a bookstore, you can reasonably expect, at least to a certain degree, an authority figure. With facebook/reddit, you can reasonably expect nonsense, and maybe one somewhat knowledged guy piping up in a wave of shit. Tbh, I have no idea why you'd bring up reddit or fb instead of at least hn, where the noise to signal ratio at least attempts to approach something useable. Reddit and facebook are where you go to accidentally stumble into something useful; not when you're searching for it. In fact, if you're looking for an expert, you usually go where few people go: because those you would find there probably have good reason to be there; places where its only worth being if you're an expert in the niche
  - egypturnash 9y ago
    Let’s say I want to read some new fantasy. I go to /r/fantasy and ask for recommendations. I will probably get someone recommending goddamn Malazan* no matter how applicable it is to what I asked for. I will also get a lot of recs that are just a title, maybe a title and an author, with no further info. Some authors who hang out there will pimp their own books. Maybe someone recommends Name Of The Wind and a mini-flamewar about book 3 taking a decade and counting happens. I end up with a lot of unfiltered recommendations, and an overwhelming amount of research to do on them. I go to a good bookstore. I can wander into the SF section and find a whole bunch of staff recommendation cards on the shelves next to things they’ve loved. Maybe there’s a list of Hugo and Nebula winners. Maybe some new stuff the average reader hasn’t heard of. Maybe a “if you liked THIS THING then try THIS OTHER THING” card on the shelf points me to something new. I’ve got a fairly small selection of recommendations, curated by people whose job is partially to keep up with new fiction and recommend the great new stuff. And maybe something outside my genre comfort zone catches my eye on the way to the SF/F section... Also it is TONS easier to get an idea of just how long a book is when you’re picking one up off the shelves. One cover image and maybe a little tiny text note of how big the file is on Amazon’s page is a lot less information about the sheer size of the story I’m considering picking up. * /r/fantasy loves this turgid-ass sprawling account of someone’s D&D campaign, I finally tried reading the first book and gave up after three chapters, then got told that “everyone knows it doesn’t pick up until book 3” and life is way too short for that IMHO... ---- TL;DR: Reddit ain't gonna give you professional recommendations. Reddit will give you a bunch of recommendations of stuff twentysomething guys with a ton of free time on their hands like.
AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
While I find this article sad, it's ultimately inevitable as far as I see it. I read a lot, and I enjoy collecting books, but I ceased buying physical books a long time ago. I've started backfilling my ebook collection based on my old physical collections. At some point, I will be able to find digital replacements for 99% of my physical book collections and I will eventually find a decent way to digitize the rest. Ultimately, digital books are just better for me. I can pull my Kindle out of my bag and have a copy of every book I've ever read and access to basically anything I might want to read. I may mourn the loss of paper books, I absolutely do mourn the loss of bookstores but ultimately ebooks are just a far superior product. The fact that they are cheaper doesn't personally factor into the equation to me. Ultimately, I think the digital print industry is just shaking off vestiges that the physical print industry required and the digital economy no longer requires. In a few (more like 10-20) years the amount of value-add coming from the publishers to writers is going to drift close enough to zero that I think the whole industry will go closer to self-publishing and become far more egalitarian. You'll pay someone to proof your book, someone to (digitally) typeset it, and someone to upload it to the top N digital distribution platforms. (Apple iBooks, Amazon, ?? who else) and the revenue cut from that will be far, far lower than what today's publishers get. You can obviously hire a publicist and have them do that facet of things too.
- na85 9y ago
  Contrarily, I buy physical books and have stopped using my kindle entirely. I prefer to own the book, and not merely a license to use a DRM'ed instance of it.
  - pritambaral 9y ago
    This is exactly why I use EPUBs. On a non-Kindle e-ink reader, on my phones, and on my computers.
  - Operyl 9y ago
    Meh, there’s a good number of writers that publish their books DRM-free, though. At least, most everything I read has a DRM-free edition for sale.
BlueDingo 9y ago
Lmg. Hh. Hmnnmhmmbhbb f. F. F. Tg. ! G
davis 9y ago
> When movies on cassette became practical, think of what it would have done to the Hollywood model if movies could be rented at the same time they hit theaters allowing people to see a movie for far cheaper than going to a theater? > That’s what publishers did. They allowed a far less expensive version of their books to be available right away, undercutting the sale of hardcovers with the cheaper e-version This is a fraught analogy and in a way shows the lack of forward thinking of lots of people in the book and publishing industry. The problem is that from a customer perspective, an ebook == hardcover in nearly all ways. It has the same story, it is written by the same author, you can read it at home or on the bus. There's no difference. In fact, some might argue ebook > hardcover since it takes up no space and you can use a Kindle and all the features it has. Watching a movie in a movie theater is about the experience of being with others with amazing sound and video quality as well as the actual movie. So movie theater > movie at home for most people. Forward thinking would be the Steam way which Amazon has tried to do with ebooks: sell for less but make up for it with huge volume. Yet publishers often price ebooks higher or equal to physical copies. It's sad to see this bookstore go and I wish I would have visited it since I live in Seattle. But this is a pretty poor analysis on the "changes in the over-all economy".
- secabeen 9y ago
  >The problem is that from a customer perspective, an ebook == hardcover in nearly all ways. It has the same story, it is written by the same author, you can read it at home or on the bus. There's no difference. In fact, some might argue ebook > hardcover since it takes up no space and you can use a Kindle and all the features it has. The problem is that despite that being so, ebooks also have zero incremental costs. People recognize that, and so they resent eBooks costing as much as hardbacks. If eBooks were only and explicitly > hardbacks, people would happily pay more, but there's more to it than just value.
  - kasey_junk 9y ago
    > The problem is that despite that being so, ebooks also have zero incremental costs. People recognize that, and so they resent eBooks costing as much as hardbacks. Thats more of a perception problem than an actual fact. It turns out that hosting/supporting ebooks does have incremental costs and people dramatically over estimate how much the price of a hardback is the physical copy. If they just priced the difference in physical production vs ebook support into the price, I think most people would be surprised at how little the discount would be. Now there is a difference of course but the greater part of the price of a book comes from the creation of the intellectual property (including subsidizing all those books that don't get sold) and the sales process. The bigger issue is that publishers have lots of expertise in selling physical books (100s of years) and ebooks are brand new. Further, the biggest platform for ebooks is run by a company that is not in anyway aligned with the publishers business interests and is in fact a competitor. This is not true of traditional book sales channels.
rossdavidh 9y ago
I'm sure it's very sad for fans of this bookstore, but the part about e-books being partly responsible seems off, since the share of book sales which are e-books plateaued in about 2012 and has even started to slump: https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/248719-e-reader-sales-slack-treeware-tablets-reclaim-market-share https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/248719-e-reader-sale...
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  The share of book sales which are ebooks from major publishers has declined, largely because they're, yup, overpricing the ebooks to avoid cutting into print sales. Indy is doing fine.
Ice_cream_suit 9y ago
"Then, too, there was me. I don’t have the easiest personality and I rub some/many people the wrong way. I can be too impatient and prickly and more than a few people have referred to me as a curmudgeon. I am all of that. I have always known that I have been the shop’s greatest drawback and I know it contributed, in some way, to the fall in sales." This is the reason that I have not shopped at bookshops for nearly 20 years. Service at small bookshops varies from indifferent to rude. I almost always receive polite and helpfull service when I buy a $2 coffee or a $15 collection of groceries at Aldi. Why are bookshop staff so indifferent and unhelpful when I am buying $50 of books ? I would rather interact with a mindless algorithm than with the staff at bookshops.
- HalfwayToDice 9y ago
  Also the same with comic book stores and vinyl record stores.
wink 9y ago
Meh. One more point. > For the last decades, the entire publishing world – bookshops, publishers, authors – had been supported by huge post-WWII generations who moved up through their jobs and had the extra money to spoil themselves and their children, and to begin collecting books, collecting hardcovers. Former avid book buyer here, now still a book buyer. I've always detested hardcovers, and not only because of the price, mostly because what I read is very often a series of novels or a range of different novels from one publisher - they look nice on the shelf. Hardcovers are always big, bulky and not the same size. Also I like holding paperbacks a lot more. Also what others said, what about the shenanigans of having to wait for a paperback release? If I am already more the target market of preferring most books on paper than as an ebook, don't annoy me even more by having to wait for the format I have chosen to prefer 20 years ago.

80 points by fern12 9y ago

I quite enjoyed riding the bus in London. I can't say that for many other cities. It was very clean safe and the integration with Google Maps was awesome.

HalfwayToDice 9y ago

There are an unbelievable amount (BILLIONS!) of printed books out there, and no-one wants them. There is no solution to this.

moonka 9y ago

Wow, Seattle's been all over HN the last couple days. Not that I mind, but it's a little strange.

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Maybe someone ordered a bunch of submarines (stories). http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- mattnewton 9y ago
  If so, they are doing a poor job: this makes Seattle look less interesting to me. It is a great slice of the times though
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    > If so, they are doing a poor job: this makes Seattle look less interesting to me. Perhaps not. It could be Portland doing it. :-)
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  He's not wrong, but Jesus it's depressing to read 12 years later: > the readers are leaving, and they're not coming back. Why? I think the main reason is that the writing online is more honest. Ahahaha oh God. > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think. "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made."
usr1106 9y ago
Right, noticed the same. How many programmers are there in Redmond? Some of them might be HN contributors...

Gargoyle 9y ago

The employees can undergo retraining for a higher-skill industry and move to where the jobs are.

scandox 9y ago
And you can go to charm school and learn to conceal your obtuse cruelty behind an urbane facade.
- farnsworth 9y ago
  I read it as sarcasm/satire of a typical HN position - impossible to tell.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Poe's Law is a bitch these days.
icantdrive55 9y ago
One, two, three--done! It's just not that easy for a lot of us. I do know this, a little part of me dies when I hear any bookstore closed. It was the only retail experience I looked forward too.

dsr_ 9y ago

I can only point to one quibble: * Those who have benefited from the exposure and attention of little shops, who are so grateful for our help launching them into bestsellerdom suddenly do not wish to use their power and leverage to help those who gave them attention and benefits. “I contacted sales and all the tip-ins went to Barnes and Noble. I have no control over that…” Well who the hell has more control that a major bestselling author? * As far as I can tell, neither Tom Clancy nor Stephen King have any control over their publishers' marketing departments; certainly nobody less exalted can hope to do anything with them.

AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
> neither Tom Clancy nor Stephen King have any control over their publishers' marketing departments Are you joking? If Tom Clancy or Stephen King or a JK Rowling-level said "Add Seattle Mystery Bookshop to my next signing tour" it would get done. They might hem and haw about how wanting to do B&N instead, or some other excuses and they might try to talk them out of it, but if the star wants it, they're going to get it. Nobody wants to be responsible for losing the rights to Stephen King's next book. Small authors can obviously go wherever they want, nobody cares enough to stop them. It's the mid-level guys who are under control by the publishers but aren't large/influential enough that they can dictate their own schedules.
na85 9y ago
Tom Clancy died in 2013.
- valuearb 9y ago
  These big shot writers always have some excuse.

georgeoliver 9y ago

I thought this was a sharp observation: > All those new millionaires and billionaires might be good for investment bankers and real estate developers, but they can only buy and read so many books.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
It is astute, but they can only wear so many shirts too. I suppose the trick is that same, sell them something you've convinced them is appropriate for "someone of their standing" - something overpriced - a first edition, with a mounting case, second reading copy, and platinum plated personalised bookmark?

brandonmenc 9y ago

> That’s what publishers did. They allowed a far less expensive version of their books to be available right away, undercutting the sale of hardcovers with the cheaper e-version. And...? Is the author seriously trying to convince me that getting books into the hands of poorer people immediately is a bad thing? > Those who couldn’t afford the hardcover price knew they could get it at the library or get it in paperback in a year. All so that a funky little book stores can exist as middlemen? I'm sorry, but as much as I loved the small independent book (and music, etc) store, that model is done - and if the result is that books are cheaper, and more widely accessible, it's a fair trade.

didibus 9y ago
I also hate hardcover, always preferred paperback, much easier to hold while reading.
- Simon_says 9y ago
  I always felt that way, too. Hardcover is a status symbol. Paperbacks are for reading.
adventured 9y ago
Indie book stores are doing fine actually. The model is closer to thriving than done. https://www.voanews.com/a/indie-booksellers-hold-steady-tough-us-retail-market/3878105.html https://www.voanews.com/a/indie-booksellers-hold-steady-toug... http://publishingperspectives.com/2016/01/independent-bookstores-thrive-in-digital-age/ http://publishingperspectives.com/2016/01/independent-bookst... http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_edgy_optimist/2014/09/independent_bookstores_rising_they_can_t_compete_with_amazon_and_don_t_have.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_edgy_optimist/201... http://theweek.com/articles/573874/4-reasons-why-independent-bookstores-are-thriving http://theweek.com/articles/573874/4-reasons-why-independent...
- warbucks 9y ago
  This is what I don't understand about this blog post. It goes directly against this narrative that I've been hearing for a while now (and which you are pointing out with sources), that independent bookstores are thriving. What makes them different than this place? I've never been to the store in the article. Maybe its because they're still trying to sell new books, and the thriving stores are all selling used books? So many people I know (anecdotal, for sure) seem to still prefer to read physical books. Even younger people, in their early 20s. Beyond that, some people will still want to collect the physical representation of something they really love. Certainly, this will not be as many people as before ebooks were around. Still, there has to be more to the story with this one store. It doesn't seem to add up.

mdlowman 9y ago

I'm deeply saddened to hear that the Seattle Mystery Bookshop is closing. This feels like something easily missed in today's automation-based economy; the ability to go to an expert and get quality recommendations is not to be missed. Seattle Mystery Bookshop was only one of many excellent book stores in the Seattle area, but it seems that their number is diminishing by the day. I can only assume that that trend holds firm in other cities, and we are the poorer for it.

MartinCron 9y ago
Agreed. I found SO MANY of my favorite authors based on recommendations from that place.
lighthazard 9y ago
Is the major benefit an expert to give you recommendations? How is this different from any online medium like Reddit or Facebook where an expert can do the same thing, without a local constraint?
- setr 9y ago
  Reddit and facebook offer the ability for anyone to recommend to you, with no real way to filter their actual authority on the subject except by the one post itself (scowering through each person's history to get a better sense is beyond unreasonable). With a bookstore, you can reasonably expect, at least to a certain degree, an authority figure. With facebook/reddit, you can reasonably expect nonsense, and maybe one somewhat knowledged guy piping up in a wave of shit. Tbh, I have no idea why you'd bring up reddit or fb instead of at least hn, where the noise to signal ratio at least attempts to approach something useable. Reddit and facebook are where you go to accidentally stumble into something useful; not when you're searching for it. In fact, if you're looking for an expert, you usually go where few people go: because those you would find there probably have good reason to be there; places where its only worth being if you're an expert in the niche
- egypturnash 9y ago
  Let’s say I want to read some new fantasy. I go to /r/fantasy and ask for recommendations. I will probably get someone recommending goddamn Malazan* no matter how applicable it is to what I asked for. I will also get a lot of recs that are just a title, maybe a title and an author, with no further info. Some authors who hang out there will pimp their own books. Maybe someone recommends Name Of The Wind and a mini-flamewar about book 3 taking a decade and counting happens. I end up with a lot of unfiltered recommendations, and an overwhelming amount of research to do on them. I go to a good bookstore. I can wander into the SF section and find a whole bunch of staff recommendation cards on the shelves next to things they’ve loved. Maybe there’s a list of Hugo and Nebula winners. Maybe some new stuff the average reader hasn’t heard of. Maybe a “if you liked THIS THING then try THIS OTHER THING” card on the shelf points me to something new. I’ve got a fairly small selection of recommendations, curated by people whose job is partially to keep up with new fiction and recommend the great new stuff. And maybe something outside my genre comfort zone catches my eye on the way to the SF/F section... Also it is TONS easier to get an idea of just how long a book is when you’re picking one up off the shelves. One cover image and maybe a little tiny text note of how big the file is on Amazon’s page is a lot less information about the sheer size of the story I’m considering picking up. * /r/fantasy loves this turgid-ass sprawling account of someone’s D&D campaign, I finally tried reading the first book and gave up after three chapters, then got told that “everyone knows it doesn’t pick up until book 3” and life is way too short for that IMHO... ---- TL;DR: Reddit ain't gonna give you professional recommendations. Reddit will give you a bunch of recommendations of stuff twentysomething guys with a ton of free time on their hands like.

AdamJacobMuller 9y ago

While I find this article sad, it's ultimately inevitable as far as I see it. I read a lot, and I enjoy collecting books, but I ceased buying physical books a long time ago. I've started backfilling my ebook collection based on my old physical collections. At some point, I will be able to find digital replacements for 99% of my physical book collections and I will eventually find a decent way to digitize the rest. Ultimately, digital books are just better for me. I can pull my Kindle out of my bag and have a copy of every book I've ever read and access to basically anything I might want to read. I may mourn the loss of paper books, I absolutely do mourn the loss of bookstores but ultimately ebooks are just a far superior product. The fact that they are cheaper doesn't personally factor into the equation to me. Ultimately, I think the digital print industry is just shaking off vestiges that the physical print industry required and the digital economy no longer requires. In a few (more like 10-20) years the amount of value-add coming from the publishers to writers is going to drift close enough to zero that I think the whole industry will go closer to self-publishing and become far more egalitarian. You'll pay someone to proof your book, someone to (digitally) typeset it, and someone to upload it to the top N digital distribution platforms. (Apple iBooks, Amazon, ?? who else) and the revenue cut from that will be far, far lower than what today's publishers get. You can obviously hire a publicist and have them do that facet of things too.

na85 9y ago
Contrarily, I buy physical books and have stopped using my kindle entirely. I prefer to own the book, and not merely a license to use a DRM'ed instance of it.
- pritambaral 9y ago
  This is exactly why I use EPUBs. On a non-Kindle e-ink reader, on my phones, and on my computers.
- Operyl 9y ago
  Meh, there’s a good number of writers that publish their books DRM-free, though. At least, most everything I read has a DRM-free edition for sale.

BlueDingo 9y ago

Lmg. Hh. Hmnnmhmmbhbb f. F. F. Tg. ! G

davis 9y ago

> When movies on cassette became practical, think of what it would have done to the Hollywood model if movies could be rented at the same time they hit theaters allowing people to see a movie for far cheaper than going to a theater? > That’s what publishers did. They allowed a far less expensive version of their books to be available right away, undercutting the sale of hardcovers with the cheaper e-version This is a fraught analogy and in a way shows the lack of forward thinking of lots of people in the book and publishing industry. The problem is that from a customer perspective, an ebook == hardcover in nearly all ways. It has the same story, it is written by the same author, you can read it at home or on the bus. There's no difference. In fact, some might argue ebook > hardcover since it takes up no space and you can use a Kindle and all the features it has. Watching a movie in a movie theater is about the experience of being with others with amazing sound and video quality as well as the actual movie. So movie theater > movie at home for most people. Forward thinking would be the Steam way which Amazon has tried to do with ebooks: sell for less but make up for it with huge volume. Yet publishers often price ebooks higher or equal to physical copies. It's sad to see this bookstore go and I wish I would have visited it since I live in Seattle. But this is a pretty poor analysis on the "changes in the over-all economy".

secabeen 9y ago
>The problem is that from a customer perspective, an ebook == hardcover in nearly all ways. It has the same story, it is written by the same author, you can read it at home or on the bus. There's no difference. In fact, some might argue ebook > hardcover since it takes up no space and you can use a Kindle and all the features it has. The problem is that despite that being so, ebooks also have zero incremental costs. People recognize that, and so they resent eBooks costing as much as hardbacks. If eBooks were only and explicitly > hardbacks, people would happily pay more, but there's more to it than just value.
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  > The problem is that despite that being so, ebooks also have zero incremental costs. People recognize that, and so they resent eBooks costing as much as hardbacks. Thats more of a perception problem than an actual fact. It turns out that hosting/supporting ebooks does have incremental costs and people dramatically over estimate how much the price of a hardback is the physical copy. If they just priced the difference in physical production vs ebook support into the price, I think most people would be surprised at how little the discount would be. Now there is a difference of course but the greater part of the price of a book comes from the creation of the intellectual property (including subsidizing all those books that don't get sold) and the sales process. The bigger issue is that publishers have lots of expertise in selling physical books (100s of years) and ebooks are brand new. Further, the biggest platform for ebooks is run by a company that is not in anyway aligned with the publishers business interests and is in fact a competitor. This is not true of traditional book sales channels.

rossdavidh 9y ago

I'm sure it's very sad for fans of this bookstore, but the part about e-books being partly responsible seems off, since the share of book sales which are e-books plateaued in about 2012 and has even started to slump: https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/248719-e-reader-sales-slack-treeware-tablets-reclaim-market-share https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/248719-e-reader-sale...

Turing_Machine 9y ago
The share of book sales which are ebooks from major publishers has declined, largely because they're, yup, overpricing the ebooks to avoid cutting into print sales. Indy is doing fine.

Ice_cream_suit 9y ago

"Then, too, there was me. I don’t have the easiest personality and I rub some/many people the wrong way. I can be too impatient and prickly and more than a few people have referred to me as a curmudgeon. I am all of that. I have always known that I have been the shop’s greatest drawback and I know it contributed, in some way, to the fall in sales." This is the reason that I have not shopped at bookshops for nearly 20 years. Service at small bookshops varies from indifferent to rude. I almost always receive polite and helpfull service when I buy a $2 coffee or a $15 collection of groceries at Aldi. Why are bookshop staff so indifferent and unhelpful when I am buying $50 of books ? I would rather interact with a mindless algorithm than with the staff at bookshops.

HalfwayToDice 9y ago
Also the same with comic book stores and vinyl record stores.

wink 9y ago

Meh. One more point. > For the last decades, the entire publishing world – bookshops, publishers, authors – had been supported by huge post-WWII generations who moved up through their jobs and had the extra money to spoil themselves and their children, and to begin collecting books, collecting hardcovers. Former avid book buyer here, now still a book buyer. I've always detested hardcovers, and not only because of the price, mostly because what I read is very often a series of novels or a range of different novels from one publisher - they look nice on the shelf. Hardcovers are always big, bulky and not the same size. Also I like holding paperbacks a lot more. Also what others said, what about the shenanigans of having to wait for a paperback release? If I am already more the target market of preferring most books on paper than as an ebook, don't annoy me even more by having to wait for the format I have chosen to prefer 20 years ago.