5 ms·

It's always weird to read a story where someone's rooting for something like old bookstores to remain in-business. The thing's that I don't mind the economic s

by _Nat_ 6y ago

It's always weird to read a story where someone's rooting for something like old bookstores to remain in-business. The thing's that I don't mind the economic shift nor the format shift. I don't particularly care for bookstores or even old-fashion books; I think electronic media with active content is vastly superior. I look forward to further advances in technology, where the line between static media and computation continues to blur into something far more beautiful. I appreciate that a shifting economy can be tough on those in sectors that're drying up. I can sympathize with bookstore owners who feel saddened by having to close up shop. But it feels a little weird to see folks taking a rent-seeking position, arguing that broken windows ought be allowed to keep breaking.

AlexandrB 6y ago
It seems weird to label consumer preferences (liking paper books) that don't align with yours as advocating for rent-seeking. Arguably, selling digital media is the ultimate form rent-seeking, since the marginal cost is nearly zero and you're often paying for "access" to content. At least with paper books you get a physical product (and resale rights) with your purchase.
- _Nat_ 6y ago
  I suspect that you misread my post as this seems unrelated to what I was saying. The rent-seeking issue was related to folks worrying about the loss of local jobs due to bookstores closing down. My personal preference for digital media's unrelated to that point.
Jimmc414 6y ago
Sometimes you are buying more than just a book and human expertise still has a value. I'll give you an example, I was very pleased to see a local music store flourishing mid pandemic, as I feared they might go under. I purchased an instrument knowingly at a considerable markup because they had a ton of knowledge I needed and I was able to ask many questions. I know that if I decided to go in and ask all of those same questions but then instead of buying it at Art's Music, I decide to find the lowest bidder online, it is only a matter of time before Art and his expertise disappear from the market. I'm afraid there aren't enough people supporting Art to keep human expertise relevant these days. Amazon may provide a very good service now but once all competition is gone what incentive is there to provide the same level of service?
- _Nat_ 6y ago
  > Amazon made provide a very good service now but once all competition is gone what incentive is there to provide the same level of service? If a single business comes to dominate an entire industry, that's generally handled by anti-trust regulatory action. I mean, I agree that a single monopoly that no longer cares for consumer preferences would seem like a bad thing; we wouldn't want any one company, e.g. Amazon.com, completely dominating the field to the exclusion of all others. Though I dunno if old-fashion book stores would necessarily be the alternative. Or if the book-industry'll maintain its importance, even under Amazon.com, as other forms of media seem to be developing. --- EDIT: Amusingly, there's a link to an anti-trust thing for Amazon.com on HackerNews's front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24274159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24274159
larrik 6y ago
I disagree. For fiction, at least, used bookstores let you find some obscure stuff for cheap, and a book can pass through many hands and develop its own story along the way. Some of this stuff isn't available digitally. I don't think ebooks are a definitive gain over physical. For fiction, I like being able to read them on my phone, and I like Kindle's X-Ray and other features on highlight (who is this character again??). Otherwise, books are damn good. For technical books, I vastly prefer paper, though. The online ebook market is being swarmed by authors gaming the system. The number of them who split their book into a 12-book "series" that all managed to get released in a year, for instance. Tons of shovelware. There's just also nothing like a good second-hand bookstore, with it's chill vibe and tactile product. Finally, kids books should be physical, forever. I don't let my kids read on a tablet or other device, ever.
- _Nat_ 6y ago
  > Finally, kids books should be physical, forever. I don't let my kids read on a tablet or other device, ever. That's an interesting position; would you mind commenting on why? That said, if we're talking about things in the long-term, then neither old-fashion books nor tablets would seem relevant. Something like a good neural-lace would quickly obsolete both.
  - larrik 6y ago
    1) It's (likely) better for their eyes and motor development (turning pages is quite the skill to learn to do properly). 2) They outgrow them quickly, and you can move them down to their little cousin or a friend or whoever. 3) No distractions of being on a tablet or having access to apps or the web. 4) Way way cheaper, especially used. That said, I pretty strictly restrict screen time, way more than even I was restricted as a kid, for a variety of reasons. Physical books are something they can look to for entertainment outside of that. Remote learning has made this worse, now that their schooling is online.
    - ivan_ah 6y ago
      > 3) No distractions of being on a tablet or having access to apps or the web. I hear you about this one! I don't understand how someone could concentrate on learning/reading when sugar rush in the form of apps and web browsing is available one click away... One possibility to remove the negatives of the distractions but keep the benefits of the tablet (e.g. digital content, interactivity, video lessons) is to install an offline learning app like Kolibri, which allows you to pre-download all the content then turn off access to the internet. For example you can have the entire Khan Academy content offline (assuming 40G storage), then give them the tablet and be like browse all you want, since all the content will be educational and not youtube junk. - Demo: https://kolibri-demo.learningequality.org/ https://kolibri-demo.learningequality.org/ - Download: https://learningequality.org/download/ https://learningequality.org/download/ - Info for parents here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-lizKhBkdrccfRWxo-NIKlfljbitdhjkcleFsFPAVnE/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-lizKhBkdrccfRWxo-NIKlfl... - Content catalog: https://catalog.learningequality.org/#/public?languages=en https://catalog.learningequality.org/#/public?languages=en - Source: https://github.com/learningequality/kolibri https://github.com/learningequality/kolibri (Django+Vue.js)
LanceH 6y ago
Bookstores offer something electronic media doesn't -- discovery. 1. You know what you want, you search for it and order it. 2. You know vaguely what you want, you search, read reviews and order it. 3. You walk into a bookstore and wander around and eventually pick something out. I just haven't seen #3 replicated in online fashion. Sure there are a million sites that will guide you to what you want, but you never quite find yourself in an odd section of the store, pulled in by something you would never have tried before. More than anything else, I think this what people miss. They don't want bookstores to exist just because. Depending on how old you are, there is a big difference between the big stores now, and the same stores just 20 years ago. They used to carry a much larger selection of actual books. My local Barnes & Noble has huge sections dedicated to toys and other things where books used to be. On the actual shelves that remain there are fewer books, and far fewer mass market paperbacks. The latter having been replaced by the more expensive trade paperbacks. The books they do have tend to be on the very popular end -- something which needs far less discovery. The library depth they used to have is gone. This leads to two bad experiences that we didn't use to have in the big book stores. You want something simple that should exist -- Tom Sawyer for instance -- and you might only find the trade paperback for $13.95. But you need it for school and it's too late to order, so you get gouged. Other times I'm looking for a book that would have been in the back catalog but isn't any more. They will helpfully offer to order it for me -- at a higher price and longer wait than Amazon, other retailers, and frequently B&N online as well. I get they want to carry less inventory. But the whole point of a bookstore (to me) is the wide inventory of books I don't know I already want. If it's a matter of just books I know I want, I don't have to go to the bookstore. I keep going and I keep hoping, but those days appear to be gone. Good luck to Powell's if they have a better store than my local B&N.
- kanox 6y ago
  > Bookstores offer something electronic media doesn't -- discovery. No, electronic media provides excellent ways to discover new books. What you seem to be missing is browsing physical books in physical bookstores, which is different and grounded mostly in nostalgia.
  - 6y ago
jasonv 6y ago
Some of my favorite moments in time are traveling to some city and carving out time to visit a locally run bookstore. I can point to books on my bookshelf and recall precisely the year and store from which I purchased it. Maybe bookstores are a problem the way you describe them... I also have a friend who does the annual holiday musical/dance/theater productions in her local town. Auditions, rehearsals, musicians, dancers, actors, etc. Her studio loses money. Her partner contributes most of the matching funds needed to break even. They book theaters and sell tickets, etc. It doesn't make money, it's not a high profile cultural event, it's a hobby but the people who do it, and attend year after year, love it. I'm not saying bookstores are like that, for better and worse. I personally think bookstores can and should survive in our economic environments. They're a universal funnel of product, output, art, commerce and community. We can buy things from them and they can employee people and survive. That said -- I just looked up the new Beowulf translation. Powell's is out, Bookshop is out, but Amazon can says it's "In Stock". Sigh^3.

by _Nat_ 6y ago

AlexandrB 6y ago

It seems weird to label consumer preferences (liking paper books) that don't align with yours as advocating for rent-seeking. Arguably, selling digital media is the ultimate form rent-seeking, since the marginal cost is nearly zero and you're often paying for "access" to content. At least with paper books you get a physical product (and resale rights) with your purchase.

_Nat_ 6y ago
I suspect that you misread my post as this seems unrelated to what I was saying. The rent-seeking issue was related to folks worrying about the loss of local jobs due to bookstores closing down. My personal preference for digital media's unrelated to that point.

Jimmc414 6y ago

Sometimes you are buying more than just a book and human expertise still has a value. I'll give you an example, I was very pleased to see a local music store flourishing mid pandemic, as I feared they might go under. I purchased an instrument knowingly at a considerable markup because they had a ton of knowledge I needed and I was able to ask many questions. I know that if I decided to go in and ask all of those same questions but then instead of buying it at Art's Music, I decide to find the lowest bidder online, it is only a matter of time before Art and his expertise disappear from the market. I'm afraid there aren't enough people supporting Art to keep human expertise relevant these days. Amazon may provide a very good service now but once all competition is gone what incentive is there to provide the same level of service?

_Nat_ 6y ago
> Amazon made provide a very good service now but once all competition is gone what incentive is there to provide the same level of service? If a single business comes to dominate an entire industry, that's generally handled by anti-trust regulatory action. I mean, I agree that a single monopoly that no longer cares for consumer preferences would seem like a bad thing; we wouldn't want any one company, e.g. Amazon.com, completely dominating the field to the exclusion of all others. Though I dunno if old-fashion book stores would necessarily be the alternative. Or if the book-industry'll maintain its importance, even under Amazon.com, as other forms of media seem to be developing. --- EDIT: Amusingly, there's a link to an anti-trust thing for Amazon.com on HackerNews's front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24274159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24274159

larrik 6y ago

I disagree. For fiction, at least, used bookstores let you find some obscure stuff for cheap, and a book can pass through many hands and develop its own story along the way. Some of this stuff isn't available digitally. I don't think ebooks are a definitive gain over physical. For fiction, I like being able to read them on my phone, and I like Kindle's X-Ray and other features on highlight (who is this character again??). Otherwise, books are damn good. For technical books, I vastly prefer paper, though. The online ebook market is being swarmed by authors gaming the system. The number of them who split their book into a 12-book "series" that all managed to get released in a year, for instance. Tons of shovelware. There's just also nothing like a good second-hand bookstore, with it's chill vibe and tactile product. Finally, kids books should be physical, forever. I don't let my kids read on a tablet or other device, ever.

_Nat_ 6y ago
> Finally, kids books should be physical, forever. I don't let my kids read on a tablet or other device, ever. That's an interesting position; would you mind commenting on why? That said, if we're talking about things in the long-term, then neither old-fashion books nor tablets would seem relevant. Something like a good neural-lace would quickly obsolete both.
- larrik 6y ago
  1) It's (likely) better for their eyes and motor development (turning pages is quite the skill to learn to do properly). 2) They outgrow them quickly, and you can move them down to their little cousin or a friend or whoever. 3) No distractions of being on a tablet or having access to apps or the web. 4) Way way cheaper, especially used. That said, I pretty strictly restrict screen time, way more than even I was restricted as a kid, for a variety of reasons. Physical books are something they can look to for entertainment outside of that. Remote learning has made this worse, now that their schooling is online.
  - ivan_ah 6y ago
    > 3) No distractions of being on a tablet or having access to apps or the web. I hear you about this one! I don't understand how someone could concentrate on learning/reading when sugar rush in the form of apps and web browsing is available one click away... One possibility to remove the negatives of the distractions but keep the benefits of the tablet (e.g. digital content, interactivity, video lessons) is to install an offline learning app like Kolibri, which allows you to pre-download all the content then turn off access to the internet. For example you can have the entire Khan Academy content offline (assuming 40G storage), then give them the tablet and be like browse all you want, since all the content will be educational and not youtube junk. - Demo: https://kolibri-demo.learningequality.org/ https://kolibri-demo.learningequality.org/ - Download: https://learningequality.org/download/ https://learningequality.org/download/ - Info for parents here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-lizKhBkdrccfRWxo-NIKlfljbitdhjkcleFsFPAVnE/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-lizKhBkdrccfRWxo-NIKlfl... - Content catalog: https://catalog.learningequality.org/#/public?languages=en https://catalog.learningequality.org/#/public?languages=en - Source: https://github.com/learningequality/kolibri https://github.com/learningequality/kolibri (Django+Vue.js)

LanceH 6y ago

Bookstores offer something electronic media doesn't -- discovery. 1. You know what you want, you search for it and order it. 2. You know vaguely what you want, you search, read reviews and order it. 3. You walk into a bookstore and wander around and eventually pick something out. I just haven't seen #3 replicated in online fashion. Sure there are a million sites that will guide you to what you want, but you never quite find yourself in an odd section of the store, pulled in by something you would never have tried before. More than anything else, I think this what people miss. They don't want bookstores to exist just because. Depending on how old you are, there is a big difference between the big stores now, and the same stores just 20 years ago. They used to carry a much larger selection of actual books. My local Barnes & Noble has huge sections dedicated to toys and other things where books used to be. On the actual shelves that remain there are fewer books, and far fewer mass market paperbacks. The latter having been replaced by the more expensive trade paperbacks. The books they do have tend to be on the very popular end -- something which needs far less discovery. The library depth they used to have is gone. This leads to two bad experiences that we didn't use to have in the big book stores. You want something simple that should exist -- Tom Sawyer for instance -- and you might only find the trade paperback for $13.95. But you need it for school and it's too late to order, so you get gouged. Other times I'm looking for a book that would have been in the back catalog but isn't any more. They will helpfully offer to order it for me -- at a higher price and longer wait than Amazon, other retailers, and frequently B&N online as well. I get they want to carry less inventory. But the whole point of a bookstore (to me) is the wide inventory of books I don't know I already want. If it's a matter of just books I know I want, I don't have to go to the bookstore. I keep going and I keep hoping, but those days appear to be gone. Good luck to Powell's if they have a better store than my local B&N.

kanox 6y ago
> Bookstores offer something electronic media doesn't -- discovery. No, electronic media provides excellent ways to discover new books. What you seem to be missing is browsing physical books in physical bookstores, which is different and grounded mostly in nostalgia.
- 6y ago

jasonv 6y ago

Some of my favorite moments in time are traveling to some city and carving out time to visit a locally run bookstore. I can point to books on my bookshelf and recall precisely the year and store from which I purchased it. Maybe bookstores are a problem the way you describe them... I also have a friend who does the annual holiday musical/dance/theater productions in her local town. Auditions, rehearsals, musicians, dancers, actors, etc. Her studio loses money. Her partner contributes most of the matching funds needed to break even. They book theaters and sell tickets, etc. It doesn't make money, it's not a high profile cultural event, it's a hobby but the people who do it, and attend year after year, love it. I'm not saying bookstores are like that, for better and worse. I personally think bookstores can and should survive in our economic environments. They're a universal funnel of product, output, art, commerce and community. We can buy things from them and they can employee people and survive. That said -- I just looked up the new Beowulf translation. Powell's is out, Bookshop is out, but Amazon can says it's "In Stock". Sigh^3.