6 ms·

Where Book Selling is Headed

26 points by dylangs1030 15y ago

blacksmythe 15y ago
>> easy for a professor to write his or her own book, made up of class notes Writing a good textbook is quite a lot of work. This seems very unlikely. What will happen is a few professors will write books, and self-publish or distribute free electronic versions. Perhaps crowd sourcing will become a popular way to write textbooks, based on a wikipedia or github collaboration model.
maccylo 15y ago
And in the end, there won't be a trace of the next generation, since there won't be any physical records left...
- mechanical_fish 15y ago
  That's an important question, but a different one. Surely we could preserve the collected works of Steig Larsson or J.K. Rowling without asking every reader on Earth to buy and retain a physical copy. (If nothing else, if in three hundred years the works of Steig Larsson are somehow lost, our descendents can just have the archaeologists dig down a few feet, where they will discover a stratum consisting of nothing but remaindered Steig Larsson paperbacks.) More seriously: It's likely that books will continue to have print runs, but the question is the size of those print runs. You can preserve a novel by having twenty librarians in twenty countries run off twenty printed copies and stash each of them in a storage vault. But that market won't support a physical infrastructure of printed-book sellers.
- WalterBright 15y ago
  I see this worry about the historical record disappearing, and think it is misplaced. We have plenty of knowledge of civilization from hundreds of years ago, despite a near total lack of written records at the time. And frankly, it's probably a good thing that a lot of records disappear. How many books about WW2 can you read? Is it remotely useful to keep all the accounting records of every company for future generations? There's a lot of angst about half of the silent movies having disappeared, but let's be honest - most of the silent movies were trash churned out for a quick buck.
aristus 15y ago
From a person who loves to read, this article is barely coherent. It lists three things that will "kill" bookstores then says Barnes is "only good at two of them". Wha? Only good at two ways of killing yourself? And one of those things that will kill bookstores is apparently LOVE for paper books. Ok, sure.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
So, physical bookstores are going to completely disappear? Just as physical computer stores completely disappeared? Except, come to think of it, my last three computers were picked up at a physical computer store. It feels impossible for brick-and-mortar stores like B&N to survive on their current scale (though never say never – it always seemed like a miracle that those stores could have existed at such scale in the first place, fifteen years and more after the invention of the web). But I suspect that something made of bricks and mortar is going to take their place. It might look more like a public library or a coffeeshop or a student union, because most of the actual books will be sold electronically, but people are going to continue to have a place to go which has the parts of bookstores that they like: The browsing, the occasional chair, the librarian/bookseller/knowledgeable person, the cafe, the company of other readers. And, yes, perhaps even displays of books. Because sitting alone in your apartment in front of a screen gets old. And because a shelf full of physical books and magazines still makes an impressive, and fairly inexpensive, display ad for books and magazines. Even the aforementioned Apple store, as well as the office-supply store down the street, still has a few boxes of software sitting on a shelf – even though software doesn't come in boxes anymore, to the extent that many of those software boxes have nothing inside them but a thin paper slip with a URL and a code on it, and even though boxed software, unlike a physical book, is not browseable, which destroys most of the value of having it on a shelf. Software boxes are merely well-designed shiny props. And, yet, some of them are still there. Props are useful things. Humans have more senses than one, and we like to engage them all when we shop. Of course, the structure of the bookselling business is going to change, and some sections really will just disappear. For example, the softening of the college textbook market seems like a harbinger: College textbooks are incredibly expensive relative to other books, most buyers really only want to rent them, they don't rely on bookstore displays to market them (because most of them are sold to a captive audience), and the people who buy them already have perfectly good places to hang out with other college-textbook readers (we call them colleges).
- suivix 15y ago
  Computers are physical products, so of course there will be stores to sell them. You can't sell a computer that is not physical, unlike a book which can be an e-book. There is no reason to have book stores and they will be replaced with businesses that make more profit.
spwmoni 15y ago
TechCrunch link, didn't read.
eljaco 15y ago
As a parent, I can't imagine giving my 1 year-old a kindle to play with - I think board books will be very hard to replace with digital alternatives, unless it's something that looks and feels like a board book, but has several different stories you can choose from.
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26 points by dylangs1030 15y ago

>> easy for a professor to write his or her own book, made up of class notes Writing a good textbook is quite a lot of work. This seems very unlikely. What will happen is a few professors will write books, and self-publish or distribute free electronic versions. Perhaps crowd sourcing will become a popular way to write textbooks, based on a wikipedia or github collaboration model.

maccylo 15y ago

And in the end, there won't be a trace of the next generation, since there won't be any physical records left...

mechanical_fish 15y ago
That's an important question, but a different one. Surely we could preserve the collected works of Steig Larsson or J.K. Rowling without asking every reader on Earth to buy and retain a physical copy. (If nothing else, if in three hundred years the works of Steig Larsson are somehow lost, our descendents can just have the archaeologists dig down a few feet, where they will discover a stratum consisting of nothing but remaindered Steig Larsson paperbacks.) More seriously: It's likely that books will continue to have print runs, but the question is the size of those print runs. You can preserve a novel by having twenty librarians in twenty countries run off twenty printed copies and stash each of them in a storage vault. But that market won't support a physical infrastructure of printed-book sellers.
WalterBright 15y ago
I see this worry about the historical record disappearing, and think it is misplaced. We have plenty of knowledge of civilization from hundreds of years ago, despite a near total lack of written records at the time. And frankly, it's probably a good thing that a lot of records disappear. How many books about WW2 can you read? Is it remotely useful to keep all the accounting records of every company for future generations? There's a lot of angst about half of the silent movies having disappeared, but let's be honest - most of the silent movies were trash churned out for a quick buck.

aristus 15y ago

From a person who loves to read, this article is barely coherent. It lists three things that will "kill" bookstores then says Barnes is "only good at two of them". Wha? Only good at two ways of killing yourself? And one of those things that will kill bookstores is apparently LOVE for paper books. Ok, sure.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

So, physical bookstores are going to completely disappear? Just as physical computer stores completely disappeared? Except, come to think of it, my last three computers were picked up at a physical computer store. It feels impossible for brick-and-mortar stores like B&N to survive on their current scale (though never say never – it always seemed like a miracle that those stores could have existed at such scale in the first place, fifteen years and more after the invention of the web). But I suspect that something made of bricks and mortar is going to take their place. It might look more like a public library or a coffeeshop or a student union, because most of the actual books will be sold electronically, but people are going to continue to have a place to go which has the parts of bookstores that they like: The browsing, the occasional chair, the librarian/bookseller/knowledgeable person, the cafe, the company of other readers. And, yes, perhaps even displays of books. Because sitting alone in your apartment in front of a screen gets old. And because a shelf full of physical books and magazines still makes an impressive, and fairly inexpensive, display ad for books and magazines. Even the aforementioned Apple store, as well as the office-supply store down the street, still has a few boxes of software sitting on a shelf – even though software doesn't come in boxes anymore, to the extent that many of those software boxes have nothing inside them but a thin paper slip with a URL and a code on it, and even though boxed software, unlike a physical book, is not browseable, which destroys most of the value of having it on a shelf. Software boxes are merely well-designed shiny props. And, yet, some of them are still there. Props are useful things. Humans have more senses than one, and we like to engage them all when we shop. Of course, the structure of the bookselling business is going to change, and some sections really will just disappear. For example, the softening of the college textbook market seems like a harbinger: College textbooks are incredibly expensive relative to other books, most buyers really only want to rent them, they don't rely on bookstore displays to market them (because most of them are sold to a captive audience), and the people who buy them already have perfectly good places to hang out with other college-textbook readers (we call them colleges).

suivix 15y ago
Computers are physical products, so of course there will be stores to sell them. You can't sell a computer that is not physical, unlike a book which can be an e-book. There is no reason to have book stores and they will be replaced with businesses that make more profit.

spwmoni 15y ago

TechCrunch link, didn't read.

eljaco 15y ago

As a parent, I can't imagine giving my 1 year-old a kindle to play with - I think board books will be very hard to replace with digital alternatives, unless it's something that looks and feels like a board book, but has several different stories you can choose from.

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