4 ms·

I wonder: the equivalent to the small corner bookshop has not yet emerged on the internet, or has it? I had expected to see more web sites offering a choice sel

by Tichy 15y ago

I wonder: the equivalent to the small corner bookshop has not yet emerged on the internet, or has it? I had expected to see more web sites offering a choice selection of books through the Amazon affiliate program (or something similar). But I rarely ever stumble across them. Perhaps because there are no corners on the internet.

technoslut 15y ago
>I wonder: the equivalent to the small corner bookshop has not yet emerged on the internet, or has it? I had expected to see more web sites offering a choice selection of books through the Amazon affiliate program (or something similar). It really doesn't matter anymore. Both Amazon and Apple are destroying this idea because they own the hardware and the software. What disturbes me is that no one has come up with a proper solution similar to public libraries.
- Tichy 15y ago
  Technically, anybody could produce an ebook reader. I suppose the publishers brought their demise onto themselves by giving exclusive rights to sell books to Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Nobles. Maybe they'll come around in time and open the market to everybody. Then there could be competition on ebook readers. I'd love to switch to ebooks completely, but I still can't stomach the fact that I don't own the ebooks I "buy", and that I can not just read whatever I want on my reader (at least not without a lot of hassle). Or even switch readers at will - these days buying an app or an ebook is essentially just cementing the vendor lock in, which is of course intentional.
bsimpson 15y ago
There's always http://www.powells.com/ http://www.powells.com/
_delirium 15y ago
Imo, those kinds of sites are squeezed between Amazon itself, higher-profile book-recommendation services like the NY Times book reviews, and spammy but well-SEO'd landing pages that link to a bunch of Amazon books in an area, but provide little value-add ("top 25 books on [subject]" type lists, which are just automatically culled from the top-25 bestselling books in an Amazon keyword search). Especially with the existence of that last category, it's tough going for someone who's genuinely curating book selections, perhaps even reading the books and providing good advice about them, when a lot of their competitors in the space are just algorithmically throwing together lists of books based on keywords. To a quick glance (the kind you normally get from search-engine visitors), it's hard to differentiate yourself from them. It might be possible to more slowly build up a fanbase of regular readers, though. Some book blogs have done that, which is not exactly the same format you're talking about, but has some similarities.
AndrewDucker 15y ago
Why would a customer buy from one of them rather than direct from Amazon?
- Tichy 15y ago
  I wouldn't mind so much if they buy from Amazon, as I said, they could offer affiliate links. I am more interested in the curation that a small bookshop provides.
jseliger 15y ago
Those equivalents sort-of exist, but part of the challenge is finding them and finding someone with tastes reasonable similar to your own; I write a book blog called The Story's Story at http://jseliger.com http://jseliger.com that somewhat fills his niche, and there's a pretty big book blog called The Millions that's worth reading: http://www.themillions.com http://www.themillions.com , plus a bunch of smaller book bloggers. But the big ones from the 2002 – 2006 era have mostly closed up shop or stopped posting as often as they did; there's no money in "offering a choice selection of books through the Amazon affiliate program," and hobbies without funding tend to flame out over time as interests wane or the hobby starts to feel more like work.
- Tichy 15y ago
  Thanks for the pointers, looking forward to browsing. As for money in the affiliate program, I have a small web site where I tested it, and I realized it sucks: if somebody buys a book through my link, I get perhaps 1 to 3€ (Europe here). But only a tiny fraction of visitors clicks, and a tiny fraction of those buys anything. Meanwhile, every click on an Adsense ad gets me 10 to 50 cents... Adsense wins easily. The only times it seems to be effective is if people click on your Affiliate link and then go on to buy expensive stuff like iPods or TVs. A friend of mine told me he was making money for years because of a a comment on some discussion board recommending some cheap cable (forgot the details). People who bought the cable also bought other more expensive tech stuff... In any case he said the discussion board people have caught on and now insert their own links.
- Tichy 15y ago
  Any chance you could mirror your RSS feed on Twitter? (There are tools for that, too). I would follow, I just don't use an RSS reader atm.
  - jseliger 15y ago
    Funny you should ask—I just started doing so about a week ago, for precisely this reason: https://twitter.com/#!/seligerj https://twitter.com/#!/seligerj .

by Tichy 15y ago

technoslut 15y ago

>I wonder: the equivalent to the small corner bookshop has not yet emerged on the internet, or has it? I had expected to see more web sites offering a choice selection of books through the Amazon affiliate program (or something similar). It really doesn't matter anymore. Both Amazon and Apple are destroying this idea because they own the hardware and the software. What disturbes me is that no one has come up with a proper solution similar to public libraries.

Tichy 15y ago
Technically, anybody could produce an ebook reader. I suppose the publishers brought their demise onto themselves by giving exclusive rights to sell books to Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Nobles. Maybe they'll come around in time and open the market to everybody. Then there could be competition on ebook readers. I'd love to switch to ebooks completely, but I still can't stomach the fact that I don't own the ebooks I "buy", and that I can not just read whatever I want on my reader (at least not without a lot of hassle). Or even switch readers at will - these days buying an app or an ebook is essentially just cementing the vendor lock in, which is of course intentional.

bsimpson 15y ago

There's always http://www.powells.com/ http://www.powells.com/

_delirium 15y ago

Imo, those kinds of sites are squeezed between Amazon itself, higher-profile book-recommendation services like the NY Times book reviews, and spammy but well-SEO'd landing pages that link to a bunch of Amazon books in an area, but provide little value-add ("top 25 books on [subject]" type lists, which are just automatically culled from the top-25 bestselling books in an Amazon keyword search). Especially with the existence of that last category, it's tough going for someone who's genuinely curating book selections, perhaps even reading the books and providing good advice about them, when a lot of their competitors in the space are just algorithmically throwing together lists of books based on keywords. To a quick glance (the kind you normally get from search-engine visitors), it's hard to differentiate yourself from them. It might be possible to more slowly build up a fanbase of regular readers, though. Some book blogs have done that, which is not exactly the same format you're talking about, but has some similarities.

AndrewDucker 15y ago

Why would a customer buy from one of them rather than direct from Amazon?

Tichy 15y ago
I wouldn't mind so much if they buy from Amazon, as I said, they could offer affiliate links. I am more interested in the curation that a small bookshop provides.

jseliger 15y ago

Those equivalents sort-of exist, but part of the challenge is finding them and finding someone with tastes reasonable similar to your own; I write a book blog called The Story's Story at http://jseliger.com http://jseliger.com that somewhat fills his niche, and there's a pretty big book blog called The Millions that's worth reading: http://www.themillions.com http://www.themillions.com , plus a bunch of smaller book bloggers. But the big ones from the 2002 – 2006 era have mostly closed up shop or stopped posting as often as they did; there's no money in "offering a choice selection of books through the Amazon affiliate program," and hobbies without funding tend to flame out over time as interests wane or the hobby starts to feel more like work.

Tichy 15y ago
Thanks for the pointers, looking forward to browsing. As for money in the affiliate program, I have a small web site where I tested it, and I realized it sucks: if somebody buys a book through my link, I get perhaps 1 to 3€ (Europe here). But only a tiny fraction of visitors clicks, and a tiny fraction of those buys anything. Meanwhile, every click on an Adsense ad gets me 10 to 50 cents... Adsense wins easily. The only times it seems to be effective is if people click on your Affiliate link and then go on to buy expensive stuff like iPods or TVs. A friend of mine told me he was making money for years because of a a comment on some discussion board recommending some cheap cable (forgot the details). People who bought the cable also bought other more expensive tech stuff... In any case he said the discussion board people have caught on and now insert their own links.
Tichy 15y ago
Any chance you could mirror your RSS feed on Twitter? (There are tools for that, too). I would follow, I just don't use an RSS reader atm.
- jseliger 15y ago
  Funny you should ask—I just started doing so about a week ago, for precisely this reason: https://twitter.com/#!/seligerj https://twitter.com/#!/seligerj .