Before we dive right in, I want to make clear that I make my living by selling books in a brick-and-mortar shop. I am biased toward shops and strongly oppose the price wars initiated by Amazon over the last set of years. This phenomenon is often blamed on large-chain book retailers, but the reality is that Amazon and non-book stores like Sam's Club and Target are the culprits - everyone else has to follow suit.
This article is not objective journalism.
Amazon's got Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for $17.99. At most brick-and-mortar shops, you'll get it for around $20.99 at the cheapest - that's 40% off. While the difference to the consumer may be an every-penny-counts $3.00, neither bookstores nor Amazon will be pulling a profit on this title. Brick-and-mortar stores have bills to pay, much greater payroll demands, and an expensive midnight release party to coordinate. Amazon's revenue from the title goes straight into their free shipping offered for it.
In an effort to compete with the online retailer, Borders stores are offering free shipping on the title if you prepay for your copy. The books are "shipping to arrive" on the release date of July 21st and since there's no real money spent to process the books this way, are able to turn a small profit on these sales.
Brick-and-mortar need the topline sales of HP right now, but make no mistake: as business models go, if every book release worked like Harry Potter, within ten years Amazon would be your only choice for books.
Publishing workes on "fixed pricing" structure - which means that titles are priced by the publisher, and no one can mark up from there. Units are aquired at a discount and the store sells these items at publisher's price. The difference between the discounted wholesale price and the publisher's price on the book is profit, which after payroll, rent, training expenses, and other overhead is reduced down to mere pennies (or a penny) on the dollar. Amazon, with significantly reduced overhead, can afford to pull really close to that wholesale price.
Two nights ago, I had one of those rare experiences that fuels me through the toughest times in bookselling - a true connection and positive sales experience. A father-and-son duo with tastes very similar to mine (both of them, though they both were very different) who, over the course of several interactions, exhibited a hunger for titles and authors both new and old to them. I spent a total of probably around 30 minutes with them dashing from literature to hand over Tom McCarthy's Remainder to SciFi, where I reinvigorated the father's passion for Philip K. Dick and handed the son his first copies of George Martin's A Game of Thrones and Herbert's Dune. It was a slam-bang interaction, myself grinning gleefully as I summoned title after title, ricocheting off the father's sly remarks of "already read that, read that one, read that, ok, show me that one!" At the end of the night, the two of them walked away with about $75.00 more in merchandise than they would have without me - very important to the store, but more important to me: they walked away not only with an enriching experience but with several titles that I felt they should have and exposure to titles they wouldn't otherwise have known. I'm a pro at that, and my job is to create a store full of people who are also pros.
It's called bookselling, and it is an addictive drug. Unfortunately, more and more of these interactions are missing from the lives of brick-and-mortar booksellers because people "can get it cheaper online" (the dreaded mantra of death to booksellers.)
I had a heartbreaking experience several weeks ago: a $200.00 return that a woman was making because she hadn't realized the books would be cheaper online. I spent a lot of time talking with this woman, practically pleading with her. She could obviously sense my distress, but at the end of the day, price won and we processed the return.
Sure, Amazon's got lower prices, and through book reviews and algorithms some of the cross-selling potential that can be obtained through a bookseller. I ask you this, though: can Amazon bring you face-to-face with an author that you love? Can Amazon hand you a book and say with utter sincerity, "you're going to love this." Can Amazon read your kids a book once or twice a week and do crafts with them afterwards? And let's not forget the sensual pleasure of browsing - the smell and feel of books, a comfortable chair, some jazz piping overhead? Not to mention Amazon's terrible service; I can't imagine why anyone would risk subjecting themselves to the task of getting a problem resolved on Amazon more than once.
These things and a list of countless others may seem trivial to you - unimportant compared to the steeper discount you'd get by ordering online. Trust me when I tell you, though, that they're the kind of thing you'd miss if it were gone. One day you just may take a look around, albiet with a much fuller wallet, and find online to be your only choice for purchasing books. No one wants to spend more money for the same item - we all shop for car insurance, books, cars, houses, etc., to find the best deal. The point that seems to be lost is that your extra few dollars into the bookstore buys you more than that object - you're not just purchasing, you're interacting and supporting a culture that is in increasing danger of being lost.
When Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince was released, thousands flocked to bookstores to participate in their midnight release parties. Enthralled and buzzing with anticipation, the crowds awaiting the toll of the clock, and at 12:01 am, the registers started beeping, spines were cracked, and a week of sleep-deprivation ensued as readers lost themselves in the world of Harry Potter once again. The winner of the costume contest at my store on the Main Line in Pennsylvania was a 7-year old boy in full Potter garb including thick black glasses and an etched scar on his forehead. His prize was to be the first to get a book, and the Main Line times snapped an incredibly memorable photo of his adoring, smiling face as he took the book from the cashier. That's good stuff. You don't get the same magic from a picture of a boy clicking their mouse.
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Comments: 24
I feel guilty about it.... but I do it.
Please vote for my short story
Unfortunately, the price of books has become so prohibitive that to afford to buy them in the quantites that fill my greed, I have to put pricing first. Oh - and you couldn't DRAG me to a midnite Potter thing. Those types of promos leave me more than cold. I grew up without a bookstore nearby, and prefer bookstores with a "library" atmosphere to those with a children's playground environment.
No way I'm going to wait for Amazon to ship them - I'll have the book devoured and be halfway through my second reading before the book would have arrived if I had ordered it.
And yet I'll wait a few days for the feeding frenzy to die down and get the last HP book. And I'm always there at opening time the first day of every even-numbered month for my favorite manga - Bleach.
rbs
However, for me, Amazon is just more convenient. I can be at work, hear about a book and put it on my Amazon wishlist while the title is still fresh in my memory. I can hear an artist on the radio and within a few minutes, order the CD from Amazon. True, it takes longer for me to get the book, but I hardly have to do anything other than go to my mailbox once I've ordered. Plus there's the Amazon Marketplace where you can find used or new books for even less than Amazon's price. Each vendor has a satisfaction rating and it shows how many votes the retailer has received, so you can be confident you're getting a good product.
I feel for the brick and mortar companies and believe me, if I could bring back Oxford, I'd do it, but it doesn't compare to being able to order whatever you want anytime and anywhere. Price is only part of the equation for me.
That kindly old man introduced a very bored ten year old kid to the pleasure of reading just for the fun of it, while my grandmother shopped next door. From that day on Saturday morning shopping trips became the highlight of my week. He opened a door that has led to many, many hours of enjoyment.
Unfortunately, there are no more of those little stores available where I live. Nothing but the impersonal large bookstores filled with salespeople who, for the most part, have little knowledge nor love of the written word. They simply have no passion.
Thank you for taking a stand. While we all love to read, we forget that the book itself is only part of a community of book lovers.
Cheers,
Kim
However, as far as price goes, Amazon offers their lower price points and free shipping specifically to get you to buy online as opposed to in a store. These prices can only go so low. If Amazon "wins," and there were little or no stores left (independent or large-chain) how long do you think those perks would last?
The market is changing - there's no doubt. But price wars are bad business, as has been proven time and time again. As bookstores struggle to gain more topline sales, it's actually having an impact on the publishing industry as a whole - publishers and booksellers are taking less risks and choosing more and more books that are likely to be runaway bestsellers. This means the market is flooded and polarized - there's a lot of good stuff out there, but the terrible stuff seems to get even more terrible.
Not to mention the potential exposure great books get through word-of-mouth and some good, solid booksellers standing behind a title. Mark Danielewski, Chuck Palahniuk, Tom McCarthy, Craig Clevenger, John Twelve Hawks, Neil Gaiman, etc, etc - these are all authors who certainly owe much to the internet, but most exposure that they got were via a few well-placed advance reading copies in the hands of booksellers who cared enough to try to sell their books.
With online as the only available outlet, the only books you'd hear about were books with enough money behind them for some expensive marketing, and the market for more obscure titles and authors will totally bottom out. That kind of world sounds a little too homogenized for me.
I published a book of short stories in 1998 and made enough money to cover the cost and make a small profit. Not much, but nice enough to more than break even for what was essentially a vanity effort. The net makes it even more possible to make money that way.
In fact, some of my book sales were on-line even back then. At the time I owned a small Internet arts marketing company and I was able to offer the book at a "bonus" rate with other purchases. The bonus was the amount I saved by shipping the book with the other purchase so I didn't lose any money on those sales.
I still have a few boxes of them in the storeroom downstairs. I'm moving in a few weeks and I'd love to get rid of a few of them...
rbs
Very-small-press publishing certainly makes a lot of information available to a lot of people, but does not form any kind of significant portion of what I believe will be lost if people don't have a physical bookseller to talk about their title.
I have to agree with you about Amazon - a company that my retirement funds probably all own stock in. I have seen lots of bookstores fail over the years - even big chain franchises in local malls.
Where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?
Just kidding. We're going to the party, though not in costume, I think. The kids are going to draw a book cover or write an opening paragraph, and my 11-year-old should be in top form for the trivia quiz.
And in any case, the bookstore is donating 20% of the pre-order and release night sales to the local education foundation.
I do hope brick and mortar bookstores survive. I only use Amazon for rare titles that are not in the real bookstores. (Usually. I must confess I have faltered on a couple of occasions.)
The problem is that while Amazon is primarily associated with books, really it's a commerce site - they sell all sorts of things. The problem with book retail is that many of the rules from other retail do not apply - you can sell books the same way you sell DVD players. You can even be profitable at it, for a time. But long-term, the book industry is the book industry and unless things change on the backend (publisher-side) to make it more like 'other' retail, the only way to successfully sell books is to be a bookseller.
This may sound like whiny foot-down resistance to change. It's not. I don't know how Gather stores articles, but come and check back in another 10, or maybe even 5 years, and let's talk about how happy you are with Amazon. Like I said, if their brick-and-mortar competition goes away, so will all of those perks.
This is part of the "champion the underdog" philosophy that permeates the Arnie Carver series. Anyone who is interested in reading a copy of the first book online can do so by clicking the link at www.ArnieCarver.com
Paul - You're absolutely right. But Amazon can't put a book you weren't specifically looking for in your hand. It might not sound important to you, but face-to-face bookselling builds the buzz that gets you online to buy the title.
Jenn - I push the 'staff picks' pretty hard. I think a card in a section can make a book stand out from the thousands next to it.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.