I am shutting down my bookstore in New Delhi
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That's a dumb criticism, since the merchandising of a brick-and-mortar bookstore typically does the same thing as that of an online retailer: presents whatever the store is trying to get rid of to everyone up-front, and otherwise presents people with things related to what they are searching for specifically, avoiding exposing them to the rest.
You can actively choose to browse (wander through a physical bookstore, click different categories for an online one) for the purpose of providing yourself opportunities for serendipity, but no bookstore is designed to encourage serendipity, because anything that does that is a terrible UX for most customers and leads to confusion, frustration, and not buying, and the store going out of business.
Book discoveries, like album discoveries, happen better in stores. It's not nostalgia, but just the way the physical world works. (Think of how music lovers connected with album covers in the vinyl world.)
Just because something is "the old way" and there is nostalgia for it doesn't automatically make it worthless.
For me, Spotify is the best way for me to discover new music. Usually through the thematic aligned playlists or unofficial playlists curated by other users.
In part, I think, this is because Rdio implemented social features poorly. I find music based on the music, not on what's popular. And it's willing to recommend things off the long tail that I'd never find in a store—one of my favorites was an album from a French band that never released anything else and probably didn't make it to a single US store.
The same isn't quite as true for bookstores, perhaps because popularity plays a somewhat smaller role than for music. But I could still see online recommendations being better for depth, especially if I wanted to dive deeply into some genre and explore obscure authors that never really made it.
If there's any truth to the complaints, I think it's that they speak to a demand for more variety in "third places" - somewhere to meet friends and serendipitously run into new people outside of the house. Restaurants and bars are fine, but I think people miss other kinds of commerce - retail used to add that variety. Perhaps the eager adoption of work share spaces speaks to this. I think there are more business opportunities catering to this innate human need.
I am not so sure about this. I always felt internet made this experience seamless and super convenient. Also, the higher confidence(with more data) with which I buy a book has decreased the regret value in case it turned out to be not so good.
Of course, if their was a highly interactive bookstore which had best of both the worlds, I would always prefer it over the virtual one. Maybe someone should focus on making those.
I mostly agree with your statement... Goodreads has made me discover a lot of books.
On the other hand, there are many good books I wouldn't have read if I had the selection available over the Internet (of course, many bad ones too, but I think everyone needs to read a few of those)... it makes it very easy to stay on your comfort zone.
Funny that you said that. That's exactly what I was imagining few minutes ago. People walking in virtual bookstores, meeting and discussing books with their friends in other countries, instantly exploring and accessing related articles, essays and research papers etc. The ability to touch and feel the book should eventually be integrated in this whole experience. The design decisions for making these interactive virtual shops are fascinating to ponder upon.
I wonder if meetup.com is considering investing money in VR considering most meetups would be online 20-30 years from now.
People were saying the same thing about Second Life, about how stores would need SL equivalents.
VR bookstores which try to model real bookstores will fall flat for the same reason Second Life ultimately failed to provide mainstream experiences.
Virtual worlds/Cyberspace are a very pervasive trope in mainstream culture (see Matrix, etc... down to the latest hits like Ready Player One)
Discoverability in many online stores sucks, and the browser doesn't lend itself to the kind of experience needed - I REALLY hope there can be a better user experience through virtual reality, and that access to an Oculus or similar device will remove friction - it needs to be a pain-free experience.
This thread got me thinking, and I already DO enjoy a kind of virtual experience that is very well suited to the Oculus - Google's Street View and similar. I and my girlfirend both love exploring through Street View. If something like the Street View experience can be replicated for shopping, it might become very popular.
My second thought is that a company that would be well suited to provide the kind of experience needed is Apple :) , but John Carmack and his team have been working very hard to provide an inmersive environment and a good user experience. I'm very excited for this technology.
And while there's a debate whether internet increases serendipity or just puts us in a filter bubble(personally i think that if you want more seredipity , you'll get it), there's some research that supports "more serendity" claims:
That's not all. Most Landmark stores are reducing in size, if not shutting down. Same is happening with Crossword.
As a customer, while I frequent book stores regularly I almost always find myself thinking "I can probably save a few pennies on Amazon".
If, on the other hand, you're looking for something like an affordable version of Galbraith's "The Emperor and the Wolf", you're better off asking at your friendly neighbourhood bookstore.
If you're in Bangalore, I'd point you towards Blossom's, Select or Goobeys (all in the vicinity of Church Street). Not only is their selection fairly eclectic, but you get a good variety of used books as well. Pretty much nothing - Flipkart or Amazon - comes close.
I thought the same thing after reading this article, but then wondered how much a posted policy in the store might help? Something clever about doing our best to match internet prices if you come over and have a chat at the counter (giving you the catalyst for a relationship that could lead to a loyal customer), and/or politely extolling the work that the bookshop does to curate it's collection, and that you may never have found it if it wasn't for your thoughtful local bookseller! I find it hard to sypathize with local businesses that I have no connection to, but the ones I do frequent, I feel at home in. I go to retail locations to browse, or because I know I'll get a level of service (and personal interaction) that can't be matched online (being able to try things on, asking for reccomendations, ordering off the menu, chitchat on similiar topics, etc.)
I want to echo this. Anecdotally I find that markup to vary between 20% and 80%. Talking about that as pennies feels disingenuous to me.
Physical stores are increasingly just museums to me: a place to spend time looking at interesting things.
If they're in/from a culture that likes books, and you forgot about the birthday party this afternoon, you go to B+N and as a punishment pay list price instead of online Amazon prices. Its just like if you stop at a gas station convenience store in an emergency, don't expect health store quality or discount supermarket prices, but you can expect to walk out the door with at least something more or less usable. If they don't like books, B+N now sells legacy music CDs, dvds, board games, legos, kids toys, chocolate bars, coffee, magazines, pretty much anything in the store can be wrapped up as a gift for someone else in a couple hours. But its all pretty bland inoffensive, send auntie to pick something up for her nephew, kind of shopping destination.
They seem to have almost no competition as one of the very few stores left in the big suburban mall that isn't a womens clothes store or a food court. Its not like I can hang out in the Radio Shack anymore, LOL. Its sort of a more conformist "hot topic" but without the band tee shirts.
Some folks predict the death of B+N because of the decline in book selling, but books are only about half the floor space so they can just shove out the books, public library style, then move in some cell phone accessories, americana home decorating novelties, maybe candy, posters, maybe candles, maybe housewares, and honestly rebrand it as a gift store.
Or in summary B+N is not primarily a book store and has not been one for some time. Its a gift store that is currently, temporarily unusually heavy on physical book stock.
3 new libraries have opened near me in recent years. I've been stunned at how few books they have for the floorspace available (and not just that they're planning to fill it, the non-book floorspace isn't usable for books by design). My own personal library seems just one order of magnitude smaller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement#Ass...
Some people think it improves availability of less popular books.
> This law provides protection for books as a cultural heritage. Fixing prices for customers ensures availability of a wide range of books. Additionally, this law ensures that this offer is available to the broad public by encouraging the existence of a large number of stores.
Fixing the prices makes books more expensive but ensures that even small niches are filled that would otherwise be unprofitable and bookstores sell those. It's supposed to be a cross-subsidy by buyers of popular books. Additionally, almost every book store will sell you almost any book (if it isn't in stock they get them overnight).
I think around half of the EU members have such laws in place. It is widely debated whether the law has the predicted effects.
By having the competition on other levels than prices (not totally, since the prices at which the shop buys the books are not fixed, so they compete for good deals on that end)
I think, they even think about partnering with local delivery providers to make delivery possible.
But it is hard to beat Amazon on the "no cost for shipping" thing for books in Germany.
If I would still live there, I would totally use this instead of Amazon for books.
If there was an independent bookstore here that offered that I would totally use it. But it's even hard to find any independent bookstore here (eastern Germany), so I'm back to Amazon.
So yeah - sadly I am also back to Amazon.
Dealing with bored, uninterested counter staff at bookshops is about as rewarding as dealing with bored,uninterested counter staff at any other shop.
Bookstores need to find new model of keeping their customers.
Also its not the online competition but also the pirated books market, where you can find all the NY best sellers at a very cheap price on the streets of India. Students don't buy textbooks but xerox them from seniors or infact there are some shops where they offer to create copies of such highly recommended textbooks for a fraction of the price.
I have purchased 100's of books most of them because while flipping them I happen to stumble upon a paragraph or quite which reasonated with me or the table of contents seem to contain what I was eager to learn.
Amazon offers that with their quick look feature.
Only thing I hated about offline bookstores was that I had to tilt my neck sideways to read the title of these books.
- Have one copy of each book, like a library, with the option of ordering a copy in, available for browsing.
- People can pay $10 for a day pass to come in and enjoy the facilities: unlimited books, coffee on tap in reusable mugs, soup on tap in reusable bowls, showers, free wi-fi, lockers (lockers are pay-for-time), inexpensive sandwiches, comfy seats
all in a convenient walkable location.
- Option to buy the book you were reading for Kindle or order a physical copy, to be delivered in two days (pay for shipping) or pickup at the bookshop (free shipping).
Money comes from:
$10 facility fee
Physical book sales
Amazon commissions
Sandwich sales
1.Libraries without being subsidized from tax payers (free to enter and borrow books)
2.Big stores like B&N which have coffee and sandwich shops now and allow browsing and are free to enter.Too bad that the Internet has not fostered a way to monetarily reward curation. Not doing so means that we lose our curation experts.
Or??
If I could filter the raw feeds of my contacts and could weight them (ideally regarding the topic, as some people are weighted more on privacy matters and lower on food matters), I would be able to use the social knowledge within my contacts to create a curated list of (hopefully) interesting (at least for me) things.
These would be weighted, so that the more time I had, the more I could go down that list.
If then I had a way to tell this curation mechanism, that I did like this piece more then that, and the third one was bullshit, over time, it could learn even better.
And then I would finally end up within my own echo chamber. At least if I would not do the hard work of curating my contacts in a way, that counters this.
This social web might be good for nice pictures of cat, but the more I have to do with it, the less it really seems to deliver on its promises.
Just my 2 cents.
If there isn't financial reward you won't have experts who can devote their lives to finding & sharing the good stuff.
Maybe it will work like this: Before there would be people who's full time job was to find great books. Now there are tens of thousands of people who, on their spare time, find those books & report back online.
The reality though is that any sort of review system gets hacked. Amazon, yelp, & trip advisor are good examples.
My personal experience with store clerks over the decades indicates severely rose colored glasses over the idealized concept of store clerks coincidentally being extremely highly educated in my momentary topic of interest.
Most of the time, store clerks have been experts at shoveling product on shelves, making change, and telling me all about their art history degree while I'm trying to find a gift for my son who likes minecraft. Insert the stereotypical Radio Shack experience of trying to locate an over priced adapter that the clerk can't help find while being grilled about my cell phone plan as opposed to their cell phone plan. I'm sure there have occasionally existed useful store clerks and customers who somehow know less than the clerks, but it seems to have been statistically very rare.
A quarter century ago as a part time student at a food store just to pick up beer money, it was comical watching customers ask me and my coworkers cooking questions. "Well, I'm not really sure how to cook that, but I've watched my mom and she usually bakes roasts for a long time in the oven". "Sorry I don't know anything about frozen chitlins". "I've never made jello, but I think there are instructions on the box". Underemployment and economic conditions were not quite as severe back then, now a days food stores probably have out of work trained chefs as employees.
However, if anyone comes up with a way to sell/rent ebooks while preserving my privacy, that would be nice, since I'm not always in a big city where there are any decent bookshops.
There are plenty of examples throughout history and around the world, of governments harassing people they don't like. Of course, as of right now, this kind of thing is not a huge problem in most Western countries. However, governments sometimes change, which is why it's bad to have those kinds of databases sitting there.
For example, if I had lived in Chile back in the 70s and bought lots of books on socialism, I may have gotten in some serious trouble after Pinochet took over (if such databases had existed back then). Or if I had lived in Lithuania in the 30s and bought lots of books on capitalism, I guess Siberia would have been my next home, when the Soviets took over.
(AFAIK It's not something that needs to be regulated, as it's generally well respected by libraries and librarians)
Examples:
1. http://www.santaclaritalibrary.com/confidentiality-of-librar...
2. https://www.saclibrary.org/About-Us/Policies/Confidentiality...
What I learned: while there is no shortage of people who appreciate the idea, the number who would appreciate the same experience made virtual is exceedingly small. Small enough to not make an attempt like this worth it.
For those interested: http://bookshopcrawl.meteor.com/
I haven't completely abandoned it...but I am now tweaking it to make something more widely appreciable [ with a new name and new site, so no shameless plug here ;) ].
I thought travel guide is a convenient format, and they do sell their books as pdf's, per-chapter if desired, so I thought they are doing well?
I still do buy and read physical books, but then again I can easily put dozens or even hundreds of digital books on my iPad for reading while travelling.
Can't do the same thing with physical books :(
If you like books for the"feel", you are missing the point of reading.
From a more practical standpoint, the possibility of storing loads of books on my Kindle is greatly appreciated. I recently spent a week at a hospital, and the Kindle entertained me through days of idle time.
Evidence that paper is better for reading comprehension http://sciencenordic.com/paper-beats-computer-screens "... when you read a text on paper your understanding is deeper and longer lasting than if you read that same text on a computer [...] if you read the text on a screen you can probably recount what you read. But you cannot as readily make use of the content in other contexts. You haven’t comprehended it as deeply and assimilated it as substantially."
I see quite a few spelling errors in ebooks. It'd be nice if I could highlight these for potential correction.
> If you like books for the"feel", you are missing the point of reading.
Nobody told me there was a point to it, I always thought reading is its own joy. To feel the flavor of the words and to hear the rhythm of the sentence was supposed to be point, if there was one.
The 'feel' of flipping pages is just a nostalgia worth holding onto, for me. Especially so when the words are actually typeset in a manner where page breaks provide transition. You know what else I like besides holding the book and flipping the pages ? I like bookmarks. I enjoy placing them and taking the time to pause, to enjoy. I like the smell of fresh print. I like leather bound, hardcover and paperback in that order. Is all of that missing the point of reading as well ? Am I not a ^serious reader^ because I cling to the physical manifestation ? Poor me, the amateur reader.
In the last 10 years, I have bought less than 10 dead tree books. That makes it a ratio of around 5000 ebooks to 10 ( at the most ) physical books.
The demographics of e-books are kind of shocking: the average reader is over 40. Most younger people only read what they can find for free online.
Some more on the topic:
http://gyrovague.com/2012/04/30/why-e-books-will-soon-be-obs...
That being said I still am a supporter of digital technical books. The information goes out of date too quickly for a physical book to be useful. However, if you want to read Homer's The Iliad, it may be better to have a physical copy you can read before bed and retain on your shelves for easy access.
I certainly don't prefer digital books over printed books. Although that said, I'm not arguing that I am like most people and that I'm included in the above statement.
I'm asking as you stated it matter of fact, so I assume you have some kind of source. I'm genuinely curious and this is a serious question.
But of course, you can always travel to Daryaganj, where the supply of books seems endless, if not too friendly to normal customers
I doubt algorithms and AI can replace the feel of a quiet bookstore where you can browse old, new and unrelated books. Maybe meet someone else with a passion for reading and strike up a conversation, perhaps a friendship.
Bookstores are much more than merely bookstores.