Borders stalls book payments, doubts survival in e-book era

There's the additional problem that a traditional book store has huge advantage in selling limited edition signed copies of books, which I've seen in local book stores many times, but I've yet to see in a big name book store.

I remember seeing a Charles Stross book selling for around $50 signed. I saw a signed Nights Dawn Trilogy for what would have been $400... all used books.

I wanted to ask what the signed (second edition IIRC) copy of The Colour of Magic was going for, but I didn't dare as it was locked up behind the counter and I knew I'd want it!

> The problem is that bookstores charge too much money.

What exactly do you expect them to do? Do you have any idea of the overhead of running a bookstore? It's easy to say that Borders should match Amazon's price, but if you take one look at an Amazon fulfillment center, you'll see a gap that simply can't be closed.

Not to mention, even if Borders had it, Amazon would be cheaper anyway, and Amazon's reviews are a huge source of book information to me.

i dont have the attention span for a book. that said, i read voraciously from a variety of resources using instapaper. i read a minimum of 2-3 hours per day everyday.

i haven't opened a book in over a year, and haven't finished a book in years.

I think you hit on something very important - that the buyers who decide what gets sent to the bookstore matter a lot.

Let me give you a couple of examples from the days when my parents ran a general and Christian books and music store...

The store was located close to several antique shops - women would go antiquing, drag their husbands along, then stop at the bookstore. Our bookstore had a huge selection of books on antiques and collectibles for just this reason - stuff you would be hard pressed to find even today in a Borders or B&N, like a $200 book on Tiffany Lamps, or even a $30 book on Depression era pressed glass.

Of course, the men were often bored - until they saw the books we had on cars, trucks, car repair, woodworking, military aircraft, etc.

We would sell at least $1000/week of car repair manuals such as the Chilton or Motorcraft series (and this was a small store). The $17 book on small gas engine repair (lawnmowers etc.) did very well also.

When we found people were restoring old Mustangs, we started carrying the $80-$110 Hollander Interchange manuals, which tell you which parts from which Mustangs are exactly the same for each year (e.g. a suspension component from any of 65-68 Mustangs might be identical, making it easier to find the part).

If you walk into a Borders today, you will find very little customization of each store for the local market. For instance, in the York, PA, store, home of a big Harley Davidson factory and filled with people who like hot rods (big cruise nights in the area) ... not even a small table packed with such books.

Second example: the Christian music buyers were always focused on the teen market (Christian Rock like Petra, etc.) -- but Christian music-buying teens usually have far less allowance money (IME) because their parents are more conservative.

So our music selection ignored the teens, and focused on having the music that the parents or other Christian adults would want (tended to be Christian country, Sandi Patti, and Christmas albums). Those folks, being adults, and in the prime of their earning years, had little hesitation in buying, often multiple items at a time. The buyers at other stores turned up their nose at such folksy stuff, to their detriment I think.

Imagine the sales lost by bookstores nationwide by focusing on Twilight books, heavily discounted, which attract distracted and less-rich teens, versus looking for and exploiting local niches.

Admission fees? Retail stores are increasingly losing to online services, so the brick-and-mortars might have to focus on the experience of being in a bookstore.

For more on this idea, The Experience Economy is a good read. (Skip everything but the first 2-3 chapters. After that, it gets redundant and a little weird at the end.)

http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-Theater-Every-Busin...

They may also continue to find more and more creative loss leaders to get people into the bookstores. Anecdotally, I know when I go to Borders or BN to work and use the free wifi, more than 50% of the time I end up buying a book too, and almost 100% of the time something from coffee shop.

I'm under thirty, but I can't stand e-books and will be reading from dead trees until they stop printing on them.

Inventory: a mix between bestsellers (e.g. Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter) and the long tail, with very specific titles tailored to smaller audiences. Amazon excels at the long tail and traditional stores can't compete with that, as they're restricted to high street real estate with limited capacity. Another problem for small stores is that they don't have the knowledge and expertise to give advice to their customers on what titles to buy for niche markets (or buy the right stock to begin with beyond using the besteller lists), which Amazon does very well through user generated reviews and the recommendation system. This is a major concern for brick and mortars, because people value a trustworthy authority they can go to that will tell them what to read next (as the erudite bookseller of the past would do in nostalgic stories).

Medium: Moving towards digital, but physical books will remain relevant. Eventually digital might become so superior from a practical perspective that physical books will become collectors items in the sense that people will want to have some of them around for nostalgic reasons (e.g. religious texts, favorite authors). But people are programmed to hoard physical objects, so even when digital becomes superior they'll still want some books. In the mid-term you will see printing on demand in a reasonable quality distributed through and printed by local stores[1], allowing them to participate in the long tail segment instead of just stocking bestsellers.

Shopping experience: It's fun to go to a bookshop and browse, even if you're going to order the books you like from Amazon in the end. This will become something you do on a free afternoon as a form of leisure (as many of us do already). Successful shops will figure out a business model around this, focussing on the experience instead of the practicalities. For more practical purchases (e.g. "I need a book on Haskell, pronto") people will use Amazon instead.

Small players will remain active in niche markets, like selling collectible antiquarian books, where focus and specialization gives them an edge over big players like Borders or Amazon. This will mostly happen over the internet, which is a change that is already happening. A good friend of mine runs a high street antiquarian bookshop and has days where he sells for less than $20 in his brick and mortar store, but makes up for this by selling online. The main reasons for keeping the brick and mortar shop are nostalgic, as a warehouse for this inventory and as an avenue for people to come in and sell him new stock.

[1] That is if copyright holders will go along with this approach, because the publishing, movie and music industries are rackets that don't necessarily have the best interest of their customers in mind (customers as in consumers as well as resellers like bookshops and record stores).

Similar to many retail sectors aka nothing very bright? When the WSJ story about in store smart phone price shopping ran there were people quite proudly commenting that they shopped at borders to find their books and then ordered them all online.

If people don't value the retail experience, it's very possible it'll disappear aside from a few niches like perishables and very expensive impulse items.

"Why should I have the bookstore order something for me? I pay more than Amazon and they add no value ..."

They add value by allowing you to physically browse through books to see what they're like.

I buy some books based on author or recommendation, but otherwise I'd prefer to be able to flip through a book (a, no, "Look Inside!" isn't the same) to get a feel for it.

There's also the serendipity factor you get just from wandering around a book store, picking stuff up because the cover caught your eye or whatever.

The problem for the bookstore is all of that is available to people whether they make a purchase or not, so they end up being the display room for Amazon.

Some bricks and mortar stores are doing fine, the local shops that stock local books and local authors and sell used books are doing great. Amazon gives them a global market for their used stock.

The chains that campaigned against net price agreements and talked about business and not being sentimental are no complaining about ebooks, Amazon and supermarkets - well tough