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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Did someone really call their bookshop 'Bookshop'?

And I really don't get it - printed books are commodities. They're the same wherever you get them. Anyone except the author is a middleman. Independent bookshops can't value-add anything except in-person, and even then it's limited to creating a nice environment.

I love my local bookshop, and we're buying from them during the crisis to be delivered, but being honest with myself it's because of the toast they do rather than anything to do with books.

(Doesn't apply to second-hand booksellers.)

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Yes, a big part of what local bookshops offer is the physical environment. Mine (near the University of Chicago) does book events, which is why I keep supporting them.

Good bookstores also provide a free service: curation. Really good bookstores are usually small, located near a good university and are run by book-loving alumni who never left the area. Small is important -- limited space means having to be super selective with inventory. A good bookstore display can give you a sense of the zeitgeist, a feeling for what thinking people are interested in at the moment. There's nothing more pleasant than spending a Saturday afternoon stumbling across new ideas in the stacks.

Unfortunately, you're right -- all these things can now be had online. Curation and bibliophile owners? Follow interesting people like Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution) and you'll get some of the best book recommendations around. Book event? Can be done via video conference.

All that's left is the physical environment, and now that's gone too.

I joined the coop years ago when I was a student and never sold back my shares.

The first big chunk of value added for independent bookshops is that they are not Amazon. That is enough for me. I avoid Amazon. But there are a few possible other pieces of value to add that the other sellers might add, but they are not doing it.

How about, if a bookseller does absolutely no business with Amazon or any of its affiliates, ever, they advertise that so that I can favor them with mine. That would be a value-added.

Now, I have bought many used books from Alibris, since I stopped buying from Abebooks when I learned that Amazon owns Abebooks, but now I find that Alibris has a deal with Amazon to ship the books that I buy from independent booksellers who list on Alibris through Amazon's shipping system. And part of the deal seems to be that any bookseller who lists both on Amazon (or abebooks) and on Alibris always lists the book a little higher on Alibris, and shipping always costs a little more if I buy through Alibris, too. So the independents, who present themselves as wanting to compete with Amazon, are being lured into supporting both the giant and the giant's ability to manage prices throughout the market. If an independent bookseller wants to offer any value beyond what Amazon offers, they should stay out of Amazon's network and sell used books that Amazon's network does not offer.

When I want to buy a used book that I find on-line that was published with one or more CD's included, I have often contacted the bookseller and asked if their copy of the book has the CD included. If the bookseller is one that lists through abebooks, Amazon, or Alibris, either my inquiry is ignored or the response is that they cannot access their inventory to answer my question, and that their terms of sale are that the CD might not be included, no matter how essential it may be to the value of the book. This uniformity of poor service across supposedly-competing sellers is suspicious at best, and an independent bookseller could certainly offer value added by not doing what everyone else is doing.

Bottom line is that it is possible for bookshop to be better than Amazon for some buyers, but I'll wait to see it before I believe it.

It’s not true that having independent stores doesn’t value add anything.

They add protection against monopoly which is dangerous, especially when talking books, to allow in a free society.

They don’t add anything in the narrow context we are usually meaning when we say such.

There’s always another abstraction that says otherwise. And in the case of society, I’d prefer a robust, unmonopolized trade.

But most people don’t think in abstractions, opting for adherence to obvious social norms.

But they just buy exactly the same books, from exactly the same publishers, as every other bookshop in the world. Where are they adding any kind of protection against anything?

My local bookshop sells the same as I could get in a chain bookshop. The books aren't any different! What's the point?

And anyway you don't need bookshops to disseminate free thought, if that's what you mean. You can do that with a website.

(Doesn't apply to specialist bookshops.)

Could you disseminate free thought with a website if there were but two massive corporate hosts?

Does it matter if anyone can be bothered to interact with your free thoughts, or only that you're free to post them?

Perhaps it is sufficient that we're all free to shelve our free thoughts in the closet?

I don't really know what you're trying to say.

Most independent bookshops don't solve the problem you're describing. They just buy the same books from the same publishers as everyone else. They don't create any variety. It's the same books!

Most of the time, I don't go to the bookstore with a particular book in mind. Instead, it's a Saturday morning and the weather is nice, so I want to go for a walk somewhere. The bookstore is a good choice, and maybe I'll find an interesting title there. If my bookstore shuts down, I lose one more important walking destination.

Unfortunately I can't buy that experience on Amazon, even with same-day shipping.

This might be a condition particular to walkable cities, though. I wouldn't drive to a bookstore.

Of course Bookshop doesn't help here either, but if it can keep their doors open then I'll be able to keep walking through them...

The value-add of bookstores is discovery. You can browse a bookstore. I don't go to a physical bookstore if I know I want to buy <current bestseller>. I go to a bookstore because I want to find something interesting on a certain topic.

You can browse Amazon of course, but for some reason it's still an awful user experience.

Yes, this. There's very little serendipity in browsing amazon. I often discover just the book I never knew I always wanted when browsing a physical bookstore's shelves.

At least in my country, publishers get a bigger cut when you buy your books in indie/local than amazon. They demand bigger discounts, are relentless with penalties, accounting maneuvers and all sorts of schemes to undermine payments, and authors get the same royalties whether the book is sold by amazon or other channels. So, yes, it makes a difference.

Please support your local bookstores and your indie publishing houses.

> authors get the same royalties whether the book is sold by amazon or other channels

If the authors get the same, what's the problem? Everyone else is a middleman.

Not true. A publishing house is not meddling anything, is creating the “commodity“ along with the author. Creating a book is an art. It involves formation, sometimes translation, concept and design. It also fires a big productive chain that in some cases, for indie publishers at least, goes along with the ethos of the author. That’s why some very successful authors stick along with indies instead of penguin random.

People are putting a lot of heart into this industry.

> A publishing house is not meddling anything

I didn't say they were meddling - I said they were middlemen.

English is not my native language. I think you understand what I meant.

Publishing houses are not a middleman in the same way walmart is a middle man. Before you get your book, it has been edited, formed and designed. Plus, and again, we’re talking indie here, it’s most likely part of a concept. Don’t you have a collection, a compilation or had ever bought a book by its cover?

I'm not all against digital seller, but at least when I was a kid, I read in the bookstore almost every day after school. I've only got the allowance of one book per week from my parents, so the bookstore was the only way for me to read though a few books a day. I'd like for bookstores like these to continue to exist.

Is that not what libraries are for?

Ideally yes. However, the quality of the books, and the reading space provided by libraries are largely dependant on government budget. Those would be nice if you live in big cities. In a small ones? They really depends.

> However, the quality of the books

I think in most library systems you can demand literally any book you want that has ever been published in the modern age and have it delivered to your local library. They often don't advertise it - but ask for it.

At my university that was explicit policy. If you needed a book for academics and they didn’t have it, they’d order it.

For some reason libraries have very, very small scifi collections. I'd get my scifi from used bookstores (long before Amazon). My favorite was a hole-in-the-wall about a mile walk away. You could return the books after reading them for half price store credit. I read hundreds of books that way.

I few years ago I got into buying boxes of 50-100 random scifi books from ebay. In bulk they're about $.50 each.

You can order almost any book in the world to be sent to your local library in most library systems.

The local library is networked in with all the other libraries in King County. You can order a book from anywhere in their system. It's still a thin supply of scifi, and wait times for single copies are often several months.

kcls.org

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