When was the last time you were in a record store? It even sounds sort of strange, doesn’t it? Have you been into a video store recently? In our area, there isn’t a record store in sight, but there’s still a small Blockbuster a few miles from the house. We rarely use it because we subscribe to Netflix which, for a reasonable price, mails a couple of DVDs a month right to our house.
Wikipedia has an extensive list of retailers who have gone bust recently, some who couldn’t make it because of the faltering economy, others who were overcome by developing technology. Will bookstores follow suit and go the way of the Dodo bird?
When Borders Books went belly up last year, it followed in the tracks of some of my favorite stores – Circuit City, Linens N Things, and Hollywood Video. Borders was a 40-year-old chain that popularized the big bookstore concept, and when it went bust, it left a lot of publishers holding the bag and ultimately left one main player in the bookstore chain game: Barnes and Noble. For writers, this means that if your book doesn’t get picked up by B&N – there’s only so much space shelf, after all – it impacts your sales.
Recently, there was an interesting story about a 70-year-old writer, Kate Alcott, who wrote a novel called The Dressmaker. The book was submitted to publishers by her agent, and was rejected about a dozen times, with references to the less than stellar sales of her previous book, which Bookscan dutifully reported. This outfit, Bookscan, is no writer’s friend. Because of Alcott’s Bookscan stats, her agent suggested submitting The Dressmaker to publishers under a pseudonym. And because the pseudonymous author had no Bookscan history, no sales history, it sold for high five figures.
For quite a while, Alcott kept up the pretense with her publisher about her fake name, her fake life; her editor thought she was the fictional writer Alcott had created. Eventually, of course, the truth came out, it usually does, and friends who have read the novel love it.
My point here, I think, is that writing, which is usually associated with the arts, is big business. It’s Capitalism with some a giant C. The publishing industry, bookstores, and movie spinoffs on novels: they all begin with writers. Writers are the storytellers, the ones who used to be the oral historians, the ones who sat around campfires in the stone age, who performed for royalty during the Renaissance, who sit in front of computers now.
Yet, writers are often the last to know what’s going on. What’s the print run for my current book? Why is my cover awful? What’s the publisher doing for my book? What do I need to do? The exception here is simple: the bestsellers that makes the NY Times list. You know their names, they don’t change much: King, Koontz, Roberts, Collins, Rowling… A roll call of the rich, the famous, and the best storytellers around. But all of them started at the bottom.
I can’t imagine a world without physical bookstores, can’t imagine not walking into such a place and smelling the books, touching them, picking them up. But I think the day is coming and that it’s coming fast, when bookstores become extinct. Just as record stores are a memory for me now, I suspect bookstores will be such a memory not so far into the future. Maybe only libraries will have actual physical books. Digital books save a lot of trees, you get them instantly. And more and more people are buying Kindle, Nooks, iPads, and bookstores and publishers are scrambling to catch up to…well, whatever this is.
Paradigm shift, anyone?
I have a Nook and download many books. But please, oh please don’t get rid of my Barnes and Noble. I could live in that store. Holding on to a real book is a simple treasure I will never give up.
It’s now Sunday morning in the U.S. so this is a “late” comment. Last night my husband took me to a Books-A-Million store in an adjacent town. It’s still huge, and there were a lot of shoppers in there. I purchased an armload of REAL books….my one indulgence these days…..and am a happy camper today with fresh material to read. (I’m unable to use an electronic device for books, etc. Just my computer, which is desk-top.) But last night while I was waiting in the vehicle for our son and hubby to go into a restaurant to get something to eat, (I have difficulty with lights and fans in such places, too), I couldn’t count the people of all ages who were walking around the buildings on sidewalks, walking across the parking lot, etc etc etc, looking down at the electronic devices in their hands, completely zoned out on them and oblivious to the living world around them. Kids from maybe four, to adults maybe 80 or so. It was sad, to me. AND dangerous. People stumbling around not watching where they’re going, so intent on the electronic toys.
I’d hate to think that bookstores might become extinct. I enjoy hard copies. However I also love being able to instantly download a book from Amazon, and it is always cheaper for the eBook, especially as most books are shipped from the US (I’m now in Australia). As for intereactive stuff. Blah! I want to read, I don’t want a web page with flashing lights and bells! There’s a real problem with people losing the ability to read. In China and Hong Kong addiction to mobile devices is out of control, and basically nobody reads books anymore (or talks to anyone in public). It’s just the two second thumb scroll from screen to screen. Personally, I find that deeply disturbing, and i do mean that literally. There is something traumatic about living life from a flickering screen and losing connection with the body, and with the world and its people.
BTW, I recently had to can my personal hard copy book sales, as most people who buy my books are in the US and Canada. When I went to ship my first book to the US when I arrived in Australia 4 weeks ago, I found the cheapest slow shipping rate (5 weeks) cost me US$30! That doesn’t include the cost of the book, which I have to buy from the publisher. So my customer bought the book for $21, and it cost me almost $40 to buy and send it to him!
Of course the upside is that there are so many opportunities for people to write and publish eBooks. (selling them is the hard part!)
Anyway, thanks for this post. I’ll share it on my new site, as it relates to the futures of publishing. Marcus
Yikes! $40 to ship it?! I’ve got to put up a link up to your new site, marcus.
My son has his hard copy book/s through
https://www.rachaelbermingham.com/bermingham-books
Rachael does the publishing and distribution of his book and he gets $4 per book sold.I don’t know too much about that side of the book trade,but he seems to think it”s OK.
i have a kindle. and i love it. and i love bookstores. i still go and browse can’t i can’t seem to stay away, something about the smell, the feel of paper, seeing the cover right before you. and i still go. but now i take pictures of books with my iphone and go look for the kindle version… its really sad, actually, how quickly one little invention can impact a huuuuuge industry, like publishing.
I take pics too and and then look for the book on my ipad. But sometimes, the need to carry a book out of a store is so great that I head to the cash register with the book in hand!
I should also add that Marc Fennell also had his own talk at the BBWF titled
“I’m So Over Books”,which I attended only because I had bought his book after the
“Digital Big Bang: expanding horizons for the work of writers” talk that he participated in.I don’t think it was recorded anywhere,and for my sake I hope not.
But I did do a post on my blog about it here –
https://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/that-movie-guy.html
Had I not have attended this talk,I probably never would have ended up at the premier of PJ Hogan’s film “Mental” with the man himself in attendance for an enlightening Q&A.
Who said syncs are meaningless coincidences that don’t seem to play a part in guiding our lives ?
I attended a good talk about this subject at the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival called
“Digital Big Bang: expanding horizons for the work of writers” and one of the authors made the remark about how are people going to get their iPads signed by the author?
It was worth a listen to,and you can hear the whole lot at this link –
https://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2012/08/05/3561077.htm
The guy in the photo at that link is the one who made the above comment about the electronic book.
I bought the books of all 3 of those authors.I’m currently 1/2 way through Marc’s book (the guy holding up the electronic book) I’m yet to read Stephen’s book,that he happens to be turning into a motion picture that he is directing.And I have read Athony’s book.All 3 books were made of paper,I might add.-)
Love these links from the writers’ festival, Daz. Thanks for including!
In addition to B&N, there are other on-line book stores besides Amazon, some of which are fantastic, especially for out-of-print and hard-to-find books. So, all is not yet lost as long as these sellers remain available and we have electricity!
I have to agree that it is a paradigm shift. Especially if you can add embedded interactive things in the books. My grandson has a million apps that interact on my I-Pad. Stories come alive when the characters can talk or move. The words light up, helping him to learn to read. While I prefer paper books because I can mark them up, I use my I-Pad for novels that I usually only read once. Times are changing, and the young people coming up are computer savy from a very young age. As for the publishing industry – they did themselves in with a template that was too hard to use – writing your own book proposal, marketing plan. Then to only reap 8% of the profits after doing all the work, who needs that?
As for Revolution – one would be very happy to have paper books if that ever happened! Yeah, I’ll still buy paper books as long as they are available, but I can’t remember the last time I was in B&N.
I love the idea of embedding!
Yes indeed…I had been waiting for that first episode of REVOLUTION and watched it.
Don’t watch a lot of TV, but this one has me hooked for sure. I couldn’t get into FALLING SKIES. Not sure exactly why. Maybe because it seems erratic and out of sync with itself, somehow. I like the concept but the series falls short of my expectations, although Noah Wyle is a superb actor and did appear in several recent sleeping dreams of mine, before I was aware of FAALING SKIES. In my dreams he was a physician, and as I leater learned by googling him, he was an ER doc in the series of the same name, ER. If I couold watch FALLING SKIES from it’s initial episode, (I may do that), I would probably be a fan. Spekaing of books, there are so many “fictions” lately that address current and potentially imminent issues. Koontz and King have really put out several good ones, as has Robin Cook. Totally off-subject, have you any news about our dear friend Mike? Anything from Karin?
it’s no secret how i feel about the physical book [i’ve written about it many times] and to me, that’s just what it is – physical – tangible – “real” – and being the physically-oriented person i am, nothing else can compare – i not only want to touch and smell and all the rest, i “need” to do those things – but be all that as it may, the thing with book stores really is disturbing for the reasons you outline here – now, in the small rural town where i am right now on the east coast, there is not a single book store – not one – there used to be one – a little used book store downtown in the historical district – right next to the only little pub – but when it burned down several years ago, it did not come back – within a 75 mile radius, i know of two book stores – the second of which just opened last weekend north of here and i’ve not made it in yet [20 miles away] – the other is a really neat one down at the beach [also 20 miles away] – in terms of the future and power etc – as i’ve also said before – i believe that a day will come when at least this country’s power grid – and perhaps the global one – will be down – and what then – [books may be the least of worries at that point] but it’s a point – anyway, a FB friend of mine did a great commentary on book stores this week, as well – seems it’s on the minds of a lot of us – neat post!
Seems that way, and when it’s too late, as with the burning of the Library in Alexandria, there will be no getting them back. Such a shame for mankind. Books, for me, are treasures without price. When R. hypnotizes me, depending on the purpose for the session, he often takes my subconscious self to a wonderful, ancient library, because he knows how much I love books. He gives me the feel, the fragrance, the sense of wonder in that place, instructs me to wander around, and then he simply instructs me to go to the shelf where a particular book is kept that contains the information I need. It never fails. Probably because, in my overt consciousness, books are such an integral part of me and my life, especially now. And btw, the MacGregor book are in my “keeper” section…..fiction and non-fiction. Don’t want to lose those. Same with a couple of the Koontz and the King books. I just finished J. Patterson’s, (really, Michael Ledgwick wrote it),” ZOO” , and highly recommend it for anyone who has an interest in what COULD happen with the animals on our planet, wild and domestic, as a result of human destruction of nature’s balance. Great material. Very thought-provoking and timely.
Have you seen episode one of JJ Abrahms new show, Revolution? It takes place 15 years after a total blackout. It’s fascinating.
Books….tangible, real, paper-filled pages….constitute a huge portion of my life. My
personal library is a walk-in closet containing several tall bookcases that are filled with real books, which, being the OCD organized idiot that I am, are very much in order. Not by title or author, but by genre. I am a voracious reader of both fiction and non-fiction material. Generally speaking, I go to a book exchange and swap out the fiction, unless it’s superlative and falls into the category of what I call “a keeper”. Into the book closet go the “keepers”, such as A DOG’S PURPOSE and its sequel, etc. Here’s my problem with everything going electronic. including all written material: There will come a day, god forbid, but it will come, when the global electrical power grid will fail. I don’t know the cause of the failure. It may happen due to overload, or to some massive global catastrophe, but sooner or later, (and yes, in this case I’m being a doomsday prophet, I admit it), the power grid will be lost. Then what good will it do to have everything in the world on electronic gizmos, discs, IPads, IPods, Apps, computers, the whole nine yards? They won’t be worth a flying flip. Most conscientious paper companies re-plant the trees they use. In this country, it has become federal law that they do so. In any event, while the elctronic age is here NOW, eventually humans will be relying on life without power, including reading materials. What then?? Give me the wonderful, musty, flavorful, unique smell of a bookstore anyday! And real books in which I can highlight favorite parts, and write notes in margins! But, that’s just me.
Our entire family room is a library. I love actual books. But unless the industry changes, books may go the way of the dodo bird.