by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Although I’ve enjoyed the amazing benefits of being a writer during this digital publishing revolution, I’ve frequently felt frustrated, too.
I do enjoy bookstores. I also enjoy writing for my publishers (working with good editors is a rarely mentioned benefit of traditional publishing…if you’re lucky enough to get one.) And I worry that bookstores and publishers are frequently making poor business decisions—or forgetting the reader in the process of doing business.
I remember several years ago wondering what on earth Barnes and Noble was thinking. I like the store. I don’t mind buying books there. So why were they running so few promotions (or promotions only for specific blockbuster titles?) Why did they require an annual membership (of, as I recall, about $20 a year) to receive coupons? No wonder readers were flocking to Amazon for print and digital book purchases. They didn’t have to drive across town to pay a higher price for the same book. The stores lose customers. Losing customers means that stores will need to close. If stores close, the big publishers won’t have the shelf space that they depend on to connect readers with books and to showcase them.
So the bookstores are tied to a more expensive product. Industry analyst and insider Mike Shatzkin in his post More thoughts about the future of bookstores, triggered by Barnes & Noble’s own predictions for itself states that Publisher Lunch creator Michael Cader:
….has also made the point that the physical stores are being made the last line of defense for book pricing. It is a virtual certainty that if a book has three different prices: print in the store, print online, and ebook, the printed book in the store will cost the most. This is not a formula to assure bookstore survival.
This is an instance where a reader need—competitive pricing—is being ignored…and jeopardizing both bookstore and publisher.
Another recent instance where the needs of the readers are discounted particularly irritated me. To be fair, the site is Publishing Perspectives, not Reader Perspectives. It’s supposed to look at issues from a publisher’s point of view. But looking at things from a publisher point of view can be illuminating—when they don’t consider reader needs in their conversation.
The article was 5 Academic Publishing Trends to Watch in 2013 by George Lossius, CEO of Publishing Technology.
Publishers are fully aware of the benefits of e-textbooks; the ability to easily refresh out-of-date content, functionality that allows books to be dissected, more interactive content, metrics that can measure the usefulness and popularity of resources, and of course pricing. All of this technology is available yet end user adoption levels are relatively low. Is it merely a question of students having the right technology at their fingertips and institutions buying into this method of working, which is surely just a matter of time? Or is there a wider issue preventing adoption?
The issue was further discussed in a follow-up post on Publisher Perspectives, What is Delaying Widespread Adoption of Digital Textbooks?
Of course, the benefits that were listed in the article pertained to publishers.
And admittedly, I don’t know the industry the commenters on the post were in. I’d imagine at least some of them are working with a publishing house. The comments were all focused on the inability of kids to flip back and forth with a digital textbook, with the cost of the digital books and the value received, and the fact that the students end up with a non-interactive PDF instead of a real transmedia tool.
As a parent, I know the main reasons why kids want digital textbooks. I know this because I drive kids around half the day, 5 days a week. What they bring up in carpool is the fact that the schools don’t have the money (as they did in the past) for the students to keep one copy of a textbook at home for homework and one copy for classroom use. Lugging a tremendous textbook back and forth (times 4 for their core classes) isn’t a lot of fun. There isn’t even room in their huge backpacks for all the books, so they carry one book in their arms and the rest on their backs.
Point number two that kids bring up is that when they inevitably forget their book in their locker, they’re stuck. They can’t do homework because they don’t have their book. If there was an online version, they’d have complete accessibility—on their home desktop, a homework laptop….heck, even on their phone.
It’s not all about the apps. The kids don’t miss what they’ve never had. It’s not the fancy stuff that the books could do. It’s more basic than that.
For adult readers, it’s more basic, too. It’s convenience. It’s price. It’s finding yourself in a full doctor’s office waiting room and pulling out your phone to read your book. Sheer convenience is a huge reason why ebooks are so popular. People are busy. It’s quick and easy to download a book and it’s readily accessible.
DRM and retailer-specific formatting is another area where publishers aren’t considering their average reader. The average reader would like to share their book among various devices in their home—on a iPad and a Kindle. They’re not wanting to pirate their digital copy or share it with all 300 of their Facebook friends.
As Cory Doctorow put it in The Guardian ‘s article, Why the death of DRM would be good news for readers, writers and publishers:
(Dedicated readers) are the customers who amass large libraries from lots of suppliers, and who value their books as long-term assets that they expect to access until they die. They may have the chance to change their ebook reading platform every year or two (the most common platform being a mobile phone, and many people get a new phone with each contract renewal). They want to be sure that their books travel with them. When their books don’t, they’ll be alienated, frustrated and will likely seek out unauthorised ways to get books in future. No one wants to be punished for their honesty.
This DRM policy may hurt the publishers more than the readers. As writer Charlie Stross put it in his post What Amazon’s ebook strategy means:
By foolishly insisting on DRM, and then selling to Amazon on a wholesale basis, the publishers handed Amazon a monopoly on their customers—and thereby empowered a predatory monopsony.
I’d love it if bookstores and major publishers could survive and thrive, despite all the industry changes and challenges. I think they may have to change their focus to do it, however. And they need to adjust their mindset quickly.
So now I’ve aired some of my frustrations with the current state of affairs for bookstores and publishers. :) What are some of yours? DRM? The slow pace of publishers to respond to change? Ideas for how they can learn to adapt? What’s your prognosis for the future (I think we’ll agree it’s going to be a bright one for writers, at any rate.)
Image: Morgue File: chrisof4
Elizabeth – I completely understand your frustration with large publisher (and book retailer) business models that seem not to include reader desires. But to be fair, up until the last half-decade or so, they didn’t have to. Competition for the publishers for the book buyers’ dollar was almost non-existent for centuries. Following customer desires (beyond the sales charts) just wasn’t necessary because they were the only source.
Much of this is also due to the nature of business itself. Any previously successful business is resistant to change because they have been successful, and why change that? Times are changing that by taking into account customer desires, but not all businesses are early adopters. Most businesses are, after all, like ships that turn much more slowly than they sink.
For all that, I don’t believe that the demise of the bookstore or the printed book is inevitable. It’s going to have to become smarter (co-ops, perhaps?) and smaller (locally based?), but you will (and our generation’s grandchildren will) still be able to buy a printed book for many years to come. Who they’ll buy it from is the question that will be answered by the conduct of book selling and publishing businesses today.
Elizabeth – I’ve never heard the reader’s needs described better. If bookstores are not going to provide convenience and competitive pricing, they are missing out on what their customers want. No wonder they are losing so many of them. This reminds me of what happened to the railroads. They forgot that they were in the transportation business and lost out to cars in the U.S. If bookstores want to stay in business, they need to learn from the railroads: What business are you in? Who buys from that business? What do those people want. We authors do it when we plan our writing. It seems pretty basic.
Monopolies fall. They do not go down easily but they do fall. United Fruit. AT&T. Your cable company.
I would say Amazon is enjoying near-monopolistic competition because of the skill with which they have removed the barriers to sale for the customer. Brick-and-mortar still suffers from a geographic model (you have to go there). As adoption of e-book grows, he novelty and romance of our (sigh) lovely hardbacks will fade.
I have kids working for me who will not buy books. They’re opposed to the physical form “cluttering” their houses. E-books only.
If the distribution network for digital works travels from the author, through a competent layout and editing service, through to a cooperative network of independent distribution and publicity outlets, the price to the consumer would be lower and I suspect the overhead of the publishing legacy would be less burdensome.
The barrier to Jack’s perfect competition model: eyeballs. Even if we wave our hands and set-up a new independent distribution network for electronic media, how to get eyeballs to look there? The consumer already knows Amazon. How to get it to Gimpy’s E-Pub Hotspot which still closes your local bookseller?
I should say I used to own a buggy whip for illustrative purposes. Does anyone else here have one handy?
If I had the answer, you’d read about me in the _WSJ_ and not some set of lame comments desperate for an understanding of a new market on Elizabeth’s lovely blog.
Thanks for bringing this up, E.
I can see our country school district using e-Readers eventually. Our kids have iPads in the classroom. I worry about the weight in the backpacks they carry, eReaders would help that.
That would be a huge shift.
On the subject of school books, in Ireland it’s up to the parents to provide those, either buying them or, if the school has one, using a book rental scheme. Not only does this add to the costs on parents (along with school uniforms which can be some of the most expensive items in a child’s wardrobe) but many students carry such heavy loads to and from school that they suffer with back pain. I’ve seen children as young as 8 walking to school with bags that weigh more than they do. E-readers for schools would be a huge benefit.
But that said, as a reader I much prefer reading a paperback to just about any other format, whether electronic or printed, except for gaming books. Those I prefer in hardback because they’re harder-wearing.
I really can’t understand why so many bookstores are shooting themselves in the foot these days. With such competition from Amazon, bookstores need better selection, better atmospher, better special offers, and shorter ordering times. Otherwise yes, I will go to Amazon to get my books.
John–Exactly. They’re clinging to a formerly successful business model. They need to pivot and move rapidly in another, new direction. But this isn’t an agile industry (at least, it hasn’t been, in the past.)
There are some types of books that I think will always require a print audience (illustrated non-fiction, children’s picture books, coffee-table books, novelty books.) Yes, the retail outlet is the only thing in question.
Paul–Ugh. No, *usually* all the textbooks are included. I’ve had to pay for supplementary workbooks before and certainly have to pay for whatever novel the children are reading each quarter. But the textbooks are included (of course, it’s our taxes that pay for them.)
I’ve reluctantly made the conversion to ebooks for nearly everything I read. I’ll admit to some eye strain, though.
I think some of the bookstore policy is dictated by the publisher’s prices, etc. It’s a real mess. Both parties are in trouble.
When we had our foster daughter, I was shocked at the size of the books she lugged home. I don’t remember doing that.
Bookstores are publisher’s last strong hold. You’d think they’d do more to hang on to that.
I think textbooks online would be a great alternative.
Margot–Such an apt analogy. Thanks, Margot.
j welling–So true about the monopolies. They’re just adverse to change.
Yes…kids immediately take to ebooks. They “get” them. They don’t even require all the bells and whistles and cool apps to go along with them…they just like having them on their phones, for the most part.
Right…so many costs are tied into shelf placement, distribution, etc. The whole model is expensive and wasteful (returns, for instance.)
Books=Amazon to so many readers now. You’re right–it would be very hard to develop a strong brand for another bookseller.
Ha! Yes, I think I’d pitch a piece for the WSJ or NY Times if I had a solution, too. No, no–I’d actually hire myself out as a publishing consultant. :) Unfortunately, my business acumen is sadly limited, so all I can think of is very, very basic stuff: remove DRM. Lower prices for print. Ditch hardcover for blockbuster new releases. Ditch hardcover altogether. Decrease production time and increase the number of releases. Adopt social media marketing and increase discoverability. Lower advances for blockbuster authors and hire more from what used to be known as the midlist. All basic….they should know this. They DO know this…they’re just not sure how to accomplish it or are frozen like deer in the headlights.
Diane–Growing up in a small Southern town, I recall that most of the time (maybe until I got to high school), I wasn’t even *allowed* to bring textbooks home because the schools were terrified that the kids would lose/damage them and the parents wouldn’t have the money to replace the books. They sent us home with mimeographed worksheets (ah, the Dark Ages!)
Teresa–I think it’s coming. We’ve got some kids here in Charlotte using iPads, too (the Bill Gates foundation grant.)
Hi Elizabeth – I don’t know enough about it … but suffice to say – it somewhat depends on the head and the school as to how open to new ideas they are .. and then stretch the school, themselves and the budget to do it ..
It’s interesting to watch .. cheers Hilary
Hilary–That’s very true. And some school districts are more open to change than others.
I’m all for digital books and think it would be a big benefit to schools. Think of all the trees saved.
Excellent points!
My daughter had almost 60 pounds of books to carry one semester – ridiculous! She couldn’t even carry them at once, but needed to leave them in her car so she could go back and forth between classes. So having them on a tablet/kindle would have been perfect!
Elizabeth – that story of the books not allowed out of school brings back so many memories now. I hadn’t thought about that in decades.
Yes, the subject books not in our desks but along the walls. A single set of books and as we rotated through Math and Science and English and Social Studies we’d pass out the single classroom sized set of books and then pass them back at the end of the session.
Then, there was sixth grade English without a book – we copied longhand notes from the board onto notebook paper as as means of helping us remember the topic.
Above beyond below beneath between beside by … from the preposition part of speech section.
I’d nearly forgotten elementary school in the south.
Two different comments: bookstores, and textbooks.
Bookstores don’t have some special right to ignore the laws of economics. If you sell a commodity, you have to differentiate; either have the lowest price (almost always the differentiator) or you have to up the ante by offering greater value.
Bookstores have decided to do neither. The “bargain” rack at a closing Borders store still had prices higher than Amazon. (Good word, monopsony.)
When there’s a little book store down the street that makes me feel as welcome as Starbucks, where the staff knows as much about books as the old guy in the hardware store knows about the right bolts for my garage door, I’ll go there and buy books, because they’ll be selling books I probably can’t find at Amazon, or perhaps, books whose physical condition is so important to me that I’ll pay a premium to see it in real life first instead of hoping the seller’s idea of “like new” matches mine.
Schools will switch to digital en masse the day someone proves that it will raise test scores. It’s the only metric schools (in the US, at least) are allowed to measure.
Alex–I didn’t even mention the environmental impact. Good point.
Jemi–Same here. And no lockers now! At least at high school level here–too many students, not enough lockers.
j welling–Yep. There was sort of a built-in bookcase thing right under the window at the back of the classroom. Books in the bookcase and stacked on top of the case, on what was the windowsill. We’d pass them out (if we were the special helper! Sometimes the special helper also took names when the teacher left the room), and then pass them back. The textbooks were fiercely guarded by the teachers. :) There wasn’t room in our desks for all those fat books, so they had to go at the back of the room. A couple of books we *could* keep in our desks…and we had to write our name in the list of people at the front of the book ( you could see which students had had that same book for the last five or six years).
You didn’t happen to go to Calhoun Elementary in the 1970s, did you? :) Some striking similarities there.
Joel –Borders. Yes. I remember thinking the same thing about their bargain table. Although Borders *always* had a coupon, which was another thing that irritated me about the head-in-sand thing at B&N. (Just read in the paper this week that we’re now losing our Books-A-Million here. So we lost all the Borders–of course–and now the BAM. Sigh.)
Well, that’s a very interesting observation and very good analogies. I have a Lowe’s and a Home Depot just a few miles away. I also have a very small hardware store about the same distance away. The small hardware store is where I go when I really need some direction and advice. A bookstore could be the same way. Experts who can make recommendations. And it would be more about discoverability–they would be able to direct us to a title in a way that the Amazon algorithm would be unable to manage.
Yes! You’re right about that. The metrics here are everything.
Well thought out and put together post. I don’t know what’s going to happen to publishers if they don’t make changes soon. And if either publishers or Barnes & Noble go, the other will likely soon follow.
Regarding textbooks, I think they will be all electronic within 5-10 years. But I’m not a visionary, so I may wrong.
What a thoughtful post. I agree with so much of what you’re saying. And not being a mom, I hadn’t thought of the huge benefit of ebooks for those poor little guys with the backpacks that look bigger than they are. Bookstores need to think their way into the new paradigm. Maybe start selling ebooks the way DVDs used to be sold? Let people browse on big screens, maybe? People still crave the community that a bookstore provides. And now more than ever, we need to connect with other humans in person and in real time. I hope bookstores can make the leap. Otherwise, used bookstores will be all we have left. Good for readers, but not so good for authors :-)
Amazon is Satan. They were happy to lose money for years in order to gain control of the industry.
As for textbooks, well…do y’all remember how you could sell your textbooks back to the university bookstore for cash that last week of school? That may also have an impact on students’ preferences, certainly at the college level. Also, some science, engineering and math books include diagrams and such that don’t display well on smaller devices. Some students can only afford to use the library computers, too, and may not have a desktop, much less the convenience of their own personal laptop. I think there’s also the sense that anything that costs as much as some college textbooks (some are hundreds of dollars) should be a tangible, re-sellable object.
Anne–You make a good point about how isolated we’re all getting. Yes, there’s still a need for people to congregate over books, I think–I see it at the library and at the (one remaining) bookstore closest to me.
Carol–I think the bigger stores will, too. Think of all the changes we’ve seen. Remember the old B.Dalton’s and Waldenbooks at the mall when we were younger? I’m thinking, though, that possibly smart, small bookstores might have the opportunity to survive.
Another Road–Ha! Well, I guess I can’t disagree with that. Although they sure have been sending money my way over the last year or so. I do sometimes wonder if I’m putting myself in a bad position, though. What if tomorrow they decide I only get 15 % royalty instead of 70%?
Yes! I totally do remember that. Of course, I also remember that I was quick to sell my Biology and college Algebra books and always kept my English textbooks. :) So you bring up a good point. Maybe, at least at the college level, textbooks should still be physical. But those kids can at least keep some of their books in their room or car.
Great post!
I do think that bookstores will absolutely have to reinvent themselves to survive. This business of just packing books on shelves and hiding assistants behind the counter, and then expecting the reader to find and decide to purchase the book – it’s outdated. There need to be promotions, talks, clubs, signings, readings, give-aways, etc. and, most importantly, the assistants should catch customers as they enter the stores and begind a conversation aimed at discerning the reader’s tastes, needs, etc., and guiding them to the best choice. Heck, they do this in clothing stores and toy-stores,why not book-stores?