> by siphoning business from the real world and replacing it with internet commerce.
I've got news for you, people want to order on a whim and have it arrive at their home the next day. If you don't offer that then people won't buy from you.
In many parts of the world overgrown local busybodies have destroyed "high streets" in attempts to monetize drivers and pad their CV; driving people away.
As per TFA, they sell their books online. Personally, having seen how Amazon achieves next-day delivery in markets with poor labour laws, my desire to receive products quickly has receded greatly.
People also want & need to explore physical spaces above and beyond what a recommendation algorithm suggests. People want to have the full experience of being immersed in a space. People want to smell the books. People want to try on clothes and see how they fit and compare them. People don’t want to be drawn in by the short-term convenience of the most convenient price.
> People want to try on clothes and see how they fit and compare them
Sure, but I can't find the clothes I want at the mall, and I can on Amazon. The mall bookstores that used to exist only sold bestsellers.
The "bookstore" I like to browse these days is Goodwill. I sometimes bring home a shopping bag full of books, for only a few dollars. I've also bought many "grab bags" of books from Ebay. The Bellevue Public Library has a second hand bookstore attached, where people donate books and the store sells them. I've bought a large number of books from them, and the little old ladies who run it are always charming. Highly recommended!
There are a couple "Little Free Libraries" in my neighborhood and I regularly insert scifi in them.
At the same time I'm quite annoyed that there's plenty of things now that you can only buy on the Internet.
I also find Amazon to be an horrible mess. It's hard to know if you're buying something legit or from a shaddy business.
I personally always look for a local physical shop first, then a local Internet shop, Amazon being the very last resort.
Concerning books, the experience on Amazon is nowhere near as nice as browsing in a good book shop with knowledgable people being able to give advices.
I might be an exception and, of course, it depends where you live, but I definitely don't fit in the people you describe.
> It's hard to know if you're buying something legit or from a shaddy business.
Is this a US problem? In the UK I've never heard anyone ever receive a fake or dodgy product, but I see these complaints on HN in almost every thread about Amazons retail business.
Plenty of fake electronics, cables, chargers, yes. Same here. But I don't think I've ever bought a fake (counterfeit) book. In that sense though I don't mind buying used books from eBay. Especially if the book I am looking for costs £100+. I can live with a £20 used one.
A good fake is borderline undetectable. So your friends could have received fakes and not known.
It's not like many people would buy several copies of a book or DVD to do a side-by-side comparison of textures and precise colour matching. Or have the equipment to tell apart a CRI 95 LED bulb from a CRI 80 bulb in the same housing. Or tell name-brand nail polish from generic in an identical bottle, or a genuine Apple charger from a good clone.
Of course, my experience with Amazon in the UK is it's nowhere near as bad as AliExpress.
That may be true but when dealing with book discovery nothing beats going to an actual book store and browsing. Human curated isles and shelves, people to talk to, an environment that fosters curiosity. That can't be replaced with clever algorithms designed to push whatever amazon want to push.
I agree with you that buying on Amazon is easy and frictionless but convenience comes with at a cost and sometimes price is not money. If you already know the book you want, it is dead easy to buy on Amazon. But, it is also easy to buy elsewhere online. Amazon is a bully and its business practices harm authors and publishers. It also treats their workers poorly. Is this the company you want to fund?
I don't want to be that guy and say to effect, "well, welcome to the real world". There are trade-offs involved for every side, good and bad.
Your book discovery process may be optimal for you, but I couldn't be further away from that. I don't really care to know Bob or Sally's taste at the local bookstore, don't know them, have 0 trust in them. (There's probably exceptions, insignificant ones though, in big cities like Austin with really cool book stores & a niche collector-kinda collection, but that's a different market to me)
Why would I care about human curated isles and shelves when I could go look up what Tyler Cowen's reading and recommending, or Marc Andreessen or Patrick Collison? Not to mention, Twitter's fantastic for this. There's very interesting people that post snippets as well of what they're reading, and build up a credibility that gives you insight into the book as well as knowing this person has a reading taste that aligns with your own.
And then once I evaluate the options, I can easily go on Amazon and get whatever I want to read in a timely manner (Not to mention using Amazon's reviews as an additional filter, the 2/3 star reviews for more critical analysis)
One benefit for me is that it's faster and easier to walk into my neighborhood bookstore and walk out with a good book that maybe I've already read a couple exerpts from right in the store (not some brief preview online), than doing my own legwork on book discovery and waiting for a shipment. I love my local bookstore, the people working there have great taste since they are literally professionals at this.
Fully agree. The bookstore/library browsing experience is intimately tied to adjacency/serendipity. I love browsing up and down the stacks and looking for whatever catches my eye. Typical genre or sorting lists don't even come close to the richness and density of the stack experience.
More than that, we also have the problem that many users look online on Amazon first.
For example, for online searches (in the UK), I try Amazon, Wordery, and Waterstones.com -- but usually Amazon first. If they don't have something or for some reason I feel I need to look elsewhere, I try the others.
Interestingly, for old or hard-to-find books, many people in the UK use BookDepository.com and AbeBooks -- guess what, both are owned by Amazon.
(I try to make up by visiting my local Waterstones regularly and more niche bookshops like Daunt when I can, but of course during the pandemic that's gone out of the window).
Yeah, they were bought in around 2008. My enthusiasm for Abebooks has declined markedly since then. I still find the site better than Amazon's for a lot of things I'm interested in, but prefer to avoid both as much as possible.
Abebooks is my primary source of buying books!
Its especially good for me, since I'm not originally from the US and its the cheapest way to get publications in my native language from "foreign" sellers. I'd like to support booksellers in my country, but I go back only once or twice a year and can't make all purchases then.
On the other hand, I've found sellers that are shipping from within my city or around (happened thrice in 4ish years of buying). In that case, I'll just track them down and try to contact them for a direct purchase cutting out the middleman. Its a lot of work sometimes, but in my mind worth it.
Fortunately, Powells is great for this. Whenever I need a book delivered in the US they deliver.
"In many parts of the world overgrown local busybodies have destroyed "high streets" in attempts to monetize drivers and pad their CV; driving people away. "
Not sure what you're getting at here but if you think you deserve free private car storage on public land you might try reading The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup.
It's very clear you have not read the book. I highly recommend it. It is largely about the problems of parking policy and I do not recall much if any content about cycling.
You guessed what the content is from the title alone and then judged the book by your made-up content instead of actually finding out what the book might be about.
I think next day is overrated. If something is important enough for you, surely most people should be willing to wait a few days e.g a week for it to arrive. It's not like you are going to finish that book the same day (usually).
Personally I want to be able to travel somewhere nearby on a whim, hold a product in my hands, sometimes physically compare it to a competing product, then travel home with it on that very same day.
*have it arrive the next day, realize they sold you a misprint as new, go and return the book, write an angry return text. Get the promise they will send you a new one, get another misprint, write an angry review
Seriously, Amazon really was good once. Now I'd rather order a book from any competitor that cares about their customers. Much less hassle.
Where does Amazon even get those misprints anyhow? Or how do they manage to mix "used, for re-sale" with "in a big cardboard box full of the copies of this book straight from the publisher, for first sale" in the first place?
I've got news for you: You aren't in Powell's target market. Powell's is for Portlanders, and on any other year of their existence they would be swarmed daily, busier than any food cart. In this part of the world, Powell's is not an online store, but a physical institution.
> people want to order on a whim and have it arrive at their home the next day
Some people don't mind giving up convenience (price, shipping time) to help their local bookstores. From the article:
"The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive. We will not participate in undermining that vitality."
When I visited the PNC in 2015 I peregrinated all the way from Seattle (WA) to Portland (OR) simply for the joy of visiting Powell’s. I even chose my hotel to be as close as possible (which turned out to be the very hip ACE Hotel, which was another amazing experience).
These places may be retail businesses, but they’re also basically priceless experiences that should be viewed as public goods.
Unfortunately we haven't found a great way to price externalities correctly - whether the positive externalities of a local bookshop, or the negative externalities of online commerce.
Of course, there are negative externalities to local stores (people demand the right to drive there, for some odd reason, though Portland does better here than most), and positive externalities to online shopping (more efficient distribution, etc.) but regardless we do a terrible job at pricing them.
I live in Milan so the whole shopping-experience thing is still very much a part of my daily life. I realise that it’s different in the world of malls and big-box stores.
The Lello bookstore in Porto, Portugal has a lot of visitors just for sightseeing (if you search for photos you'll get why), so they started to charge €3 (~$3.6) for the entrance, refundable if you purchased a book.
Still, seems like Powell's experience is all about the books themselves, so that value should be well captured in increased sales.
I wonder if used bookstores should be thought of as that "third place" (not work or home) a significant percentage of the population like to hang out at, rather than just a retail shop. Would a used bookstore look different if it was designed as a club first, with a great used bookstore as its theme attraction? Borders was sort of going for that with their in-house coffee shops, but they were fairly sterile and mall-esque...not very clubby.
Yes, it's called "showrooming" and retailers hate it, not that there's much they can do to stop it.
However, for bookshops, I personally believe there's value in having a well-curated collection of books available locally, so I tend to allocate a portion of my book-buying money to physical stores.
An added bonus: Browsing for me is an excellent alternative to recommendation algorithms, and lets me pick up books that I otherwise wouldn't.
Whatever the printer decides. The idea is to prevent price cutting/dumping by large enterprises and keep local stores afloat while ensuring decent pay for authors, translators etc. - all in all it has served us well.
Here in Germany we have fixed book prices (at least for German books). I think the publisher sets the price and it must not be sold for less with the exception if the book is damaged.
So in this case you really have no reason to order the book from Amazon if it is available at the book store.
For other products this is however true, probably because the price difference and the sometimes cumbersome return policies of retail shops.
If the price is identical everywhere, then people will compete on other factors like the percentage of profits the bookseller donates to charity, or the speed and ease of delivery.
* if the item is expensive enough to be worth checking out physically, Amazon generally doesn't have it, since it's mostly full of Chinese copies and the genuine products are easier to ship from the manufacturers/smaller shops (since that's where Amazon actually has any margin)
* if the item is cheap, I'll gladly pay the margin in the physical store, since I'll get some extra joy out of having it now-now, not "when it gets there"-Amazon-"now".
I should note I am probably biased here from 3-7 days shipping times due to every Amazon order having to cross a border (into Switzerland).
But do they do this for bookstores in the same numbers? It seems like a different demographic desiring an increasingly niche product wouldn't be showrooming in the same degree. The most showrooming probably occurs at big box stores, or those that compete with Amazon on general goods.
I do the opposite now. I search for stuff on Amazon and then go to Best Buy to buy it. Same day delivery even if ii have drive and way better confidence I wont get a counterfeit, it wont be damaged, and more often than not these days it's cheaper.
Depends on the book. I read a lot, and if I am trying a new author out or a book I am not sure of, a hardback at £20 is a bit of a risk compared to kindle 99p perhaps.
I genuinely want to support local businesses, and I make the effort to buy local from Waterstones whenever possible. But it's not always feasible with the amount I buy. I have many thousands of books, including those on Kindle. I don't have physical space for them otherwise.
Often you can buy direct from the author or publisher. If your goal is to avoid Amazon (although I admit I don't know how this will affect revenues to the author/publisher), you can get in touch with your local bookstores or places like https://www.indiebound.org/
Powell's Technical Books used to be my favorite place to hang out. I would ride downtown in the morning and spend an entire day there, scanning every shelf in my fields of interest, reveling in periodic hits of serendipity. Since PTB closed, I've been back once. It wasn't worth it any more. I'll admit that I did like it better back before the store was spruced up to be like a Borders.
How is it like Borders? It's a warren of different rooms on different floors, half of which are more like a warehouse than a retail store, with a huge selection of used and new books shelved together.
I loved the separate technical books stores, too, although they still have a great tech section in the main location. I assume the standalone PTBs shrank then closed because people were browsing more than buying.
I'm still mourning the loss of PTB. Not just a bookstore, more a collection of hundreds of subjects in excruciating detail, rabbit holes that would take years to follow of programming, electronics, physics, machinining, steam power. I hate to think what happened to it all. It really did feel like a reservoir of discarded knowledge, like a massive grimoire of nerding.
The technical sections on the top floor by the rare books area is still pretty good, but it has none of the "science gizmos" and the feeling is just that of a regular section.
The problem is not Amazon, the problem is local rents. If we encourage mixed-use zoning, ie. 3-5 storey apartment blocks with the ground and first level for commercial and office use, we'll lower rents and reduce commutes.
That's true. But I'd say the problem is us. We want the perks of local business, but too often they're an afterthought. Or we simply choose convenience. Saving a couple dollars on Amazon is no savings at all, if we eventually lose things we love (e.g., local bookstore). But try selling that to someone who is has a religiosly deep relationship with their Prime membership and is convinced they're too busy to fit the local ____ store in. The Hustle Culture mentality has real side effects.
That said, as someone who did (i.e., owner) B&M retail for 10 years, local business need to be more available. Closing at 6.00 pm every day limits your audience. Being open later one or two evenings is a game changer. _If_ you are focused on your customers and their needs.
Or, if your store is in a small town and you drive to your shop, don't take up prime parking spots. Yes, I've seen this done. "Business is slow." Gee, I wonder why.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Amazon supporter. They are my vendor or last choice. That said, it's sad how often I get to that last choice so quickly (e.g., Powell's website is marginal at best).
So they close early to do less business? And that pays the rent?? So instead of being able to catch people coming home from work, the local biz ignores those people? So those people can go home and buy from Amazon?
Convenience is definitely important, which is why mixed zoning is helpful.
Instead of digging through amazon trying to find the one item that isn’t fake, hoping it’s what I actually want or need, needing to be home at the right time to sign for the package, and waiting for delivery, I could just make a 5 minute trip and hold the item in my hands before buying it.
Local businesses still mostly thrive in cities with mixed zoning despite the presence of online businesses. Some things do get crushed (small electronics stores just can’t possibly match the variety and endlessly cycled out stock of the newest items online), but there’s space for some things.
There's definitely space. But it also requires creativity, and even the big chains fail.
There's an Eastern Mountain Sports near me. It's an anchor in a small "boutique" mall. Not a single screen in the whole store. Now how are you going to capture the interest and imagination of the casual walk-through traffic? With racks of cookie-cutter clothing?
B&M certainly isn't easy. What is? But having done B&M and ecomm, B&M has something online does not...presences. Mind you, that's not a plus ATM but pre-C19 very few were fully exploiting that unique asset. And yet they cry about inline? As if boring and generic will win over convenience??
Or would hedge funds and REITs just buy these spaces (or keep them to rent out after building them—a common practice for developers) and continue to charge high rent with more empty storefronts?
I’ve thought for years that the growing number of commercial vacancies, even pre-Covid, would “sort itself out.” It certainly hasn’t yet.
The thing you're seeing with covid is that places are empty for the same reason they became empty, and the owners are speculating that demand will rebound in the future (e.g. once there is a vaccine) so they have no reason to sell for less today.
If you change the zoning at a sufficient scale, rents would be expected to decline permanently, so there would be nothing gained by holding out until tomorrow.
> The thing you're seeing with covid is that places are empty for the same reason they became empty, and the owners are speculating that demand will rebound in the future (e.g. once there is a vaccine) so they have no reason to sell for less today.
This partly explains why I saw -- with two temporary-by-design blips -- a particular downtown San Jose corner location empty for 10 years. Last I saw, they finally rented it out as an office, but that was just shy of Covid19.
Apparently a decade is the minimum for "wait for better demand" or they had//have pockets deep enough to play a long game.
I just don't understand how some people are happy with empty store-fronts. "I want the blightful eyesore, not the bustling tax money" doesn't make sense to me.
Most of those 'empty' buildings are just ways for people to park money. If you rent it fine. If you dont that is fine too. The rent is not what they are looking for. They are basically looking for something that has maybe a slightly better yield than bonds.
When you look at it as parking of assets as a hedge against inflation it makes more sense what is going on.
But taxes you might say. They charge dumb rents on these places. So if you get a sucker willing to pay a way over priced rent for say 6 months or a year it may cover the taxes for 10-20 years. Meanwhile the cash value has usually at least matched along with inflation. Even if they do not cover with a sucker the rate of inflation may be higher than the taxes. Plus the possibility of buying into a 'hot market' and the value does actually increase (but that is speculation which is some of it).
Why the 'dumb' rent why not have a reasonable one? Because they do not really want to rent. They do not want to deal with 'hey landlord the roof needs to be replaced again'. They want to deal with that when the time comes to liquidate it for whatever reason.
Many people look at like the are running a property business. There are many of those types of companies out there (which is why they can play this game). But there are many people just looking to 'not be poor' and live off daddies money for the rest of their lives from their trust fund.
Many European countries have mixed-use zoning. That still hasn't stopped bookstores from hollowing out -- actual books getting fewer and fewer while most of the stock becomes hipster accoutrements like vinyl records and tea sets -- or closing entirely. The problem is that physical books are just not in-demand and high-margin enough to cover labour costs and rents in this day and age.
The problem is there is just too much variety in books. I've bought a fair number of books from physical bookstores over the past couple of years but they're almost always books I found while browsing. If I go into a bookstore looking for a specific title - unless it's a high profile new release or something common (Jane Eyre or Harry Potter) - they're _really_ unlikely to have it in stock. Sure, they can order it for me but then why aren't I just ordering it online?
This problem impacts smaller shops most of course but even the largest stores can't possibly hope to have more than a small % of every title in stock. That's just a natural consequence of how many books are out there.
If I understand correctly, Powell's owns their downtown property, including the parking garage. The rent on their adjacent location may be high, and they did renovate and change those adjacent locations a few years ago, but that shouldn't endanger the main "city of books" block.
Of the last 10 books I bought on Amazon 4 were faulty prints with miscut pages, misaligned pages, misprint pages. Two of them had misprint covers. All of them were sold as new by Amazon itself. I am done with buying books from them
To be fair, this might not be Amazon's fault, it could have happened with any online booksellers, because ultimately the publisher is at fault. For example, Oxford University Press used to be renowned for the quality of its printing and binding, but it has quietly moved many titles to very shoddy digital printing with misaligned pages and a glued binding that fails instantly, and online you just can't be sure whether you'll get a quality book from an earlier print run, or the new crap. Even the ISBN might be the same.
Weird however that it happens so often with Amazon (with books from different publishers) while it never happened to me when using more local online booksellers, where I was essentially buying the same kind of books.
I noticed the same thing with other stuff from Amazon. E.g. 3 of the Amazon basic HDMI cables I ordered didn't work. Ordered similarly priced ones at a local retailer and they worked like a charm - all of them.
I am not the only person who noticed that Amazon's quality has dropped in recent years.
Edit: one thing I forgot to mention: one of the faulty books was also clearly used, there was even a coffee (?) stain inside. This is not something that happens because the publisher has bad quality control.
Some OUP books look like they were printed on a laser printer from 1988 now. I think they’re doing print-on-demand for some titles. You expect better for a $40 paperback.
As mentioned by others, Amazon owns them. I used to use them until I found out about that, then switched to https://blackwells.co.uk/ and https://wordery.com which are usually pretty close price-wise and also offer free shipping.
Don't forget the usually horrible wrapping job. I've received a bunch of damaged books because they couldn't be bothered to wrap the book up. In one case, it was the only copy left I could find anywhere and I was stuck with it.
These days (unless there's absolutely no other option), the only books I buy from Amazon are audio books.
Same. In general I go out of my way to not use Amazon these days, coming from a customer who was a customer when they only sold books.
80% of the time I buy something from Amazon what I get feels very much like I went to a garage sale. Defective products, opened packaging, mismatch with what was on the site, etc.
I find that on March 26, I ordered a couple of books from Powell's. Powell's expected the delivery to be April 14, and as I recall it arrived a day or two earlier. And two and a half weeks was fine. I wasn't out of reading matter, and I knew that one of the books would take a couple of weeks to read. What hurry was there?
On a side note, Amazon really only delivered the coup de grace to independent bookstores. Large chains like Borders, Barnes and Nobles and box stores like Target and Walmart weakened them so much they couldn't compete when Amazon took away their sole advantage: ordering hard-to-find books from small publishers.
Had a parent that worked in an independent bookstore. The store couldn't match box stores in price. They had selection and the willingness to order obscure books for people, but once the Internet came to homes, they weren't the only ones that did that. Eventually that bookstore got bought out by Borders. Ironically that store was one of the first customers of the distribution network Borders set up for their stores.
And even before the chains, there was a big independent bookstore near me that had the remarkable innovation of selling books at less than list price--which was probably the first real shot at the small independents in the area. They eventually shrank and then went out of business, during the Borders/B&N era I believe.
I'm conflicted over this business. It's ran by good people but I don't think it's the right solution for independents to compete with Amazon.
Just go straight to the local bookstore's website. A lot of the stores on bookshop also have an online store. Bookshop is a supplement and basically just plugged straight into Ingram (the distributor), so they're able to sell whatever your local indie's web store lacks.
Where I live there is no bookstore with their web store within a close distance (it's greater than 30 minute drive). So, it's not an option. One bookstores within 30 minutes all have very limited selection essentially tied to those who live at the edge of suburbia and rural.
So, if I'm going to order online I'm happy to do it in a way that supports small bookstores.
yeah that makes sense. some folks will find an independent store from far away and make that their "home" bookstore. powells is that for a lot of people
I tried but local store really is much more expensive, like double or at least 50% - that is if they can even get it. I dont ever want to go there and browse, just buy some books. For me Amazon is sooo much easier and much cheaper as well, I wonder what the point of supporting local is for.
A site like Amazon is always going to be better than a local shop if you already know exactly what you want.
Local shops offer human curation instead of algorithmic recommendation, and create situations where you can stumble into something that you would have never even thought to search for.
If this isn't a way you like to shop that's fine of course, but it's something that a lot of other people enjoy. Personally, I loathe algorithms that recommend things to me based on what I've already consumed, and certainly hope we don't ever lose our local bookstores.
ditto this. amazon, in its current form, will never be able to emulate a brick and mortar bookstore. a dedicated staff with exceptional customer service will curate books and recommend books that an algorithm will never catch.
also, local bookstores tend be an integral part of the local, geographic community, where you can engage with likeminded folks who live nearby. amazon can't do that in 2020.
and, amazon has so much power that they force publishers to offer lower prices. that's bad for your margins if you're a publisher and causes the quality of book to go down since they're gonna want to sell more of what sells. what sells well doesn't necessarily mean better quality. i don't want the good publishers to go out of business.
and! amazon can't do readings and book signings. if you're not into that, then ok, but book signings are very important for a thriving literary culture.
keep buying on amazon if you want to save money but consider throwing a few bucks to your local independent from time to time, please
This is surprisingly cool. I bet a significant market would be into this. And with the current situation in the world supporting local businesses is all the rage. I just wish they had a phone app with ebooks.
America only, so not really an option for the majority of the world. Mind you, given most Irish bookstores (in Dublin area at least) don't even bother offering online ordering, I'm not sure a clearing house helps anyway.
I was skeptical at first, but now I am quite pleased with bookshop.org. It would be great if they had a subscription based thing similar to Prime so that I wouldn't have to pay so much for shipping each time (and if you don't go with UPS, then it tends to be very slow).
It's always weird to read a story where someone's rooting for something like old bookstores to remain in-business.
The thing's that I don't mind the economic shift nor the format shift. I don't particularly care for bookstores or even old-fashion books; I think electronic media with active content is vastly superior. I look forward to further advances in technology, where the line between static media and computation continues to blur into something far more beautiful.
I appreciate that a shifting economy can be tough on those in sectors that're drying up. I can sympathize with bookstore owners who feel saddened by having to close up shop.
But it feels a little weird to see folks taking a rent-seeking position, arguing that broken windows ought be allowed to keep breaking.
It seems weird to label consumer preferences (liking paper books) that don't align with yours as advocating for rent-seeking. Arguably, selling digital media is the ultimate form rent-seeking, since the marginal cost is nearly zero and you're often paying for "access" to content. At least with paper books you get a physical product (and resale rights) with your purchase.
I suspect that you misread my post as this seems unrelated to what I was saying.
The rent-seeking issue was related to folks worrying about the loss of local jobs due to bookstores closing down. My personal preference for digital media's unrelated to that point.
Sometimes you are buying more than just a book and human expertise still has a value. I'll give you an example, I was very pleased to see a local music store flourishing mid pandemic, as I feared they might go under. I purchased an instrument knowingly at a considerable markup because they had a ton of knowledge I needed and I was able to ask many questions. I know that if I decided to go in and ask all of those same questions but then instead of buying it at Art's Music, I decide to find the lowest bidder online, it is only a matter of time before Art and his expertise disappear from the market. I'm afraid there aren't enough people supporting Art to keep human expertise relevant these days. Amazon may provide a very good service now but once all competition is gone what incentive is there to provide the same level of service?
> Amazon made provide a very good service now but once all competition is gone what incentive is there to provide the same level of service?
If a single business comes to dominate an entire industry, that's generally handled by anti-trust regulatory action.
I mean, I agree that a single monopoly that no longer cares for consumer preferences would seem like a bad thing; we wouldn't want any one company, e.g. Amazon.com, completely dominating the field to the exclusion of all others.
Though I dunno if old-fashion book stores would necessarily be the alternative. Or if the book-industry'll maintain its importance, even under Amazon.com, as other forms of media seem to be developing.
I disagree. For fiction, at least, used bookstores let you find some obscure stuff for cheap, and a book can pass through many hands and develop its own story along the way. Some of this stuff isn't available digitally.
I don't think ebooks are a definitive gain over physical. For fiction, I like being able to read them on my phone, and I like Kindle's X-Ray and other features on highlight (who is this character again??). Otherwise, books are damn good. For technical books, I vastly prefer paper, though.
The online ebook market is being swarmed by authors gaming the system. The number of them who split their book into a 12-book "series" that all managed to get released in a year, for instance. Tons of shovelware.
There's just also nothing like a good second-hand bookstore, with it's chill vibe and tactile product.
Finally, kids books should be physical, forever. I don't let my kids read on a tablet or other device, ever.
> Finally, kids books should be physical, forever. I don't let my kids read on a tablet or other device, ever.
That's an interesting position; would you mind commenting on why?
That said, if we're talking about things in the long-term, then neither old-fashion books nor tablets would seem relevant. Something like a good neural-lace would quickly obsolete both.
1) It's (likely) better for their eyes and motor development (turning pages is quite the skill to learn to do properly).
2) They outgrow them quickly, and you can move them down to their little cousin or a friend or whoever.
3) No distractions of being on a tablet or having access to apps or the web.
4) Way way cheaper, especially used.
That said, I pretty strictly restrict screen time, way more than even I was restricted as a kid, for a variety of reasons. Physical books are something they can look to for entertainment outside of that. Remote learning has made this worse, now that their schooling is online.
> 3) No distractions of being on a tablet or having access to apps or the web.
I hear you about this one! I don't understand how someone could concentrate on learning/reading when sugar rush in the form of apps and web browsing is available one click away...
One possibility to remove the negatives of the distractions but keep the benefits of the tablet (e.g. digital content, interactivity, video lessons) is to install an offline learning app like Kolibri, which allows you to pre-download all the content then turn off access to the internet. For example you can have the entire Khan Academy content offline (assuming 40G storage), then give them the tablet and be like browse all you want, since all the content will be educational and not youtube junk.
Bookstores offer something electronic media doesn't -- discovery.
1. You know what you want, you search for it and order it.
2. You know vaguely what you want, you search, read reviews and order it.
3. You walk into a bookstore and wander around and eventually pick something out.
I just haven't seen #3 replicated in online fashion. Sure there are a million sites that will guide you to what you want, but you never quite find yourself in an odd section of the store, pulled in by something you would never have tried before.
More than anything else, I think this what people miss. They don't want bookstores to exist just because.
Depending on how old you are, there is a big difference between the big stores now, and the same stores just 20 years ago. They used to carry a much larger selection of actual books. My local Barnes & Noble has huge sections dedicated to toys and other things where books used to be. On the actual shelves that remain there are fewer books, and far fewer mass market paperbacks. The latter having been replaced by the more expensive trade paperbacks. The books they do have tend to be on the very popular end -- something which needs far less discovery. The library depth they used to have is gone.
This leads to two bad experiences that we didn't use to have in the big book stores. You want something simple that should exist -- Tom Sawyer for instance -- and you might only find the trade paperback for $13.95. But you need it for school and it's too late to order, so you get gouged. Other times I'm looking for a book that would have been in the back catalog but isn't any more. They will helpfully offer to order it for me -- at a higher price and longer wait than Amazon, other retailers, and frequently B&N online as well.
I get they want to carry less inventory. But the whole point of a bookstore (to me) is the wide inventory of books I don't know I already want. If it's a matter of just books I know I want, I don't have to go to the bookstore.
I keep going and I keep hoping, but those days appear to be gone. Good luck to Powell's if they have a better store than my local B&N.
I like both methods of discovery, but I don't impulse buy digital books like I do when I wind up in Powell's and see a 40-year-old used small-press book with little or no digital profile. Just looked one such example up and the only copy on Amazon is priced at $332; I got it at Powell's for $7.
It can be nice to open up a book and flip through the pages to get a quick look at it. By contrast, book-previews on sites like Amazon.com can be obnoxious with blocked content and inconsistent behavior.
I think I'd have a dimmer view of the transition to digital media if it were to remain exactly as it is today. But I tend to think of it as an evolving thing; I'd expect features like book-previews to significantly improve over time.
Some of my favorite moments in time are traveling to some city and carving out time to visit a locally run bookstore. I can point to books on my bookshelf and recall precisely the year and store from which I purchased it.
Maybe bookstores are a problem the way you describe them... I also have a friend who does the annual holiday musical/dance/theater productions in her local town. Auditions, rehearsals, musicians, dancers, actors, etc. Her studio loses money. Her partner contributes most of the matching funds needed to break even. They book theaters and sell tickets, etc. It doesn't make money, it's not a high profile cultural event, it's a hobby but the people who do it, and attend year after year, love it.
I'm not saying bookstores are like that, for better and worse. I personally think bookstores can and should survive in our economic environments. They're a universal funnel of product, output, art, commerce and community. We can buy things from them and they can employee people and survive.
That said -- I just looked up the new Beowulf translation. Powell's is out, Bookshop is out, but Amazon can says it's "In Stock". Sigh^3.
I'm going to take this opportunity to grind my personal axe: Amazon is extremely lazy about shipping books, throwing them into lightly-padded envelopes. Books shipped from Amazon usually arrive with at least minor cosmetic damage and sometimes much worse. For me this is reason enough to avoid buying books on Amazon.
I've definitely received counterfeit books from Amazon. I bought two volumes in a set of George Orwell essays and the difference in quality between the genuine one and the fake one was absurd. The real volume was a high quality trade paperback and the fake was a low-quality scan of the book printed on extremely cheap paper, binding stiff and hard to open. I emailed the publisher to let them know it was happening and never heard back.
I recently ordered an illustrated novel with a rather heavy paperweight - Amazon shipped it in weakly padded envelopes and the corners were banged up. I even bothered to contact their customer service to ship it with better packaging, to no avail on the replacement item.
I then ordered 10 of the damn things, to see what the packaging would do. 4 came in one box, 3 came in another, and 3 came in individual poorly padded envelopes. The ones in boxes had insufficiently inflated plastic bags, and only 2 books out the entire 12 ordered (original, replacement, and the 10) were what Amazon defines as 'New' upon arrival, though all were shipped as 'New'.
Definitely a frustrating experience.
Edit: I returned all but the one showing the least damage, and received a full refund after some time.
Props for going through the hassle. How bad does Amazonneed to get before the costs of negligence outweigh doing it right the first time? I would think there are dozens of actuaries doing the math, maybe I'm giving bezo too much credit though.
Keep in mind the following scenario: if all books were packed to ensure no possible damage, then you would see another set of posts lamenting how wasteful amazon is with packaging.
As a counter anecdote, in my case, all books get delivered in good enough condition where I don't feel the need to remark on it.
At amazon's scale, damned if you do/damned if you don't becomes a certainty.
I ordered an $80 art book from Amazon. Had to return the first two they sent me, they were so damaged. No protection at all, just loose in a box. Amazon used to mount books to a piece of cardboard and shrinkwrap it together. They must have calculated that most people don’t care and it’s cheaper to damage books with a certain probability. As a book-lover I’m offended by all the waste.
They do the same thing with vinyl records. I opted to roll with Amazon because I was impatient and wanted it soon, even though I'd rather have given my money to an actual record shop. Sure enough, they packed the record like they pack everything else - in a box that's too big and not specifically made for the product, with a couple of InstaPak air sleeves; it was almost comical. Lots of cosmetic damage on the record sleeve, unfortunately. My immediate thought upon opening it was, "Of course."
Record shops or folk on Discogs will always ship them in boxes specifically made for records, and (knock on wood) I'd never received a damage record in the post until that point and haven't since.
I’ve had a really good experience with shipping on Discogs. Better then what you get buying directly from the artist (though I do try to do so when possible). I’ve bought from record stores domestically and overseas. Would recommend.
I order meat from The Great British Meat Company and my meat arrives 2 days later, still refrigerated, in a hard polystyrene case packed in with still frozen ice cube bags. It costs a little more to deliver, but it arrives upright and in a perfect condition at 3 degrees Celsius (~38f).
Its ridiculous that something of regular shape, in a regular box, is so difficult not to damage in transit especially from a company like Lego who exist purely on the sentiment parents and children have towards their brand.
Those meat packages end up getting very different handling, because of the dry ice that's used to keep them cold. It's necessary to keep a careful track of the dry ice and know how much of it you're loading into a container, in order to avoid asphyxiating your colleagues. Most packages are just tossed along as quickly as possible, because there's a tight schedule to keep. But you have to temporarily slow way down when a package containing dry ice comes down the belt.
It's a little bit like that photographer's trick of packing a starter pistol with your camera equipment when flying, in order to ensure that the baggage crew is extra careful with your stuff.
Just to clarify: the meat packages I ordered didn't use any dry ice. They provide two (standard) ice packs, one which is placed beneath the meat and one which is placed above the meat.
Because the polystyrene is so thick and they send so much ice, the ice was still fully frozen when I received it 42 hours after my order.
We've actually kept the polystyrene box and ice packs to reuse for picnic days and things like that.
I wouldn't call it laziness but money-driven apathy. They probably tell the warehouse packers to use envelopes for all non-fragile items. As long as the cost of returns is less than the cost of hiring more packers to keep up, Amazon will do things this way.
And, from my experience as a warehouse order packer, the quotas are insane. I'm cautious with other people's stuff, so it wasn't long before they reassigned me. Commercial bulk buyers got better treatment.
To me this is preferable to putting it in a large cardboard box with bubble wrap like they seem to do for even tiny but durable products like finger nail clippers. It’s much less of a waste and I don’t mind if a book is slightly creased.
Powell's (for example) have a good alternative, they stack several books on a piece of cardboard the size of the box's bottom, then shrink-wrap the books to the cardboard. The books can't slide around, and can't move much. I've never had any arrive damaged (unlike AMZN).
I 100% share the frustration with carelessly damaged books from Amazon and don't disagree with your comment, but just want to say it's not Jeff Bezos or "Amazon" doing this to your shipment.
It's underpaid, overworked and (these days) health-endangered warehouse workers pushed beyond their limits by crazy quotas and efficiency measurements trying avoid losing their jobs.
[Well, I guess I should say it is Bezos/Amazon, but you know what I mean.]
Some have been over-packed - especially from third party bookstores. But new books from amazon, are hit or miss, sometimes being thrown in with non-book items. (think of packing the eggs with the hammers)
If you ever had the opportunity to visit Powell's technical bookstore in the past, you'd find it very worthy. It was an amazing goldmine of books, back before Amazon, and back when university campuses had actual bookstores with actual technical books.
When I worked for Rogue Wave Software in the 90's, we took an all-team field trip (rented bus) up to Powell's TB with everyone getting a spending amount to get whatever they wanted.
I support Powell's courage and I am rooting for them, but I'm afraid they have waited too long to make a stand and the only limit to Amazon's power to squash them in the marketplace is Amazon's concern about being perceived as too powerful.
Me too, been going there a long time. Though it has had its own share of public labor disputes with employees over the years.
That said, the local support really is quite good and as far as I know the company hasn’t been in real dire straights.
>The pandemic changed the landscape, Powell said...its Amazon sales slowed so she decided to focus on the bookstore’s own website.
I like Powell’s but the site wasn’t really very good. It was like so many other companies that have somehow been caught flat footed when they should have been hiring and building excellent online experiences _around_ their core value offering years ago.
This is with acknowledgment that the company built out an entire area to do online sales years back.
Powell’s could have or still can build its own GoodReads or similar engagement tool but they haven’t and probably won’t.
So long as the company is competing like an online bookstore I don’t think it will ever compete with Amazon in potential sales.
Kudos to Powell's, I've spent literally thousands of dollars over the years at that magnificent store and will continue to do so; spent hour upon hour there in my childhood getting lost in wonders it holds.
They don't try to undercut smaller bookstores by offering discounts on new books like B&N, Amazon, etc., their employees seem to actually enjoy working there, it's a family-friendly environment and the selection simply can't be beat. If you enjoy reading, please support this business.
Someone convinced me to switch to Libro.fm for audio books, which gives a dividend to a bookstore of your choice, and Powell’s is of course on the list of options.
‘Course I haven’t been commuting or taking road trips so I haven’t been listening as much lately.
Totally agree. I live in Seattle and my family and I pre-COVID would visit Portland at least once a year, sometimes twice.
Powell's was always a destination every single time, even if only for an hour with many books in hand I'd simply never have found or thought to look for online.
I've yet to go to Portland, but if I ever do I intend to make a stop at Powell's assuming the world is in a place where that can happen. Thankfully we have our own good indie bookstore where I live that's a stand in until I can make it there.
Worth noting there are a few Powell's, including a lovely pair of them on the east side, one a smaller but well-curated satellite of the main store, the other specialized in gardening, cooking, and craft books. A coffee shop is sandwiched in the middle. (Assuming anything gets back to near-normal ever again.) https://goo.gl/maps/LhYrHLLJ2UcGFmpA9
One of the few "perfect mornings" in my life was a day off during a Portland business trip: with a Stumptown coffee, a Voodoo donut, and Powell's. Simply magical.
I live here and still had a similar perfect morning. Walking down a snow covered street, no cars, crisp and quiet, and then a warm Powell's book store serving their own coffee and cookies.
At one point it was more than a city block! Endless towering shelves, Espresso Book Machine, espresso to drink at the café, rare books collection… Paradise for book lovers.
I lived within walking distance of Powell's for over a decade and it was my favorite place to spend free time (shot out to Annie Bloom's Books in Multnomah Village, as well). I make a concerted effort to live near bookstores because I think they are some of the most wholesome and comforting places on the planet. That and libraries.
Local farm says will not sell grain in cities any more; Says agricultural "revolution" has resulted in decline of people working on farms from 83% to 8%; Working themselves, day in, day out, tilling the land by hand, and all the good honest work that pre-agricultural revolution farming required.
Some people cite that the agricultural revolution paved the way for cities, the industrial revolution, science and technology, but what is really important is jobs that involve turning the land by hand.
The facts that food is now far more available, far cheaper, and far easier to obtain (it can be delivered to your door) and at far greater variety, don't offset the fact that if we returned to pre-agricultural revolution pratices we could have 250 million americans all employed working dawn till dusk on the fields, with only the occasional famine.
(In other news, Farm admits that its only doing this because "The pandemic changed the landscape, Powell said, with Amazon prioritizing cleaning supplies and other essential goods -- slowing the shipment of books.")
I love Powell's. I've spent way too many hours in both of their Portland locations (and the old Technical store, RIP) over the last 20+ years. I've lived within walking and biking distance to both the whole time.
That said, these days I buy a majority of my books from Amazon, and have for a while. The simple reason is that for the books I buy most, which are technical in nature, the prices on Amazon are so much better.
For example, on Wednesday, I bought (from Amazon):
- Programming TypeScript
- Effective TypeScript
- JavaScript: The Definitive Guide
- Eloquent JavaScript
(I'm learning TypeScript/JavaScript for work...)
In order, the prices on Amazon vs Powell's:
- $27, $50
- $27, $40
- $52, $70
- $25, $40
totals: $131, $200
I can't justify spending that much more at Powell's, sorry not sorry. If the prices were similar, as in 10%-25%, I would for sure buy them from Powell's, but they rarely are.
Now - what I do buy at Powell's is every other type of book! I'll never buy a regular old paperback off Amazon, or a cookbook, or a travel book, or ... It's the categories of books that I don't spend a lot on, for which I will gladly pay an increased price. I feel this is definitely justified by the experience I get perusing the stores, finding books I never knew I wanted. (Sometimes the books at Powell's aren't more expensive or actually cheaper, especially the used ones).
I used to think this way, going with the cheapest method possible but I now try to buy directly from the publisher or local stores. Not only does it hurt the publisher buying from Amazon, it also diverts the funds to produce the next book. Some of my books have been extremely expensive but these are pennies to the value I find in them and how it improves my career.
^^^ can't emphasize this enough. please don't buy from amazon if you have the means to afford the list price for a book. amazon isn't good for the ecosystem of books for a lot of reasons, but in this instance amazon makes publishers lose money. unfortunately publishers have no choice but to sell on amazon. you gotta vote with your dollars here to help sustain quality publishing.
Often I try to buy Manning, Pragmatic Bookshelf, or NoStarch books direct from them. I don't know why O'Reilly seems to be so much cheaper on Amazon though, probably because they have so much volume.
> Some of my books have been extremely expensive but these are pennies to the value I find in them and how it improves my career.
Here's my counterpoint. Your argument makes 100% sense in the short-term. In the long run, Amazon's strategically thin margins on technical books will disappear when the other vendors are driven out of business, and books across the board will see a price hike.
Amazon doesn't write books. If they raise margins, anyone (including the publisher) can pop up a storefront and promote it on Twitter to the community.
At some point you have to think about what kind of world you want to live in. I want to live in a world in which independent bookstores exist, rather than a world where Amazon has eaten up every other kind of business. Yes it's more expensive but I think of it as an investment.
Ignoring Amazon, my beef is with everything sold at MSRP. Americans don’t have a history of haggling, and most stores’ employees probably aren’t equipped to give you 10% off. I have had luck getting a discount off a new Mac, though usually just enough to cover tax.
If I see an intriguing book in a store I will not hesitate to buy it if it’s 5-10% off. Otherwise I’ll get it on Amazon, probably on Kindle, probably just the sample since my physical backlog is already about 50.
If you've only visited the first Powell's on the south side of Chicago (Hyde Park), you'll be blown by the Portland location. It truly is a book lovers paradise.
I have been to the Portland location, and as amazing as it is the Hyde Park Powell's will always hold a special place in my heart. I spent many a day in college wasting time in the shelves of Powell's and spent a lot more money there than I should have. My interest in graphic novels was started by a book (Dash Shaw's Bodyworld) I stumbled onto there, my interest in poetry the same (Stanely Kunitz' Passing Through). Perhaps most significantly, I discovered a book on cellular automata there that really kicked off my interest in computer science.
Once things are better... if you like books, you have to visit Powell's at some point in your life. I used to work a few blocks away and would often spend my lunch break there. The trick was to look at books before eating, so I'd get hungry enough to remember to leave.
It's surprsing that in 2020 that a bookstore would like to walk away from where most customers would go and buy their product.
I hope they find it would be able to serve their customer better with their own online bookstore and less cost to run their own infrastructure.
While I recognize the convenience and price savings of shopping online at Amazon, the reality is that once charming bookstores disappear, people won’t even know what they’re missing to be able to ascribe a value to it. It’s about wanting a world that has a distributed power scheme (healthily decentralized), a marketplace of ideas (rather than only what Amazon platforms/sells), value placed on knowledge (books), spaces for subcultures to thrive, spaces for people in communities to interact with each other, etc.
Bookshops are just one example of what we are losing to megacorps for whom anti trust action is long overdue.
I've got news for you, people want to order on a whim and have it arrive at their home the next day. If you don't offer that then people won't buy from you.
In many parts of the world overgrown local busybodies have destroyed "high streets" in attempts to monetize drivers and pad their CV; driving people away.
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