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“Alas, alas! Twenty-one years have passed (all too quickly). During all these years I have struggled first to attain to earlier ambitions, later to keep a semblance of a bookstore.
…
“Oh, no. Now and then callers drop in to see about discounts, or if we can furnish such and such books as cheap as Cut-em-up & Divide-em, or to let me know they always order direct from the publisher, or Wanamaker or Alden, or from ‘clearance-sale,’ or from the ‘Library Association,’ or Macy’s or the ‘cheapest book-store on earth’
…
“In vain do I call attention to a well-selected stock, good editions, fine bindings, etc. In vain do I call in play all the resources of a tongue made eloquent by the necessity of making sales to meet coming bills. To all these blandishments — including the piece de resistance of 20 to 25 per cent — he ventures the unanswerable argument of a clearance catalog in his pocket, or the catalogue of the ‘Home Library Association,’ or quotations from the ‘cheapest.’
…
“Mr. Editor, you have championed the book-seller, pleaded his cause, deplored his decline, offered sage words of advice, counselled patience and prudence, advised enterprise and wide-awakeness, and altogether in a general way said as comfortable things as could be said under the circumstances. But, if you will permit me, I will say frankly that if you regard the booksellers as a part of your constituency valuable enough to be saved, if indeed their destruction would imperil you own existence, then you must make your paper more a ‘booksellers’ than a Publishers’ Weekly, and take hold of the vital questions that are sapping the foundations of the trade, and hammer away on them until publishers recognise that the inevitable result of the present policy is the certain ruin of bookselling in its legitimate and best sense. The decadence of publishing follows quickly that of bookselling.
“No bazaar man, or agent, or association, or any other method can take the place of the bookseller proper who studies his business as a profession and makes books his chief thought. It is useless for publishers to claim a want of enterprise booksellers and hash up complaints of his inability to give customers information, or lack of enterprise in ‘stocking up.’ Pray, Mr. Publisher, whose fault is it? I believe booksellers (what there is left of them) do not lack in energy, ability, or will. What they do lack is encouragement from you — you who give freely with one hand and take away with the other — you, sir, must foster, aid, encourage, and protect, in all possible ways, the agents upon whom you most rely to distribute your products — the bookseller if he is that agent. It not, than the other.
“I believe the remedy for the greater evils of the trade is in the hands of the publishers. The publisher can, if he will, control his own productions. It is easy to trace his stock from the moment it leaves his hands, and if he really desires it can be kept out of the hands of the slaughterers.
“But at last the whole question hinges on a single proposition : Is the bookseller any longer desirable : is he any longer indispensable in the estimation of publishers? If not, then all arguments are useless and all pleading vain. Booksellers can make up their minds to waste no time or money in useless endeavors to right an ever-increasing wrong.
…
“Summing up the whole matter, Mr. Editor, it seems to me that you, the publishers, and the trade must unite in an effort to bring about such reforms as will save what there is left and build up a new generation of booksellers. Can it be done? I have no doubt it can,”
…
“This is the only way to bring the matter on a practical basis. Neither limited discounts nor any special plan will ever accomplish the desired end.”
— A letter to the editor from one A. Setliff in the 7 January 1888 issue of Publishers’ Weekly. Emphasis in original. A Google Books version of the original document is embedded below:
From the same:
“in the course of the competition, the discount system developed until the nominal or advertised price of books did not correspond to the practical selling price. The result of this has been to decrease not only the number of book-stores in proportion to the community, but probably the actual number of book-stores throughout the country.”
I had previously cited different parts of this every same 1888 PW issue in a March 2011 blog post titled “The more things change…”
“Once upon a time book retailing was about as exciting as watching haircuts. Hardcover books were often sold in musty downtown stores by fussy bibliophiles, and many readers turned to paperback racks in the more informal atmosphere of supermarkets or drugstores. Today the bookstore business is in the midst of a rambunctious revival. Highly organized chains with fat financial backing are using aggressive, unsentimental sales and promotion techniques to push into all parts of the country. The chains are cutting into book-club sales and sweeping some small independent stores out of business or forcing them to rely more and more on discounting or specialization.”
The “highly organized chains” mentioned above were B. Dalton and Waldenbooks.
Other highlights: the casually dropped factoid that I used as the title of this post, that in 1978 fully one third of all hardcover books were sold in New York City, plus Barnes & Noble referred to as a local NY bookseller (not one of the chains cited) and the positively glowing description of a 5th Avenue B. Dalton Flagship store that “will carry 100,000 titles and have ten departments offering 125 categories of books.”
…just like the big box down by the mall in your dinky podunk hometown.
In the four years since I first quoted the Time article, sadly it’s been placed behind a time.com subscriber paywall. [Boo! you’re limiting academic research, Time!]
It’s interesting to note just how far bookselling has come in 35 years, or even in just the past 10. Amazon will be turning 20 years old in 2014 or 2015 (depending on how one cares to measure it) and the first commercial experiments in ebooks devices date all the way back to 1998.
I was extremely busy at the store this past week, and working some very odd shifts — so I didn’t have as much time to spend online, and (generally speaking) I’ve been bone tired besides. So not only is this list [thankfully?] light, you get this past week’s link round-up both late, and with minimal introduction.
That said — send it:
##
Multiple Tweets combined for clarity:
“Memo for Santorum: the only governments that claimed Classless societies were all communist http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/12/1230720/-Santorum-dismisses-the-middle-class-as-Marxism-talk …plus Marx made his observations on class while living in 19th Century Germany, France, England… capitalist, gilded age You know what looks A LOT like the Gilded Age these days, Senator? Modern America http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age – Classless society my ass. Bah. Every time one of these congress-critters opens their mouth, it’s like a klaxon argument for better education in America.”
[I’m still working on the best presentation/formatting for these posts – I’m afraid I may not be happy with anything until I do a major overhaul of this blog’s CSS and other odd gears under the hood. developing…]
I don’t usually shill for my store…
…not least, because the corporate overlords and I don’t always see eye-to-eye…
And also,
I mean we do book signings all the time. All the damn time. I didn’t blog when we had Stephen King. I didn’t blog when we hosted (then Senator) Hillary Clinton. We’ve hosted Khaled Hosseini. Gregg Allman. John Smoltz. Steve Harvey. Jen Lancaster. Laurell K. Hamilton. Kathryn Stockett. Emily Giffin. Stuart Woods. Daniel Silva. ok so now I’m boring you,
[now you’re paying attention? see, this is why I don’t blog these things…]
However,
Tomorrow in the store we’ll be hosting my congressman and civil rights legendJohn Lewis who will be signing his new book — it was released this past Tuesday — and while that might be reason enough
— this gets a mention on my blog, because John Lewis’s new book is a graphic novel illustrated by Nate Powell (Any Empire, 2009 Eisner Award Winner Swallow Me Whole – both also from Top Shelf)
[blockquote]
“Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper’s farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.
“Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole).
“March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis’ personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.
“Book One spans John Lewis’ youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.”
[/blockquote]
relevant press:
SDCC: Rep. John Lewis’s MARCH: Book One : Pam Auditore, ComicsBeat.com, 16 August 2013 — the coverage at The Beat includes two YouTube clips that I am Shamelessly attributing to them, before stealing them:
John Lewis on the Colbert Report from Tuesday, 13 August:
[part two with Colbert here, Congressman Lewis was also a guest last year, 4 June 2012; plus additional coverage of the Colbert appearances at Top Shelf]
If you can’t make it in for the event, a limited number of signed copies should be available after the event — no guarantees though: copies are reserved for attendees first, and availability also depends on how long Congressman Lewis can stay to sign stock. Call the store after 4pm EDT to inquire about availability and to also arrange for payment and shipping (we can take your information and credit card payments over the phone).
And I’d also like to point out publisher Top Shelf has limited, signed and numbered hardcovers available to order direct from their site (we’ve only the paperbacks in stock at the bookstore) so that may be an even better option for some (or most) collectors.
March, Book 1 is also available as an ebook, for those who must. For your online shopping convenience, cut-and-paste the ISBNs below:
paperback 9781603093002
digital 9781603093026, ASIN B00CTBU3NC
The PC is Dead? We all have tablets now, or phones, and no one needs an actual box that sits on a desk that you attach things to? No one needs a 1995-era PC?
I think it would be fair to say a vast majority of people didn’t need a PC to begin with:
web browsing, including
web shopping
email
music
games
To this short list, add in “social” for whatever that means for you: skype, reddit, facebook, flickr, instagram, twitter, telnet to ‘dial in’ to your fav BBS.
You need a big fancy box with the fastest processor and graphics processing workhorses and big honkin’ monitors (monitors, multiple, natch) and the associated desk, chair, et al.?
The answer was always No. But for a time, the only way to get to the web, play games, and send drunken IMs to xGFs was on a computer, the old fashioned PC box-on-a-desk type.
Wouldn’t you rather play games lounging on your couch, rather than hunched over in a stiff-backed chair? Of course you would, which is why game systems from Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and later Microsoft all proved to be popular. Game systems are of course computers as well, it’s just no one usually thinks of them that way.
Email? “Sent from my iPhone” — same for facebook, twitter, and all the quick-message-type interactions that take place these days. The best computer is the one in your pocket.
Tablets? Did we need tablets? It’s basically a smart phone with a bigger screen that doesn’t make phone calls — so apparently yes, not only did we need tablets, they started selling like hotcakes. (At least, the iPads did, and later, the Nexus line from Google, and some poor fools are still buying Amazon’s Fire, so there’s that market, too)
Many of us need a computer for a little bit more than casual connectivity and recreation. We write, or code, so we need a keyboard. We manipulate numbers, or pictures, or both. We create. So there is a cohort that needs the old-school-PC-form-factor.
…Yes, of course, there’s an app for that: you can do anything and everything from a tablet apparently. But who wrote the app? and what does her rig at home look like?
I’m not going to argue that the “PC” as it was defined in 1990 will somehow make a resurgence and come back to prominence. It’ll likely disappear — or PCs will be built into your living room TV set at some point and you’ll use a wireless keyboard and mouse (or, ha!, a virtual keyboard on a tablet) to access your home PC.
You won’t have a dedicated appliance: the computing you need will be available from whatever screens you already own.
##
The Computer in Your Pocket
“The mobile phone is today’s PC, but not necessarily in the way you think. Fifteen years ago, the PC was the central hub in one’s interactions with the wider world. This was largely because of the state of miniaturization; our electronics simply weren’t small or efficient enough to make mobile phones and laptops nearly as powerful as desktops.” The Right Tool For The Job : Devin Coldewey, 25 March 2013, TechCrunch
also, can I share with you one of my recent obsessions? Man, but I luv the Idea Channel:
Mike makes many points better than I can, so even though the topic of the video is a bit tangential to the points I’m trying to make, I had to include it. However one basic starting premise is the same: Your mobile phone is the computer you keep in your pocket. Your phone is not only your primary screen (even over a TV screen) — increasingly, it is also your primary computer.
In addition to the ‘traditional’ mobile space (can we call a 5-year-old smart phone market traditional?) there is also the current proliferation of tablets and the tendency for everything new these days to sport a touch screen and a wireless connection. Tablets are adding keyboards, and laptops are going ‘detachable’ with their screens. It’s a mess.
“As the Transformer’s name suggests, it also transforms into another device: Pull up on the PC screen to separate it from its stand and it becomes a tablet you can move around the house. It has a handle and a kickstand for propping up on flat surfaces. Like the desktop version, the tablet runs two systems: Windows 8 Remote and Jelly Bean 4.1. Though this concept sounds smart, it’s laughable in practice. The screen measures a whopping 18.4 inches diagonally and weighs an arm-straining 5.3 pounds.” A PC and Tablet “Brick” for the Price of One : Katherine Boehret, 19 March 2013, All Things D
“It’s official. A study released by Google yesterday shows that mobile devices, and smart phones in particular, are now the dominant means of Internet connectivity in five key global markets. Google conducted the study of smart phone versus feature phone ownership rates throughout last year, pulling data from the USA, the UK, France, Germany, and Japan. It found that, while smart phones were were quickly pushing out older feature phones… together, a full 10-percent more people own these connected mobile devices than PC’s or laptops (78-percent vs 68-percent).” You’re Now More Likely to Find a Computer in Your Pocket Than on Your Lap : Andrew Tarantola, 26 January 2012, Gizmodo
[blockquote]
“The iPhone remains the flagship of Apple’s entire product line. It exhibits not merely the highest degree of fit and finish of any smartphone, but the highest degree of fit and finish for anything Apple has ever made. When first you hold it — where by you I mean ‘you, who, like me, is intimately familiar with the feel and heft of an iPhone 4 or 4S’ — you will be struck by how light it feels, yet in a premium, not chintzy way. Within a week, it will feel normal, and your old iPhone 4/4S will feel like a brick. …
“Using the iPhone 5 on LTE is nearly indistinguishable from using it on Wi-Fi. Web pages load in a snap, Siri parses input and responds promptly. It’s as big a difference from 3G (and whatever bullshit AT&T calls “4G”) as 3G was from EDGE. …
“So, as of this week, we have computing performance in our pants pockets that nine years ago required a professional desktop workstation. …
“Think about this: eight or nine years from now, we should have phones that are computationally equivalent to today’s Mac Pro. (Maybe even sooner, given the sorry state of the Mac Pro at the moment.)” [/blockquote] The iPhone 5 : John Gruber, 18 September 2012, Daring Fireball [blog], daringfireball.net
Are we talking about the death of the Personal Computer, or the declining popularity of one particular user interface, the keyboard-and-mouse? Because it sure looks like we’re making and buying a whole lot of computers these days.
…
Oh, and what happened to the ‘must-have’ gadget of 2009? The dedicated e-reader?
“Not coincidentally, the rapid decline in e-reader sales comes only two years after Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) introduced the iPad. Even at considerably higher price points, the capabilities of tablets like the iPad offer consumers much more than merely cool, electronic paper turning, making the additional cost well worth it. The dramatic rise in tablet sales is as quick as the decline of the e-reader: IHS forecasts 120 million tablets will be sold this year, rising to 340 million by 2016.” Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Death of the E-Reader : Tim Brugger, 13 December 2012, Motley Fool
“Multi-use tablet sales are dominating single-use ebook readers. IHS estimates that ebook sales will decrease 36% this year from 23.2 million to 14.9 million and continue to fall to 7.1 million in 2016.” Tablet’s Dominating Ebook Readers : Chuck Jones, 14 December 2012, Forbes
aside: Has anyone heard more about the “Steam Box” or other dedicated hardware from Valve recently? Was January the last time we saw any rumors or announcements?
I think it’s interesting that we’ve had two big product announcements in this space (PS4 and XBox One) but no word yet from Valve. Of course, you can already play Steam PC games on your living room TV, but without a plug-and-play box Valve is kind of restricting themselves to just the nerdcore demographic. (On second thought, maybe the entirety of their client base, so I guess no loss?)
Both the PS4 and new XBox are, in their guts, desktop gaming PCs — this was perhaps always true of the dedicated game consoles but seems especially so in the new generation. And both Sony and Microsoft are leveraging the large user base already to bring “computer” functions to the TV.
Even your Blu-ray player is a small computer — and again, perhaps this was always true, though that old VCR has a lot of mechanical pieces in it too — and with the latest generation of video playback we’re seeing quite a bit of computer-functionality brought to the forefront. I don’t know if it is possible anymore to buy a player that doesn’t connect to the internet for Netflix and YouTube playback, and a growing list of devices only do streaming video, up to and including the new $35 Chrome stick from Google.
With the prevalence of Bluetooth and Wifi enabled peripherals, just how far away are we from a Blu-ray player that accepts wireless input from an actual keyboard? (I think anyone who has attempted to type in a search using the arrow buttons on a remote feels my pain on this one.) And will we be able to use the keyboard before or after we’re all managing our queues with the smart phone anyway? Will a future device even have a remote control, or will we just use our mini-tablet or smart phone to begin with?
Given the size of the Roku, AppleTV, and Chromecast — and in parallel, considering the size of the Mini-ATX or even the engineering of the Raspberry Pi — how long before both the streaming box and a small PC are incorporated into a thin flush-mount LCD TV? Both the Chrome stick and the ‘better’ version of the Raspberry Pi retail for $35 each — when a decent TV costs $700 what’s another $70?
I think it’s just a matter of ‘installing’ a bigger monitor, and sitting on the couch. Why is there a hedgerow between PC and TV manufacturers? And wouldn’t a company like Samsung or Sony (which do both anyway) already have one of these in the market?
Maybe we just need a new word for the new computing device, like ‘smart phone’ or ‘tablet’.
ScreenPC. There you go. You’re welcome. This is a generic term, by the way, as I just introduced it as such and anyone who attempts to copyright or trademark it will have to come up with a fairly good reason why they’re entitled to it, given that people have been using the term generically to discuss wall-mounted or free standing television replacement PCs since 14 August 2013.
[heh.]
##
The ScreenPC is a handy seque to my next point:
Is the PC Defined by the Form Factor, or the User Interface?
…or does either matter? If it’s my personal computer, the computing device I use daily, why isn’t it also my “PC”?
Here’s another question for you: Is my “personal computer” the hardware, or the combination of software-and-data that I define as mine?
“Now, a clever piece of software lets you carry your own personal PC which you can carry inside your pocket – and once you have finished using it, no-one will ever know. Technically, what you are carrying is not a whole computer – instead it is a simple USB memory stick. But within it is a full operating system (like Windows), and when you plug it into a PC, that computer will restart into your own personal set-up, called Tails. When you have finished, shut down the computer, put the USB stick back in your pocket, and the PC will never know it has been used.” Not just for spies: The PC on a memory stick that doesn’t leave a trace of your browsing history or documents : Daily Mail Online : Eddie Wren : 12 June 2012
It has been said that the difference between the “old” PCs and the “new” devices is in how people use the hardware: Lean Forward (into a desk) vs Lean Back (on a couch)
[blockquote]
“When people started using the iPad, it was speculated that the iPad seemed to be a ‘lean back’ medium, like print, as opposed to the ‘lean forward’ medium of the web on a personal computer.
“The distinction between a ‘lean forward’ and ‘lean back’ medium apparently began with interactive television. The terms have commonly been used by hand-wavers such as marketing people, media theorists, and futurists. The distinction has very little real scientific basis. There isn’t any clear idea what these terms really mean.
“Still, there’s something going on here. Jakob Nielsen, in studies of reading via print versus the web, found major differences between the two. To the question of ‘How readers read on the web,’ Nielsen answers: ‘They don’t.’” [/blockquote] Engagement Styles: Beyond ‘Lean Forward’ and ‘Lean Back’ : Craig Will, johnnyholland.org, 15 March 2012
[blockquote]
“The idea behind lean-forward mediums is that people are engaged when they use the Web. They are in scanning mode, actively looking for content – and their attention span is much shorter. People use the Internet with purpose. Articles should be shorter and get to the point sooner, videos should be snippets or separated into clips of only a few minutes long.
“Lean-back mediums on the other hand are the times we sit down and veg out watching TV, read a book or flip through a magazine. Our attention span is much longer because these are passive mediums and we are in a consumption mode. This is why most long-form doesn’t work on the Web.”[/blockquote] Lean-forward vs. lean-back media : Jeremy Rue : 4 May 2010
“One of the old debates about the emergence of the personal computer as a media device centred on the lean-back (think television) versus lean-forward (think PC) distinction. The meme was that computers would never replace television because of that difference in engagement. In some ways the tablet (think iPad) has shattered that as it has very clearly become the couch computer.” Lean Back versus Lean Forward : Sherman Young, The Book is Dead [shermanfyoung.wordpress.com], 15 December 2011
[blockquote]
“While cellphones have become ubiquitous as mobile devices, it’s been a much longer road to popularity for tablet computers – portable electronic devices that try to fill a void between tiny screen cellphones and more cumbersome laptops.
“Roger Fidler was one of the original proponents of these portable “electronic tablets” when he ran the Knight Ridder Information Design Lab in the early 1990s. See this story and this 1994 video showing Fidler’s vision (Fidler is now at the Reynolds Journalism Institute as Program Director for Digital Publishing).
“Many companies subsequently produced various forms of tablet computers as reading devices, such as the SoftBook and the Rocket eBook in the late 1990s and Sony’s e-book readers in the mid to late 2000s. But most of the devices failed to gain much traction with consumers.
“Other companies in the 1990s also worked on developing “electronic paper” or “e-ink” technology that would be used in wafer-thin flexible displays that theoretically could be rolled up and put in a briefcase, backpack or purse. But years passed with no consumer product hitting store shelves.
“Then with Amazon’s release of the popular Kindle e-book reader in late 2007, buzz about portable tablet computers heated up again. By 2010 and 2011 a number of sophisticated tablet computers were being produced, usually with color displays and/or wireless Internet connections for downloading up-to-date news and information.” [/blockquote] the transition to digital journalism : Kinght Digital Media Center, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism : Paul Grabowicz, 4 December 2012
The link above is:
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/digital-transform/tablets/
…just in case you missed it. There are a number of great resources linked at the bottom of the KDMC post, and they keep updating them. Just today, in testing the link (I usually do, before posting) I noticed the page had been updated just yesterday.
And of course, because I can as it is on YouTube, here’s that 1994 video linked above:
(It’s another tangential discussion, given my article above, but once again worth watching. The archived viewpoint of 1994 is fascinating)
##
Is it the interface that makes a PC?
A brand name? Marketing, market penetration, install bases and number of users?
The operating system?
The form factor?
Use cases, software, and intended design?
…or is a PC defined by how we actually use any and all of these devices?
The PC isn’t dead — in the late 1970s the “Personal Computer” came upon a virgin landscape and started to proliferate. Like any organism, it first exploited the easily-grasped resources (markets, in this case) but with increasing numbers also comes increased competition. To survive and prosper, computers had to differentiate and exploit new markets. Not just the computer but the whole ecosystem evolves, and revolutionary new forms (laptops, tablets) might dint the progress of older models, but don’t necessarily kill off their predecessors.
Computers are adapting. As we select the best type for each need, we’re guiding their evolution, but the whole ecosystem isn’t a zero-sum game. The whole digital world is still growing. A computer will fill every conceivable, supportable niche — and even some that aren’t sustainable so long as there is a dedicated and invested small fan base.
If anything, I spend too much time on twitter (to the detriment of other projects I should be spending the time on) and I probably over-share:
Is every last article I read both insightful and/or funny, and worthy to share? Just because I find a topic fascinating (you know, like the business of retail, or sci-fi anime, or the history of technology) does that mean I get to spam 500 more-or-less random strangers with every link that suits my whim and fancy?
It is also true that when I’m tweeting my own mind (and not just links) I tend to “run at the mouth” and tweet 10 or 20 times in a row, violating the spirit of Twitter’s 140 limit and imposing even further on an uncaring audience.
And of course, Not Every Recipe I Make Needs to Be Liveblogged Via Twitter, and of my many bad habits this is probably the worst (that or, you know, the drinking.)
In college I used to joke that if we did something three times, it becomes a tradition, and if we do it four times that means it’s something we’ve done *forever*. Since many of us (who did go to university) only go there for 4 or 5 years, I suppose that these ‘traditions’ are part of what makes the self-forming communities there, indeed, it may be what part of what defines the community. Otherwise, each annual class of freshmen would be a self-contained phenomenon, and the various clubs would flicker in and out of existence like generations of flies.
So: as this is the fourth link round-up I’ve posted, I guess that means I’ve been doing this *forever*. (You won’t believe me, but yes, the following list was edited and abridged.)
Given that news, a quick thought experiment for you: name the top 3 US newpapers (by reputation, not circulation) (so no USA Today) — My list was NYT, WSJ… and then WaPo. ymmv. Maybe the $250M purchase price is more than justified. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_newspapers_won_the_most_Pulitzer_Prizes
↑… that was my best joke all week. fell flat. my faith in humanity (or at least the fan base) was betrayed.
“Our 2-person network was selling 5000 copies in over 80 shops, thanks to the relationships we had built with individual booksellers. That world has gone.” http://www.thepassivevoice.com/08/2013/tough-deal/
If you wanted to follow my every drunken musing and read all the tweets: you’d be following me on twitter. So moving forward, I’ll skip embedding the tweets, skip most of my commentary, and give you a round up of “just” the links.
I’m sure both you and your rss feed will thank me for it.
There was also the time Riggio had B&N buy the B&N College Stores (from himself) for $514 Million. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aiONkuELFnNA (I recall being a bit annoyed at the time, since I was told I wouldn’t be getting a raise—no one was—while Riggio treated B&N like an ATM.)
disclaimer: Yes, I work for Barnes and Noble. I also speak for myself, have better ideas on how to run a bookstore than the damnable corporate overlords, the information presented here is publicly available not derived from my position as ignorable field management mucking about in the trenches, and all opinions below are my own. Having satisfied the “code of conduct and business ethics” I now thumb my nose at the necessity for a disclaimer and wonder when we let the lawyers get in the way of a good drunken rant.
[note to self: copy that bit above as the new boilerplate disclaimer for business-related posts, and add it to my ‘about’ page for the blog.]
##
Amazon is getting credit for expanding it’s warehouse work force from 20,000 to 25,000.
Out of courtesy, I won’t steal and embed PW’s chart, but you can find it in the article linked, which I recommend you go ahead and read […or here, direct link].
So Amazon is looking to increase its warehouse work force by 25% (alongside the additional warehouses built, economic activity, etc etc) and gee that looks great. “Amazon is creating jobs! Let Me Go Make A Speech About It!”
I know Amazon sells other stuff, but the huge investment in customer fulfillment logistics has to be wedded to the expectation on Amazon’s part that these moves will increase their overall sales, including their share of all book sales: Big, and looking to get bigger. A proportional increase in market share to match the increase in staff would take them from a quarter of the retail book business to a third, 33%, one in three of every book sold.
You know, just by hiring 5,000 people to work for, what was the figure, $11-15 dollars in hour? — doing physical labor in a warehouse, which should be admired, not denigrated as it is hard work but honest — but c’mon, even with Amazon stock options: this isn’t a career path. It’s a job, a decent job, but with exceptionally few opportunities for promotion and no lateral opportunities for advancement.
##
B&N has a smaller share of the retail book business [it pains me to admit]. But B&N employs 34,000 full and part-time employees as of April 27, 2013, in 1300+ storefronts: the 675 superstores and the 686 college bookstores. [source: page 5 of B&N’s most recent annual report]
Damn. B&N now has more college bookstores than Big Boxes. This is… OK? That business decision is above my paygrade. It seems wrong, though. College bookstores are great, I have to admit: solid margins on textbooks, guaranteed customer base, extremely seasonal (the beginning of semester crush) but also regular and something that can be planned for, and around.
There are drawbacks though — and I’m going to take some space to say this even though it is taking me far away from my topic:
College Bookstore locations are, in almost all cases, owned by the college and only the operations of the bookstore are leased. This is even worse than having a landlord, as the College owns the location and also still technically owns the business. I’m sure B&N signs multi-decade deals, or at the very least, provides strong incentives and options for schools to renew whenever the operational agreements expire — but this is not the rock-solid business some assume
[blockquote]
“B&N College may not be able to enter into new contracts and contracts for existing or additional college bookstores may not be profitable.
“An important part of B&N College’s business strategy is to expand sales for its college bookstore operations by being awarded additional contracts to manage bookstores for colleges and universities. B&N College’s ability to obtain those additional contracts is subject to a number of factors that it is not able to control. In addition, the anticipated strategic benefits of new and additional college and university bookstores may not be realized at all or may not be realized within the time frames contemplated by management. In particular, contracts for additional managed stores may involve a number of special risks, including adverse short-term effects on operating results, diversion of management’s attention and other resources, standardization of accounting systems, dependence on retaining, hiring and training key personnel, unanticipated problems or legal liabilities, and actions of its competitors and customers. Because the terms of any contract are generally fixed for the initial term of the contract and involve judgments and estimates which may not be accurate, including for reasons outside of its control, B&N College has contracts which are not profitable, and may have such contracts in the future. Even if B&N College has the right to terminate a contract, it may be reluctant to do so even when a contract is unprofitable due, among other factors, to the potential effect on B&N College’s reputation. Any unprofitable contracts may negatively impact the Company’s operating results.”
[/blockquote]
to that I would add:
College bookstore locations vary greatly in size, but most are smaller than 20,000 sq.ft. – while the big box superstores start at 20,000 sq.ft. and most are a good bit larger.
Operating a separate chain of college bookstores under the same trade name leads to brand dilution and customer confusion. Technically, if you bought it at a college B&N, I can’t even process the return at one of our trade stores. Yes, I know they’re only 6 miles away. Yes, I know they have a big B&N logo on the front, just like me. [Oh, of course I know a work-around. I’ve been working-around our computer systems for years]
Related: So the B&N at Georgia Tech sells textbooks, iPads, computer software, college-badged sweatshirts, some home goods (dorm goods?) — they both rent and buy back textbooks, and (most hurtful) they have a larger manga selection than I do at my store. This is all because they are on a College Campus, operate as a College Bookstore, and That Is A Different Business. I don’t and can’t do any of that. But there is this Big Fat B&N logo right above the front door… Since the GT store is listed in the phone book as “The Georgia Tech College Bookstore” *no one and I mean no one* can find that telephone number, but oh boy howdy can they find the listing for “Barnes and Noble, Atlanta” so at my very fine bookstore not only do I get my daily call volume, I also [joy, joy] get to inform and educate the general public about the idiosyncrasies of our byzantine corporate structure, the hedgerow that exists between the college and trade divisions of my company, and why *I* can’t buy, sell, rent, order, or process a return on their textbooks for them. It’s fun. On top of an already stressful job, why, it might drive one to drink.
The built-in divide extends to our website: use the store locator, and you’ll get the Trade locations but none of the college bookstores. Good luck even trying to find their address online. And yes, customers call my store every day looking for even this basic information on the two B&N College Bookstores in town.
None of this would matter were it not for the deliberate muddling of the B&N/B&N College brands. This isn’t just a customer service issue: how much of the stock valuation and potential spinoffs, sales, mergers, buyouts or buy-ins of the Nook/B&N brands are potentially spiked because of uncertainty about which operations (trade, college, online retail, and online digitial) are included in any potential purchase or investment? The four, or five, Barnes & Nobles each need a brand and identity — hell, make that six Barnes & Nobles if we include the (recently-abandoned?) nook hardware. By keeping it all much-too-close, and by being secretive and playing the spinoff game too close to the vest: the whole company suffers.
##
before I was sidetracked, I was talking about jobs.
Right now Amazon employs 20,000 warehouse serfs, and is looking to hire more. — 20,000 out of 88,400 full- and part-time employees [source, pg 3, 2012 Annual Report, pdf] — so order fulfillment is just a sideline for Amazon as they only dedicate a quarter of their staff to the task. One presumes the other 75% of Amazon is working on either web solutions, hardware, collectively hypnotizing Wall Street, or crushing my soul.
If one were lucky enough to get an Amazon warehouse job in Tennessee, what are the chances you could move up from that job, internally within Amazon, to Seattle and some sort of web, corporate, purchasing, accounting, or human resources position?
[I’ll leave that as an exercise for the student.]
Barnes and Noble, with even less book market share, employs more people: 34,000. Now of course that included the home office staff, our warehouse employees (yes, we have those too) but mostly it’s the booksellers in 675 Big Box Bookstores, doing the impossible and exceeding expectations daily*.
[* in 2008]
I am the first to acknowledge the bookstores have changed. In 2008, B&N had 718 Big Box Stores and the company employed 40,000 full- and part-timers. (not including seasonal hires: each December would add another 10,000 temp ‘booksellers’ to that total). The benefits, frankly, were awesome: even part-time, 20hr a week employees qualified for health benefits (in 2008) and (in 2008) the number of full time positions was roughly equal to the number of part-time. There was an employee development track, and a ladder: from part-time to full-time to “lead” to “dept. manager” and from there into a salary management staff position. In 2008. Or going back, from roughly 2000-2007 while the chain was still actively expanding, with multiple new store openings in each metropolitan area, annually and while the corp. still looked to develop talent from within.
Why, one could join the company in 2001 as a part-time, seasonal bookseller, but if one had aptitude, a willingness to work flexible hours, and kept showing up and doing the job – between training, on-the-job experience, and making the most of available opportunities: a bookseller could go from the back room to front of store and on to store management.
I did.
That door closed in 2008. While the chain was expanding, and promoting from within, opportunities abounded. Now, in 2013: we’re closing more stores than we open, and rather than look for talent in our own staff — sadly — there is a full-on corporate initiative to actively recruit managers from other retailers.
[If Len, Mitch, Dan, or Steve feel it is necessary to fire me for letting that slip, fine.]
In the 5 years past, B&N has gone from a culture that actively developed and promoted talent internally, even as far down as the individual store level, to… well, to what? To a caretaker organization merely overseeing their own long fall? Yet-another-retailer who hires only part-timers – because that’s what Wal-Mart is doing and we have to compete with the lowest common denominator? Paring back on customer service because payroll is the only variable the corporate office has control over, even when our own customers say the only reason they shop online is they no longer get the service in-store that they are accustomed to?
##
A fading bookseller chain can only manage 25,000 bookseller jobs (we’ll assume the rest are in a warehouse or at corporate) while Amazon boasts 20,000 warehouse jobs (since they have no bookstores we have to consider these as equivalent) and Amazon is looking at adding 5000 more.
I would love to devolve this down to a single equation, but I think the whole post above kind of negates that.
Bookstore jobs were good jobs, up until Amazon ruined it, and my corporate overlords went Full-On-Wal-Mart on our employees.
Amazon Warehouse jobs are really excellent warehouse jobs. That said: warehouse jobs suck.
And it all comes down to ‘efficiency’
We’re losing jobs because the old jobs were ‘inefficient’ and for some reason that is bad.
Inefficiencies are Great. Bookstores should, honestly, be as inefficient as possible, as that is the singular bookstore characteristic that spawns discovery.
Shall the name of this ongoing be “This Week on Twitter” or perhaps the more personal “My Week on Twitter”?
hm.
Food for thought. Also, it seems it would be worthwhile for me to edit a bit — perhaps by capping the number of embedded tweets to something less-rss-feed clogging? Not sure what a perfect number would be; more than a top 10 certainly, but 25 seems like too much. [I already edit out the one-on-one twitter conversations, almost all of my retweets, and some-but-not-all-political topics.]
Enough introductory digression. On with the tweets:
"instead of succumbing to temptation to reinvent itself, B&N should focus on the truly radical: being a bookstore." http://t.co/uHzSulHPSF
On June 1, 2015 (after 6 years and 11 months) I needed to relaunch/restart this blog, or at least rekindle my interest in maintaining and updating it.
Rather than delete and discard the whole thing, I instead moved the blog -- database, cms, files, archives, and all -- to this subdomain. When you encounter broken links (and you will encounter broken links) just change the URL in the address bar from www.rocketbomber.com to archive.rocketbomber.com.
I know this is inconvenient, and for that I apologise. In addition to breaking tens of thousands of links, this also adversely affects the blog visibility on search engines -- but that, I'm willing to live with. Between the Wayback Machine at Archive.org and my own half-hearted preservation efforts (which you are currently reading) I feel nothing has been lost, though you may have to dig a bit harder for it.
As always, thank you for reading. Writing version 1.0 of Rocket Bomber was a blast. For those that would like to follow me on the 2.0 - I'll see you back on the main site.
In my head, I sound like Yahtzee (quite a feat, given my inherited U.S.-flat-midwestern-accent.)
where I start my browsing day...
...and one source I trust for reviews, reports, and opinion on manga specifically. [disclaimer: I'm a contributor there]
attribution
RocketBomber is a publication of Matt Blind, some rights reserved: unless otherwise noted in the post, all articles are non-commercial CC licensed (please link back, and also allow others to use the same data where applicable).
Email? “Sent from my iPhone” — same for facebook, twitter, and all the quick-message-type interactions that take place these days. The best computer is the one in your pocket. 
