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Top 50 New Releases:
(Titles releasing/released This Month & Last)
1. ↔0 (1) : Maximum Ride 3 – Yen Press, Aug 2010 [423.1] :: 2. ↑6 (8) : Alice in the Country of Hearts 4 – Tokyopop, Aug 2010 [421.4] :: 3. ↑7 (10) : Bleach 32 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2010 [406.2] :: 5. ↓-2 (3) : Rosario+Vampire Season II 2 – Viz Shonen Jump Advanced, Aug 2010 [342.6] :: 6. ↓-2 (4) : Bleach Color Bleach+: The Official Bootleg – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2010 [337.9] :: 8. ↓-3 (5) : Black Bird 5 – Viz Shojo Beat, Aug 2010 [321.3] :: 14. ↑5 (19) : Junjo Romantica 12 – Tokyopop Blu, Aug 2010 [269.6] :: 15. ↑8 (23) : Hetalia Axis Powers 1 – Tokyopop, Sep 2010 [258.6] :: 16. ↑32 (48) : Bride of the Water God 6 – Dark Horse, Aug 2010 [249.7] :: 17. ↑1 (18) : Bakuman 1 – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2010 [239.4] ::
1. Take four large handfuls of fresh greens. These can vary by season or location, but go for what’s fresh. Fresh, healthy greens are vital.
2. Add carrots, celery, green apple, and walnuts. Carrots should be julienned, celery can also be julienned or just rough chopped, green apples should be a fairly fine dice (1 cm cubes) and the walnuts can be whole or chopped, though I prefer whole.
3. Dress simply, with salt, oil, and a small amount of flavourful vinegar, like basalmic. Garlic oil instead of olive oil is a tasty substitution.
4. Add 6 cups of silage, and two handfuls of 6 month old, leftover halloween candy.
5. Feed the entire mixture to a cow. Repeat. (repeat, repeat, repeat…)
6. Slaughter cow, portion and prepare using common methods.
Assumption 1:
One of the problems cited with our national debt is that so much of it is foreign owned. The fear is that foreign governments could use this to ‘force’ the US Gov. to do something against our best interests.
Fact:
Billions are spent each election cycle in an effort to influence government, albeit in a backward, roundabout way by getting sympathetic candidates elected. $4 Billion in 2010, by some estimates
Assumption 2:
At least half of those billions come from corporations and the wealthiest individuals, not from small donations by individual donors (“voters”)
Premise: If ownership of the debt is equated with influence, why not require those seeking influence to buy some of the national debt? If foreign ownership of debt is “bad”, then why are there no large drives to get US Citizens and Corporations to buy that debt instead? During WWII, stars and celebrities encouraged all of us to buy war bonds — and correct me if I’m wrong, but the current line is that we’re at ‘war’ with ‘terror’ — where is the push to get anyone, especially those who profess to be in favor of massive military spending, to actually pay for it?
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So, is there an opportunity to generate $1-2 Billion every two years? What if instead of donating money to get candidates elected in an effort to curry influence, those who wished to purchase influence were allowed (or forced) to purchase government bonds to do so? But it doesn’t have to be a bond; after all, if you have the money there’s nothing stopping you from buying T-Bills —maybe we could do something more direct, and effective.
Proposal: Make it a law that any political donation over $1000 has to be matched by an equal payment directly to pay down the national debt. Take the upper cap off, allow folks to donate thousands and millions directly to candidates, or to buy whole hours of advertising, or whatever; corporate, individual—hell, if the Sultan of Brunei wants in on this, let ‘im— no limits on campaign funding so long as any political donation is matched dollar for dollar with a payment on the national debt.
Might only amount a billion dollars every two years or so. Only a billion. The whole process is corrupt; I’m not going to argue that or try to fix it. But, so long as influence and politics and the machinery of government are for sale, we might as well put a price tag on it, and do something good for the country while we’re at it.
before I post all the crap I’ve been looking up on the internet since, well, September and quite a bit more intensely the past few weeks, it is necessary to post a disclaimer — it ran a little long, though, so I bumped it to the bottom of this article. Short version: I work for, but do not and can not speak for, Barnes & Noble. Clear?
A number of other media outlets also reported on the upcoming 26 Oct. ‘event’, presumably because they all got invites. Didn’t take long for the news to ‘leak’
Paul Biba of TeleRead took some video during the B&N presentation and posted it in twoparts — I won’t bother to embed it here, but the links are there for those who just have to see it — and plenty of details are in the offical press release. Both cnet and engadget were on hand, and posted videos from the demonstrations made to the press after the event. B&N posted a promotional video to their nook website, and you can go watch it if you’re feeling masochistic, though I prefer the edited version Gizmo posted to YouTube.
If you’re interested in keeping up to date, you might bookmark appropriate searches at engadget, gizmodo, TechCrunch, and Google
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Despite what anyone else might say in columns or thought-pieces, no one was predicting a new Barnes & Noble ereader.
The first rumors landed 2 days after B&N extended invites to its unspecified Media Event, and I know this to whatever degree of certainty web searches provide: I’ve bookmarked a specific Google search, ‘ereader rumor’, restricted to only the posts in the last 24 hours and I’ve been checking it daily since 23 September. That particular search turned up the same 20-30 pages for weeks, right up until… wait for it… 20 October, the day after the B&N press invite for a 26 October media event. Sure, folks have predicted color e-readers for a while now, kinda ignoring the color screen attached to 99% of PCs and laptops—which function quite well as an e-reader, as does the iPad—as apparently, the platonic ideal form of an ‘e-reader’ must be a handheld device that is neither a ‘phone’ or a ‘tablet’. Very specific, for some reason.
[and the same might be said for ‘e-books’ which for some (the same?) reason must be read on an ‘e-reader’ — and this reading experience is somehow more sublime than reading mere ‘documents’ or web pages off of your computer screen, even though 90% of us do 90% of our reading on the internet on an LCD, day in & day out for years now …but that’s a different rant.]
The problem with the tech press is that they are techies — they know too much. Anyone in a position to comment authoritatively on the matter has been following tech trends for decades and knows not just what’s coming out this autumn, but also the trends and new technologies that will likely come out in 2012 or 2013 — It is rare to blindside someone in the tech press (though Apple seems to be capable of at least mild surprises once a year or so) and no sooner is a new device released, than they begin to tear it down. [literally, in some cases, but metaphorically also]
Nothing is quite good enough. The 4g iPhone was all but perfect, but one could sense the barely contained glee bloggers and journalists took in reporting the attenna problems. The iPad is great, but it doesn’t have a keyboard and at all of 1.5 lbs., apparently it’s a leaden albatros around users’ necks. The Palm Pre was also near-perfect, but since the user base was too small there was no hope of a robust app store.
Easy-to-use gadgets get docked for not being ‘open’ and user-customizable, Open gadgets get points taken away for being ‘chaotic’ and hard to learn, and great gadgets of all sorts get panned because they’re sold with (and subsidized by) data plans from phone companies that tie you in for years. (Oddly, devices sold without the phone-co.-subsidy are then criticized for being too expensive.)
There is no way to keep the internet happy: Haters are going to hate, partisans of one brand will always disparage all others, and even perfect isn’t good enough, because perfect takes too long and the tech will be six months old [*ancient*] by the time it comes out.
Not that the Nook Color is perfect — with specs as advertised, it represents a set of compromises: decisions made to optimize user experience while keeping costs below one of the ‘psychological barrier’ price points [$50, $100, $200 — big round numbers]. But when reading articles condemning (or praising, but mostly condemning) the new nook, it’s good to keep in mind that these writers and reviewers are techies, and both their knowledge base and expectations are different from the general public — for sub-$500 units, different from the devices’ target market.
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Nook Color: So what is it?
It’s an android tablet. No getting around that. It runs android, looks an awful lot like the emerging leader in the android tablet category [hey, there’s a lot to be said for being first, Samsung is going to build up a lead here] and let’s face it: the new nook has a LCD screen — in what seems like a step backward for e-readers [e-ink was one of the few selling points]
Ah yes, but what of that screen? LG VividView LCD. For most folks, I’m sure that means nothing. I’d certainly never heard of VividView, though I am familiar with LG — one of the top three manufactures of LCDs (second only to Samsung, in fact, and both based in South Korea) and certainly, they are folks who know screen technology. With bit of strategic Googling, I can demonstrate that VividView isn’t brand new; it’s been used for a couple of years now in high-end gaming laptops – and in those applications, easily HDTV capable. Now, I sincerely doubt the Nook Color is going to run HDTV – this is a $250 handheld and the stated resolution is 1024×600 (on a 7” screen; might I remind you that 1024×768 is often found on 14” laptops? —and that the resolution of the 10” iPad screen is also 1024×768?) and I don’t want to be blinded by the numbers; but the screen tech (despite not being Mirasol or color E-ink) certainly seems nice. I’m sure this lovely display is a battery hog and one of the reasons I’ll only get 4 hours (B&N says 8, and I laugh) between charges, but I’m eager to actaully see it. The Samsung Galaxy Tab has the same advertised resolution, 1024×600, for their 7” – though obviously Samsung manufactures the screen in that one. I’m looking forward to the write-up by a reviewer with access to each.
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The other half of the “android tablet” dynamic isn’t the ‘tablet’ part: the new nook seems to run android apps pretty much out of the box [according to reports] — though it won’t connect to an outside app market of any sort; what’s available will be only whatever B&N deems worthy. While that seems like an unnecessary speed bump, B&N is positioning and selling the device as an e-reader, and has an open invitation to all developers. I called it a mere ‘speed-bump’ for a reason; either some smart cookie will figure out how to hack the nook without crippling it (allowing it to run side-loaded apps while preserving the B&N e-reader functionality) or Barnes & Noble may just sell enough of these to make it an attractive market for developers, who really only have to tweak and gloss already finished android apps so they look good on the nook …and the Galaxy Tab, which as noted has the same screen resolution and OS so there will likely be some synergy
— and since synergy has been so overused, I’ll link to wikipedia and also define it here: “two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently” — I might advise my employer to be very generous in regards to what programs make it into the nook app store as there is an opportunity to develop a 7” android ecosystem — with the Samsung device soon to be available through Verizon and Sprint, and of course sales of the Nook Color (at at least $100 less than Samsung’s unit) and I know, I know, we’re selling e-readers and not computers, but one should not discount the “after market” or all the uses a consumer—a purchaser of our product—might want to employ, all of which add value and increase sales — you know, if Sony had tacitly accepted PSP hacks instead of cracking down, the PSP might be outselling Nintendo DS right now — and might even be a passable e-reader, to boot.
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So there it is; about all I can think to say about the new nook without actually having my hands on one.
Though I might note one other bias I think the nook encounters in the internet/technical press: Anything we do automatically gets discounted because we were two years late to the ball and we’re not a ‘tech’ company — it’s like your frumpy old aunt is getting dolled up and trying to crash the party.
As to being late: Apple is always late. They introduced iPods after MP3 players had been around for years, a phone after smart phones had been around for years, the iPad after netbooks had been around for years. [I’ve been over this in detail] Now, my [*cough*] beloved employer is no Apple, but being late isn’t bad.
And as far as not being a tech company: yes, I know many of you have Barnes & Noble ‘sussed out’ – there is a box somewhere in your head, labeled ‘bookstore’ or ‘place to plug in and check my email in an emergency’, and that’s the only role you can think of for Barnes & Noble.
We’ve offered wifi to customers for longer than I’ve had this blog; initially it was available only to paying customers, but we’ve had wifi in store since 2004 — what, 6 years as an internet service provider doesn’t count? — and for those of you who have been constantly re-learning and re-certifying for the past 20 years, where did you buy your computer reference books? Hm? Oh sure, you all buy them from Amazon now, but who stocked the books the Amazon programmers themselves used prior to 1994?
We’ve been here all the time.
I have to admit: some of the folks at the top are booksellers to the bone, and they don’t get the ‘new’ tech. But that’s why Steve Riggio stepped aside to let Bill Lynch take over as CEO — and B&N has had a website since 1997 (13 years now); & before the launch of BN.com, the company was selling books via CompuServe and America Online — OK, so that was a bad move in retrospect, but B&N was out there, out in front, back before a lot of you were on the ‘net.
Some might hate to admit it, but Barnes & Noble is a tech company: we are the entry point for learning, a provider of free internet for that sizable minority of ‘wifi gypsies’, and since last year: we sell portable electronics. Say what you want, but B&N has 20% of the e-book market and 1400+ stores and folks like me — who don’t have to defend the company…
You know, let me take that back a half-step: B&N corporate has cut my store payroll by like, 35% over the past couple of years and that, quite honestly, is killing me – I have a more than adequate base from which to criticize
…but that aside (or even taken into full consideration) – I still sell books, and I still work for Corporate Overlord Big Box Books, and as a blogger I might be considered an ideal interface to bridge old-school-physical-bookselling into the post-internet age, but not a one of my posts is sponsored or authorized by my employer, and I am at risk when I write about topics this close to home.
That’s a bit far afield from my point [though I consider it a necessary detour] –
I can’t help but get this impression from the tech press to date, “The Nook Color looks like a great tablet for $250 – a real bargain, even – it’s a shame it comes from Barnes & Noble”
Barnes & Noble signs my paycheck. I’m not an ‘insider’ at the corporate headquarters, though, or an engineer (or even the janitor) at the shiny new Barnes & Noble Digital division in Palo Alto. [which is hiring, btw. obviously that link is time-dependent; this article was posted 11 Nov 2010.] I’m just field management, one out of thousands of Store Managers and Asst. Managers and dept. managers that actually run the damn stores.
I’m not authorized to speak for Barnes & Noble. Period. Not officially, not “off the record”, not under condition of anonymity: nothing.
Barnes & Noble doesn’t tell me squat, past what you can go read for yourself at their website. OK, so I know a little bit more about my store, like payroll and sales targets, but I don’t share that information for obvious reasons.
When I clock out and go home and start drinking, I’m a blogger. Every word you’ve ever read on this blog is just me, Matt Blind: otaku fanboy loser, geek-correspondent-at-large, introverted alcoholic blogger. I’m also a bookseller, and I bring that perspective and experience to my posts, but I am in no way privy to any insider info on this one.
And even if I knew something, I couldn’t tell you. In fact, if I knew even a few, minor details that would be enough to preclude me from posting any sort of analysis on this topic at all. You know, because I could get fired and whatnot, since fool that I am I’ve been writing RocketBomber (and blogging for years now) under my real name.
indeed, “M. Blind” is neither a nom de plume nor nom de guerre — though it quite handily looks like one, something I’ve used to my advantage for close to two decades on the internet. (I started at Georgia Tech in the Fall of 1992 and one of the first things they assigned me was an email address.)
So, I speak for myself. I don’t have a crystal ball or Mímir’s head in a bag. I’ve got the internets, a search engine, a cooler full of beer, some leads, and the burning desire to know.
The old book retail model doesn’t quite work anymore, not in a world with online, discounted sales of physical books and instant downloads of e-books. But some of us (myself included) aren’t ready to let go of the ‘bookstore’ quite yet, and there should be some way to make a bookstore work even as book retail [as we used to know it] is significantly marginalized and in large chunks replaced by online analogues and substitutes.
One merely [merely, as if it’s that easy] has to “rethink the box” and come up with a new way to run a bookstore.
What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.
criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra
Among other rules of thumb, I told aspiring shopkeepers to pay close attention to their neighbors – being next to a restaurant or other retail was considered a bonus, being out in the middle of nowhere was not recommended (despite the cheaper rent). One advantageous adjacency that I don’t remember mentioning was movie theaters: being next to a movie theater is as close a guarantee of customer traffic as you’re likely to get in retail. Folks go out to the movies, and either just miss a showtime (and have to wait an hour or two) or the show they want is sold out so they choose another (and still have to wait 30-40 minutes) or rarely, they plan ahead but don’t encounter traffic or other delays, and so are early — typically they’d just sit in a theater watching the same 4 minutes of the movie screen equivalent of a screen saver (about 5 times over) but if there were an option many folks would much rather flip through magazines or take a look at the new releases. And maybe they come back after the show, for coffee and to talk about the movie, and just maybe to buy something that caught their eye.
If you can locate your bookstore along a restaurant-shop-theater axis, you’re golden: Given the difference between movie showtimes, the time to get seated and served at a restaurant, and other variables (John is running late, again, or Kristen called and she wants to bring her roommate so now they’re going to be another 10 minutes) there will almost always be an hour or so for customers to waste — and what better way than to spend some time than in a bookstore?
Someone who already has a coffeeshop in house will of course also be trying to get folks to eat (or at least snack) at the bookstore before they see the movie – instead of another restaurant. Indeed, a smart risk-taker might imagine putting a restaurant and barinside the bookstore, to capture even more of that before-and-after-the-show business.
It takes a mad genius to make the next intuitive leap, though: heck, why not put the theater in the bookstore?
while I am a mad genius, I don’t get credit for this idea: my Music Department Manager, Brad, gets the nod here. At Big Box Books, we also sell DVDs (and an increasing amount of Blu-Ray) out of the music dept., and Brad has noticed several trends over the past couple of years – At least at our store, the disc-buying customer is much more cinema ‘literate’, and they tend to be collectors.
We can build on this [in fact, we have] and make it a point to reach out to this customer base. As a result, we sell more blu-ray, box sets, and Criterion than anyone else in the metro area – and maybe much further. Tapping into a collector’s market is great, as you see certain all-but-guaranteed sales in select categories with each new release. The Criterion & blu-ray markets are also nice for the higher price points: when list price is $40-50, even in a once-a-year 50% off sale ($20) you’re banking $10 a disc (and at those prices, the real collectors buy much more than just single discs.)
So extend that out just a bit. Open up a book & disc store with an art-house style theater inside.
Doesn’t have to be a huge, megaplex, stadium-style cavernous hall of a theater – something of a scale with your market and intended audience – indeed, a multi-use space better suited for live drama (though with enough room for a decent screen) would be a much better choice. Say 200-275 seats.
One way to envision this strange hybrid is to consider the local movie cinemaplex — that one with 10 screens and the football-field-sized parking lot out by the mall is a fine example. Their lobby is huge — really oversized and seldom used, even when folks are standing in line for Star Wars or what-have-you. Sure, there is the concession counter (also grossly oversized; I’ve seen a Starbucks do 5 times the business from a counter a fourth as big) and maybe some video games off to one side, but otherwise there is nothing but carpet, bare walls, and the occasional movie poster. Say we took that unused floor space and did something really simple: took 10 sq.ft. to add a small counter selling movie soundtracks. Folks just saw the film and some of them no doubt loved the soundtrack – why make them wait? Sell them the CD before they leave; they can listen to it in the car on the way home. Talk about a specific retail opportunity & exploiting an ideal market; you know, given the low investment cost (you’d need to stock, at most, like 10 different CDs – a far cry from the hundreds we have at the bookstore) and the similarly low payroll (a single person for like 10 minutes at a time as each show lets out) and the fact that the CDs could be locked in a display case—and you’re only handed a copy after the sale at the register— I am really quite surprised none of the cash-strapped theater chains hasn’t tried this already. Maybe as a one-time thing, or special promo (“buy 2 lg. drinks and a popcorn bucket for $22 and get a free CD!”) but so far as I know, it hasn’t happened.
Now, stretch it just a bit further: Showing Iron Man 2? Why *aren't* you selling the first Iron Man on DVD in the movie lobby? Allergic to money?
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The idea behind “The Last Picture Show” isn’t to save the movie theater; in fact, just taking one failing business (theaters) and combining it with another slowly-dying business (retail sales of CDs and DVDs) is far from a recipe for success.
But, the whole can be more than the sum of its parts: think small, and build up.
Art House style theater? check. Make it a multi-use space, suitable for small music ensembles or even live drama.
Concession Stand? Nope – Instead: the ubiquitous bookstore coffee shop (sure, we’re still charging $4 for a large drink, but for some reason people don’t blink when it’s a coffee-based-milkshake) with something better than just candy – a decent sandwhich, to start with, and maybe even a small sit-down restaurant.
Bookstore? again, check – but focused: ‘literary’ fiction supplimented by bestsellers and select genre fiction; biographies, select history & non-fiction titles; ‘coffee table’ books on cinema & things like “The Art of” and “The Making of” specific films; and obviously if someone ever made it into a movie we’ll want to stock that book.
CDs? well sure, soundtracks, natch, but also a larger selection of classical and jazz – even at the expense of other “popular” CDs. The kids will download stuff (legally or not) so we’ll want to focus on music that requires more, hm, experience to appreciate: the thoughtful customer, the one with more money and a willingness to spend some of that money at a place that stocks (and can recommend) music.
And of course, we’ll want to have DVDs and Blu-Ray: imagine, say, 3 times the floorspace of a Big Box Books (5-10 times what a Walmart or Target allots) and instead of inefficient floor bins, try putting most of them (the long backlist) into something much more like bookcases — at least along exterior walls.
Oh, I know why there are these bins that only hold (at most) 300 discs each (on 5sq.ft. footprints) in wide open floorplans: it’s to open up sight lines, so we (retailers) can always see what’s going on, at least nominally to deter theft.
Hate to say it, but it’s not the kids who steal our stuff anymore. Some professionals still do it (though I have to wonder how much they make fencing the stuff? it almost seems like too much trouble to list it on ebay for what folks are willing to pay…). And there might be other ways to deter theft; just because we have always done it one way doesn’t mean we have to continue – or even that it works.
Anyway: an extensive catalogue of discs (music & video, and video in whatever format is currently selling) combined with a decent café, a curated selection of books, a lovely place to hang out in and kill time, and the theater:
Aside from “art-house” films one could do almost-first-run films (skip the brutal opening weekends and just pick up stuff on its way to the dollar cinema, or to DVD) on Saturday nights, or cartoons once a month on weekends if you plan to also have a kids department, or special programming (Marx Brothers or Three Stooges, John Ford Westerns or Ed Wood Shockers, Japanese cinema—or anime, for that matter— Rocky Horror if you don’t mind the clean up, complete filmographies of Woody Allen or Godard or Kurasawa or Bergman or Weimar-Era German Noir or whatever you can think to program (and can get your hands on). [Here’s one easy idea if you can sign up for it.]
And the kicker: setting up author events in-store? Wouldn’t it be great to have a theater for that?
One of the struggles of book retail is getting people to come into the store; that’s why we have the comfy chairs and free wifi and don’t yell at you for not buying that humongous stack of magazines you just read cover to cover and didn’t even put back — oh, we still hate you for it but we smile and ask “find eveything you need?” in a friendly tone [through gritted teeth] as we clean up after your cheap, lazy ass. We need the traffic, as it is difficult to sell anything to folks if they don’t come in at all.
One of the struggles of a theater is that they are really only used for about 20 hours a week — out of 168, approximately 100 of which the theater is technically “open” but not working at anything close to capacity — for much of each day, even a Saturday, the huge house sits all but empty; there are movies playing but only to small handfuls.
So, we combine the two, seeking out the ‘literary’ aspects of a theater and adding in some of the ‘fun hangout’ aspects of the bookstore. We recoup the criminally underused space of the theater lobby to run a cafe and bookstore, we leverage the movie screen to help us sell DVDs and blu-ray discs, we capture the half hour a typical theater-goer will waste waiting for the next showtime and use it to sell books, and maybe we even manage to get in on the dinner-half of profits from folks going out for “dinner and a movie”.
With enough square footage (and a few millions) this idea would scale up into something grand. A truly unique experience. Even in a slightly smaller store, though, it could still be something quite special.
Concept: A movie theater that is also a bookstore
Related: sales of movie soundtracks, DVDs, and other discs
Relevance: People still consume visual media; and some things need to be seen live, in person, “on the big screen” – even in a world with internet streaming and downloads, there is value in the experience. We’re just suggesting a way to combine several, potentially related experiences into that perfect chocolate-and-peanut combo.
Let me sell it to you: well, I tried. Read the rest of this post.
Killer App: Taking a large iced coffee and a hot sandwich into a movie. (Are you kidding me? We’ve been smuggling food in for ages; maybe that says something about the available food?) — also, the bookstore as an Event space, not just a time-killer or occasional shopping trip
Alternate Profit Centers: I don’t know; popcorn, maybe? :)
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“The Last Picture Show” is a 1971 film by Peter Bogdanovich, and a 1966 novel by Larry McMurtry — noted author & also, a bookseller. The name seemed perfect for this concept.
The old book retail model doesn’t quite work anymore, not in a world with online, discounted sales of physical books and instant downloads of e-books. But some of us (myself included) aren’t ready to let go of the ‘bookstore’ quite yet, and there should be some way to make a bookstore work even as book retail [as we used to know it] is significantly marginalized and in large chunks replaced by online analogues and substitutes.
One merely [merely, as if it’s that easy] has to “rethink the box” and come up with a new way to run a bookstore.
What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.
criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra
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Case Study #3: The Reference Desk
The typical North American will change careers at least three times during their career lifespan and will have an average of three to five different jobs within each career change. Depending on the size and scope of your ambitions it may take one to three jobs to reposition yourself. This is not as daunting as it may seem, since the average North American job only lasts 2-3 years. Thus, planning a career transition is an essential life-skill, and requires strategy and planning. [source: some blogger – additional note: “blogger” as a job/job title didn’t even exist 10 years ago]
So we will be (or should be) constantly learning throughout our lives, tooling up for the next job or retooling entirely for a new career – or just brushing up and picking up new skills to help ourselves in our current employment. Once upon a time one would waste invest four years in a decent college education, and that would be enough. Employment wasn’t guaranteed, but provided you actually finished a 4-year degree you could usually get in on the bottom rung of a management ladder and a comfortable middle class lifestyle seemed all but a promise, even a birthright.
I think successive bubbles and outsourcing and technological advancements and loss of manufacturing and what might be termed the New Reality have shown the old model to be a lie. It’s a shame high school guidance counsellors are still feeding this crap to impressionable 16 year olds — “Just go to college, dear, and everything will be allright.”
I call bullshit. For the record, I spent seven years in college — at a major, nationally recognized research university — and I work retail.
I may be grossly over-qualified, and I’m management, and I had my own reasons for wanting to work retail, specifically book retail, but that’s kinda beside the point. After 10 years in books, I’d have to go back to school if I wanted to do anything in any of the fields I studied at university. My education is, sadly, out of date.
The truth we should be telling high school juniors is that their first job out of college will be in a field that hasn’t even been invented yet. While at university, they should study problem solving, as much math as they can stand, a broad slate of other basic sciences (both hard science and social science), and the basics of business and entrepreneurship. Anything more specific than that is going to be on-the-job training anyway.
It’s fine to have a focus, admirable even. A concentrated study in anything is good for you, and looks good on an application. But one should endeavour to learn how to learn, and how to apply your knowledge base and skill set in creative ways to solve problems — that is what will help you best, moving forward. Commit to life-long-learning, never settle, never get too complacent — because even a white collar job that requires a college degree is no guarantee of lifelong employment.
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To that end, and to support it, I’d like to propose a new type of bookstore. I call it “The Reference Desk”.
It will likely look a lot like Powell’s Technical Books — you folks in Portland are so freakin’ lucky it almost makes me sick — but I might do things just a bit differently if I were setting up my own shop.
Concept: life-long learning, job re-education, computer books & test prep & all sorts of hard-to-find or seldom stocked technical books. Related: Text books — but only to a point. This isn’t the college bookstore. If the nearby nursing college wants to use us as an alternate (or primary) bookstore, that’s great: but they need to give us title lists. This annoying habit of just cutting students loose with the advice that the books ‘are available’ from nearby bookstores needs to stop. Now. Relevance: Did my long intro not spell out the relevance of a post-college-collegiate bookstore?
Here, Let me sell it to you:
From my personal experience: about 75% of the customer calls (and occasional in-store request) that end in a “no” or “I’m sorry we can’t order that” are directly related to text books. [Protip: kids, calling the local Big Box Books isn’t how you buy textbooks. We’re not a college bookstore; we stock novels and bios and history and astrology and kid’s picture books – if you want Intro to Polynesian Fertility Rites you’re going to have to buy it on campus, order it online, or plan ahead – because there ain’t no way in hell I’m going to have a copy on the shelf. —and an aside: you think we’re going to be cheaper? Man, I would laugh myself into unconsciousness if I hadn’t heard it a thousand times before. Sure, you need it for class tomorrow; but a lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. Tough cookies, kid; and I hope this little exchange serves as a learning experience.]
However: A customer need that isn’t being filled by Big Box Books is an economic opportunity for the bookstore that can fulfill those needs.
It’s not just students, though: again, my rough estimate is that 75% of folks who come in looking for a computer book just can’t find it in the store — and there are folks looking for electrical & building codes, construction cost estimating, medical reference, project scheduling & management, guidance for setting up and running non-profits, and at least 90 other specialized fields that I haven’t even heard of yet. [except Organic Ostrich Farming – I’ve heard of that one; there is at least one customer looking for that book – if it exists. But I’m sure there are 89 other technical fields that are even further out there and that customer just hasn’t walked through my door yet.]
Alternate Profit Centers:
Used books. Set up a system, say a set sale price (60% of list) with a set buy-back (30% of list) and just keep cycling books through the store. Since customers know that not only do they save 40% off the price of a new book but can expect to get 50% of their money back, dependent on how well they maintain the condition of the book – well, it might just earn our store quite a bit of repeat business. There would need to be very clear guidelines and expectations for customers, along with some real sticklers and hard-asses to work the buy-back desk, but this is something, unique, the sort of thing you just don’t find at other bookstores. As a bookstore owner, you’re looking at much larger initial outlay (you’ll need a separate budget for this, as it will take a while for the system to break even) and the stock will need to be periodically purged (annual clearance sales) but it’s something that could be made to work.
Coffee, and food: I know folks are going to come in and camp out all day and study, or work their way through GMAT and GRE guides one question at a time (on scrap paper, not writing in the books – so they don’t have to buy them) and they’ll meet with friends and study partners and all the rest of that. Fine. I’m even willing to add extra tables & chairs (& outlets, for laptops and phones) and all that is not only not annoying, I’d love for you to come in for 16 hours a day. Even if you don’t buy my coffee or sandwiches, who do you think is earning money off of the vending machines? I could set one up that sold nothing but 20oz bottles of Mountain Dew for a dollar a pop and with this crowd, I’d likely be able to retire in ten years.
That Something Extra: Set up two ‘stores’ — out front, you have your coffee shop, free wifi, laptop friendly floorplan, all of last year’s books on convenient shelves, a Pocket Ref and Occupational Outlook Handbook on every table – multiple used books in the ‘reading room’ available to browse, or buy. But anything brand new, the most current edition, the latest version of the software, whatever is in demand — yeah, that’s going to be in the back. And by “in the back” I mean you’re going to have to pay for it in advance. But as stated: last year’s model is probably already sitting on a table in the reading room. Go ahead, read it. Steal it. You won’t be able to sell it back to me without one of our receipts, and it’s already out of date – still of some use, no doubt, but not something I’m as worried about. All the good books are “in the back”.
Killer App: 25,000 square feet of technical, educational, reference, and computer books — actually, let me make that 30,000 sq.ft., or more — with a place to plug in and plenty of interesting books to hand, and the one brand new computer guide you’re looking for in stock today
This wouldn’t be the easiest bookstore to set up and run, and it might do much better in some communities (Palo Alto, CA; Cambridge, MA) as opposed to others — but if your hometown is a college town, or a capital, or a major hub of whatever sort, especially if you have a strong entrepreneurial base — then I think you can not only make this work, after you’ve been open for a year folks will ask, “Now why didn’t *I* think of this?”
The old book retail model doesn’t quite work anymore, not in a world with online, discounted sales of physical books and instant downloads of e-books. But some of us (myself included) aren’t ready to let go of the ‘bookstore’ quite yet, and there should be some way to make a bookstore work even as book retail [as we used to know it] is significantly marginalized and in large chunks replaced by online analogues and substitutes.
One merely [merely, as if it’s that easy] has to “rethink the box” and come up with a new way to run a bookstore.
What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.
criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra
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Case Study #2: Living Memory
Let me start with an extended aside: the media we sell at retail is different from the sale of “content”.
We often conflate the two, but the sale of books [and also CDs, DVDs, computer games] via retail channels is still not quite the same as the sale of content. Oh, sure, in the 1950s there was no other way to sell content; it was intimately conjoined with the media on which it was recorded. As a result, many [most] [all?] content producers focused on the media-of-delivery, and assumed that the media equalled the message, and poured resources into the production of physical artefacts, as opposed to the production of content. The sale of music, or books, or [eventually] movies as a commodity, rather than a work of art. But that only works for so long as that one technological model applies; when the underlying game changes, the physical artefact that holds the content becomes nothing more than a curiousity, a footnote.
If one merely wants the content of a book [the e-book file, under current models] and one assigns no value to the physical artefact [the “books” I’ve been selling for years] then retail is already dead. This was the primary failure of the record stores — now all but extinct — as we saw almost the entirety of their business move online, both through piracy but more importantly through iTunes and other internet retail channels. No one needs a disc to listen to music.
Past that: retail sales of media competes not just with other goods but with itself — free broadcast and subscription cable TV, radio, and satellite offerings (both TV and Sirius XM), not to mention (but I’m going to mention) streaming video and music over the internet (free and otherwise) — the difference between “retail” and “broadcast” has disappeared. One consumes media like we consume water and air. Yes, we have to pay someone for it, but it is rare that we actually think of the infrastructure that provides our lifeblood; much of our casual, informal, personal consumption of media is done via subscription: we pay the cable bill, and that’s it.
Netflix & Cable are betting on subscription models; Apple, Microsoft, and Sony already own a substantial base of consumers through iTunes, XBox, and PSN, respectively; The Cable Co. (whichever your local happens to be) is itching to expand it’s offerings (with significant hits to your monthly bill) and the last thing any corporation wants is a free and open internet — one that could potentially spit-up the next Napster or YouTube. Yes, it’s all about movies and music now — but how long before even your choice of books is an extension of which bookstore you subscribe to?
Seems unlikely? really? Well, Kindle owners/users only get their “books” from Amazon; they don’t have the choice of other sales outlets. The e-pub format is “open”, but with 75% of the market tied up by Amazon [to date; things will change] how “open” is a format that is intentionally snubbed by the near-monopoly that claims to own the market?
Plenty of blame to go around, but I’m going to mound most of it on Amazon for being a dick. And let me expand on that: Amazon, darling, what do you lose by letting your books be read on other devices, or enabling e-pub support (used by current library systems for e-book lending) on the Kindle?
What, increased sales of Kindles is abhorrent to you? You don’t want the tacit concession of the e-reader market of Kindle as the ‘default’ e-reader device? Is monopolistic control of e-books so important that you shoot yourself in the foot (or the head) in a vain attempt to attain it? Or are you so insecure in your hardware and marketplace that you refuse to open your Kindle ecosystem to even the option of sales of competing units, and of a universe of content, because what, it will make Kindle ownership even more appealing for the vast majority of readers?
Monopolies went out of style in the 1890s (in fact are now illegal) and the current model is to put out a product that is so good imitators and late-comers just can’t compete. You can insist on a MaBell-USSteel-StandardOil model, but it only makes you look bad. Apple is in direct competition with several competitors, in a number of fields, but they don’t resort to dirty tricks – or insist on market dominance. Apple makes billions off of 15% of the market – and constantly looks for new markets to get into, and new technology that invents new markets.
The Kindle will always be an “almost” technology for as long as Amazon insists on direct control.
If nothing else, pirates will release ebooks as pdf files; readable on a kindle – or on anything else.
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Y’all can take that and write your own editorials.
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The point I’d like to make in this much larger debate is: It may eventually be the case that the only reason to buy entertainment on physical media is because you want to own it. Archivists, rights advocates, and fans may be the market of last resort, and the media companies who still want to sell discs (of whatever sort, type, or technology) need to engage them.
Case Study #2: Living Memory
Concept: A used record store, with used DVDs, and on top of that: a bookstore. At least when we open, it would be mostly a new book store, but also rapidly moving toward a used book store model. We all know e-bay and other secondary markets are strong and growing stronger; why not embrace the trend with both arms and a change in focus?
Related: Rare Books. Collectibles. Anything on the secondary market might be of use; we’d scour ebay and pick up anything that makes economic sense. Astoundingly, some customers still can’t be bothered to do their own internet searches and orders, and someone should capture those sales. Relevance: Old. Treasured. Childhood memories, the comfort of the familiar, the joy of rediscovery. Not just old music and used books, but the vast selection of DVD releases that hit shelves in the past 5 years then just as quickly slipped into obscurity. If one is committed to accepting near anything & returning nothing – and populating increasingly growing shelves with the ever-growing backstock — then the only limiting factor is the amount of shelf & floor space one enjoys.
Here, Let me sell it to you: Vinyl records and old DVDs, CDs, and whatever other discs we eventually employ — sure, it could be that there is a new digital version to download and no one wants the actual physical media. But [to pull from my anime roots] say a licensor no longer permits a local-language version of a TV series to be streamed, but which also was previously released on DVD. So long as the physical media exists, there should be a storefront that offers the same for sale.
That Something Extra: Tables full of boxes full of vinyl.
Killer App: The Prisoner on DVD – or [choose your cult favorite] available [on the media of choice]
Alternate Profit Centers: One could try and work this like a bookstore, with a coffee shop and the rest, but it might be easier to go the comic-shop, gamers-nexus, used-CD-Store route. Embrace the media of the last century, and wallow in it.
(yes, this was previously posted in part, but it was hidden at the bottom of the last post so I felt it was worthwhile to re-format and repost it)
The old book retail model doesn’t quite work anymore, not in a world with online, discounted sales of physical books and instant downloads of e-books. But some of us (myself included) aren’t ready to let go of the ‘bookstore’ quite yet, and there should be some way to make a bookstore work even as book retail [as we used to know it] is significantly marginalized and in large chunks replaced by online analogues and substitutes.
One merely [merely, as if it’s that easy] has to “rethink the box” and come up with a new way to run a bookstore.
What we want is The Landmark, Destination Bookstore — like Powell’s City of Books, The Strand, or Shakespeare & Co. — but since that’s not enough anymore, we also need a “hook” — hopefully the hook also involves another revenue stream [20 years ago, adding a café was the “hook”; coffee was enough] but in a post-internet age you have to bring more than that: not just a Bookstore, but a Unique Experience.
criteria: multi-use space, multiple revenue streams, destination shopping, curated collections, weekly events and big-name, newsworthy Capital-Letter-E-Events — along with something extra
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Case Study #1: Books and Brews
Concept: Either a gastropub with books on the walls, or a bookstore that has a pub/restaurant in it instead of (or in addition to) a café Related: Well, whatever type of bookstore you want: Call the bar MI-6 and only stock spy novels – Agatha’s could specialize in cozy mysteries and English pub fare – The Bar at the End of the Universe could be sci-fi themed (with Romulan Ale and Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters) – Straight-up Irish with something like Ulysses’s, or Joyce’s – or maybe even Dodgson’s Pub, with a Lewis Carroll theme Relevance: Folks gotta eat. Folks like to drink.
Here, Let me sell it to you: Actually, it was a conversation I had with a friend/co-worker while we grabbed a quick meal before a Emily Giffin book-launch party, at a local gastropub called TAP [warning, flash site with music] [aside: lovely place] – being book geeks and booksellers, of course the conversation over lunch was about books, and the business – but the venue — and the fact that we were off-site for an author event — also shaped our discussion. Books & Brews as an idea took shape that afternoon. Of course, I’m pretty sure I’m already on record as saying I’d love to open up a bookstore with a bar in it (rather than a café but here is the new thing: a bar, where books are just a ‘theme’ and decorations on the walls, and a handy hook for events: book signings, launch parties? Hey, we’re already a hot spot, just come on in.
That Something Extra: Beer & Liquor
Killer App: Beer & Liquor
Alternate Profit Centers: Well, in this case, any book sales are the alternate — we keep the doors open and make the payroll off of the sales of beer, wine, and food. The “Book” side of the business can be as large as the market allows, or as large as our given storefront — even just putting a bookshelf on any and all available walls would be enough. Ideally, this would be more of a bookstore than a bar — but the reality is that one can make a lot more money off of a restaurant. This isn’t a “corporate” idea and it’s not scalable – but as a single, landmark location: this not only works, I think it would pay for itself in under a year.
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).
