Good article today in Melville House’s Moby LIves blog. Here’s part of it:
The other half of my contention is that one reason it’s gotten this way is that reporting on the industry has tended to follow trends at the cost of reporting reality.
Thus, as I pointed out in a MobyLives post a few months ago, the demise of Borders was treated as a trend story, the trend being that ebooks are cooler than print books and people were thus losing interest in print books, instead of a business story, whereby Borders had simply been badly managed and all signs were actually not that people didn’t want print books anymore, but simply that giant corporations didn’t want to sell them anymore.
Now, another case in point — as a New York Times report put it:
Bookstore owners everywhere have a lurking suspicion: that the customers who type into their smartphones while browsing in the store, and then leave, are planning to buy the books online later — probably at a steep discount from the bookstores’ archrival, Amazon.com.
Now a survey has confirmed that the practice, known among booksellers as showrooming, is not a figment of their imaginations. According to the survey, conducted in October by the Codex Group, a book market research and consulting company, 24 percent of people who said they had bought books from an online retailer in the last month also said they had seen the book in a brick-and-mortar bookstore first.
Thirty-nine percent of people who bought books from Amazon in the same period said they had looked at the book in a bookstore before buying it from Amazon, the survey said.
It was just one of many reports on the survey. But in going for the sexy trend story (Amazon is killing old-fashioned brick-and-mortar bookstores) every one of those reports missed something important, not to mention fascinating — and not to mention something that must be alarming to Amazon: For 39 percent of Amazon’s polled, a bookstore is still a crucial part of their book-buying experience.
Think about it: Almost 40 percent of Amazon’s customers, according to this poll, have added a complicated step (the time-consuming and not-without-expense process of going to a bookstore) to the simplicity of Amazon’s buying process. Maybe it’s because they don’t want a book with a dinger on it, or they want to see the quality of the paper or art reproduction. Maybe they want to ask a clerk about it. Maybe they want to be sure they don’t get stuck with another print-on-demand copy that looks like a piece of shit when it arrives. Maybe it’s because “Look Inside the Book” just isn’t the same as flipping through a real book. Whatever. Almost 40 percent of Amazon’s book-buying customers have rejected something fundamental to Amazon, which is the concept of buying something sight unseen. And indeed, according to this poll 40 percent of Amazon’s business thus relies on brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Which begs the further observation: What happens if the geniuses at Amazon puts all those bookstores out of business?
“Which begs the further observation: What happens if the geniuses at Amazon puts all those bookstores out of business?’
Sorry, it is the idiots that ran Borders and are running Barnes and Noble that put one out of business and are strongly pushing the other that way.
I love the BN stores (as i did the Borders ones too) and I always pay my way there with a coffee and a cookie or a pretzel for my son and I have a Nook color from last fall which i utterly love and use very extensively, but as i buy most books digitally with some print online, I never use the BN online store for either as it is just an utter disaster. In so many ways that would take pages of ranting to do it, especially once you see Amazon or Kobo and various independents (like Smashwords, Baen, Weightless Books) that i use as my first choice in e-buying with Amazon as the backup…
Readers aren’t going to bookstores because they like bookstores; they’re going to bookstores because the bookstores effectively offer free samples of the book.
“something that must be alarming to Amazon: For 39 percent of Amazon’s polled, a bookstore is still a crucial part of their book-buying experience.”
I suggest to Mr that the reality is the complete opposite of his assertion. I believe that it is astonishing that in late 2012, only a couple of years since the eBook started to really gain traction, only 39 percent of Amazon’s customers use bricks and mortar shops as part of their book buying process. Astonishing.
After all bricks and mortar shops are everywhere. Everyone bumps in to them almost every day. It is hardly surprising that people use them as part of their buying process.
“Almost 40 percent of Amazon’s book-buying customers have rejected something fundamental to Amazon, which is the concept of buying something sight unseen.”
Which is totally inaccurate. Amazon offers extensive previews.
I think Amazon will be quietly delighted by the NYT report.
We used to visit B&N about once a week, usually after a dinner out, and our local indie bookstore, The Tattered Cover, a few times a year as a special family outing. No longer.
Now we visit B&N maybe once a month and only pick up a gift book for a non-Kindle reader or a couple of magazines. I haven’t been to The Tattered Cover since I got my Kindle.
Even before I got my Kindle, I would text myself book titles I was interested in, then buy them from the Amazon Marketplace where they are usually far cheaper than Amazon itself. I got most of my paperbacks from the grocery store.
I have no trouble finding new books online. There are Amazon recommendations, many book blogs, and ereaderiq.com.
I have so many ebooks that I don’t have to buy another book as long as I live. I never buy mainstream Big 6 ebooks, unless they’re in an Amazon sale or offered for free. There are plenty of high-quality indie books or free books.
Bookstores should confiscate smart phones at the door.
“Bookstores should confiscate smart phones at the door.”
I can see that as being a popular customer service move. It’ll certainly make lines at the checkout much shorter.
“Bookstores should confiscate smart phones at the door.”
Great idea ! That’ll kill them off within a year and we can move on with the transition to the great new medium.
“…a complicated step (the time-consuming and not-without-expense process of going to a bookstore)” Complicated? Really? Time-consuming? Oh yes, people avoid bookstores because they’re so time-consuming. The expensive process of actually going to a bookstore? In most urban areas, bookstores are a common part of the scene. If you’re already there to do some shopping, or because you work there, the expense is less than negligible. If you prefer print books, the expense is irrelevant. The idea that going to a bookstore is complicated, time-consuming or expensive is just plain ludicrous. Amazon’s share will keep increasing, but I doubt those reasons have anything to do with it.
Shows how far behind the times bookstores are when they’ve only recently discovered the decades-old phenomenon of “showrooming.” And obviously it hasn’t occurred to them to do what other businesses–all other businesses–know to do about showroomers, which is to engage them with savvy salespeople and make the sale now, before they can leave.
Personally, I stopped going to bookstores a long time ago; they never had the books I was looking for.
Price beats savvy salespeople. Unless they can offer their visitors 40% off.
Not always. A good salesperson will leave a customer willing to pay more, because they believe they got their money’s worth, or got an additional deal by buying there. If a store can’t accomplish that, they might as well go out of business.
People visiting B&M retailers to test-drive/comparison shop before buying online isn’t unique to books, print or e-books.
http://www.marketsqueeze.com/2011/09/13/best-buy-is-amazons-showroom/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/retailwire/2011/07/14/retailers-fear-becoming-amazons-showroom/
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-24/tech/30057456_1_wal-mart-amazon-big-box-retailer
Call it showrooming, call it comparison shopping… People have been doing it since the last century. And not just for books.
It is just savvy consumer practice.
Excellent post Felix. I have been going to PCWorld and many other retailers for years to check the look and ‘feel’ of products before ordering online.
The world is changing and it’s momentum is unstoppable. Bricks and Mortar stores need to find other ways of persuading shoppers to buy from them. If they cannot compete on price then they must compete on different grounds. There are many routes to the heart of a shopper. Price is but one of them.
It all boils down to added value.
The business model for way too many retailers is “stock it and they will come”. For some products it is still true. But the list is ever shrinking.
As time moves on, old businesses change or die and new businesses arise to serve new demand.
Check this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_retailers_of_the_United_States
For all the angst over bookstore closings, there is nothing unique about their plight; they are merely the latest retail segment to hit the wall. Times change and consumer needs and desires change too.
Would-be survivors need to start by acknowledging that consumers are in charge. After that, they need to identify what consumers want that they can offer. If they can’t answer that question, their name just might end up on that wikipedia page in the near future.