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whoelscher

The Man Who Took on Amazon and Saved a Bookstore - Forbes - 0 views

  • double digit sales growth month by month over the last year.
  • Imagine for a moment what it would feel like if people walked into your company and used the lobby to call your competitors and buy their products. That’s standard consumer behavior in a bookstore.
  • To truly compete, he would also have to solve consumer’s expectations for instant gratification and delivery.
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  • Essentially, Jeff installed a printing press to close the inventory gap with Amazon.  The Espresso Book Machine sits in the middle of Harvard Book Store like a hi-tech visitor to an earlier era.
  • can print nearly five million titles including Google Books that are in the public domain, as well as out of print titles. We’re talking beautiful, perfect bound paperbacks indistinguishable from books produced by major publishing houses.
  • can print that book for you in approximately four minutes.
  • get any book delivered the same day by an eco-friendly Metroped “pedal-truck,” or a bicycle, as I like to call them.
  • fanatical attention to customer service
  • Ultimately the bookstore exists to serve a community
whoelscher

In E-Book War, the Independent Publishers Strike Back | mediaIDEAS - 0 views

  • the nine independent publishers who finally took a stand: Abrams Books, Chronicle Books, Grove/Atlantic Inc. Chicago Review Press, Inc, New Directions Publishing Corp., W.W. Norton & Company, Perseus Books Group (where I work), the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, and Workman Publishing.
  • the independent publishers asserted that, “in aggregate, according to market data published by Nielsen BookScan the independents accounted for approximately 49 percent of total trade book sales nationwide in 2011.” A significant portion of those sales were through Amazon, which is why their decision to challenge the settlement and incur the possible wrath of this retailing giant is cou rageous.
  • If the agency model is effectively banned, Amazon will have the ability to price whole categories of e-books below cost in a way that is likely to drive out competition from other less deep-pocketed booksellers as well as brick and mortar booksellers.
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  • By effectively banning the agency model for the settling publishers, the proposed settlements would harm rather than enhance competition–enabling one large retailer (Amazon) to regain a monopoly or near monopoly position through below-cost pricing.
whoelscher

How publishers gave Amazon a stick to beat them with - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

  • A big part of that control stems from Amazon’s ownership of the Kindle, the leading e-book reader, and that books bought for the device have DRM built in. Stross argues that this effectively locks many e-book buyers into the device, since it’s virtually impossible to read Kindle books on other devices
  • Publishers — and some authors, especially those who control the Authors Guild, which has fought every attempt by Google and others to open up the book market — have been so obsessed with piracy and locking down their products that they have allowed Amazon to take control of their fate
  • even if you take advantage of Amazon’s self-publishing options to avoid having to get a traditional publishing deal, you’ve really just exchanged one corporate overlord for another.
whoelscher

How to Survive in the Age of Amazon by Janaka Stucky - 0 views

  • Unless bookstores can not only acknowledge their role as beacons of culture, but really embrace that role and market themselves as such—as long as they try in vain to compete with one of the world’s largest retailers at its own game—they will slowly lose ground as they steadily morph into increasingly bizarre hybrids of book-music stores, bookstore-cafes, and bookstore–tapas restaurants, until they simply become businesses that sell the latest quirky breakout novel on the side to customers who’d rather pay $15 for a sandwich and a cup of coffee than for a book.
  • Here in the Boston area, two bookstores have managed to not only survive but thrive: the Harvard Bookstore (not affiliated with Harvard University) in Cambridge and Brookline Booksmith in Brookline.
  • they also sell a great selection of used titles at lower prices.
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  • robust websites that offer options
  • interesting and revelatory staff selections
  • host over 100 readings a year
  • A well-read staff that can anticipate their customers’ interests are one of the greatest assets any bookstore can have.
  • This is where the almighty in-store event comes into play, and it’s really at the heart of what distinguishes a bookstore from an online retailer, what makes a bookstore a center for culture in its community, unlike a Walgreens.
  • Poetry, the least profitable and most esoteric of all the genres, can save the bookstore.
whoelscher

Author Websites, Branding And CopyWriting With James Chartrand From Men With Pens | The... - 0 views

  • Brilliant website design and why it’s so important for authors. James mentions some of her favorite authors who have ugly and terrible websites. BUT if the author is established, it doesn’t matter. New authors don’t have this luxury. We have to stand out in the market. We have competition. The author website is a way to connect. It’s critical to make a good impression and a personal connection. You can only do this through your web presence and social media. Bring them back to reading your work, so they will read your books, enjoy them and tell their friends. Chris Guillebeau, author of the recent $100 Startup tells how it was easy for him to get a book deal as he had an established platform online. Read more in James’ guest article - Is your website hurting your writing?
  • A bad choice of colors can kill first impressions.
  • A mystery might be greys and blacks, whereas a go-getting kickass non-fiction book might be red and modern white.
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  • The book can’t sell itself.
whoelscher

Melville House Books » Amazon's earnings fall hugely … again … Will investors... - 0 views

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    Amazon's earnings fall hugely … again … Will investors rebel?
whoelscher

eBook lending: Libraries go digital - CNN.com - 0 views

  • EBooks accounted for 6.4% of all publishing in 2010, according to the American Association of Publishers, and 114 million electronic books were sold last year.
  • EBook lending is growing at a fast pace at the New York Public Library. The number of downloads of electronic books on the library's website grew by 81% in the last 12 months
  • why would someone pay for an eBook if they can download it free from a library's website?
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  • Several publishing companies were contacted for this story but none returned messages seeking comment.
  • libraries make up 10% of all book sales in the United States each year
  • Libraries across the country recently developed the ability to make their eBook downloads compatible with the Kindle, Amazon.com's eReader.
  • She worries that libraries will lose their place in society as borrowing eBooks grows in popularity. "I think it will be sad. I mean there's just something about smelling the books and the whole experience," Salzano said. "It's like a feeling of calm and peace and you don't really get that anymore. You can't just sit and read a book."
  • there are commercial bookstores; more than 16,000.
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