Watching the below video of Anand Agarawala from BumpTop got me thinking about the arcane ways category managers plan and allot their inventory within bookstore chains. If BumpTop was the interface layer for the catalog at say Indigo Books, the employees at HeadOffice could plan displays, tables, and promotions quickly and intuitively then pass those [...]
For those RSS subscribers out there, Indigo Books has responded to my post about their green policy. Bottom line: they are doing more behind the scenes then they are advertising.
McNally Robinson just closed their Calgary store. Their New York store has been rechristened — McNally Jackson (mcnallyjackson.com).
From their website today…
McNally Robinson is changing its name to McNally Jackson, and we’re launching our new identity with a special party for all of our supporters. Store owner Sarah McNally will be your host for a festive [...]
Audible is doing a huge marketing push on a lot of the podcasts I listen to. They even have Alex and Kevin doing Audible picks over on Diggnation.
I am resisting.
For some reason, maybe it is the idea of signing up at yet another webservice, I have stuck with iTunes.
When Amazon bought Audible, I figured Apple [...]
Borders produced a 25 minute video (release) to support its latest book club pick. They are clearly aiming for some Oprah-level of love at the new Borders website. That is a long vid by web standards but that aside it makes me wonder does anyone trust a retailer to tell them what to buy? If [...]
When a baseball team is in trouble, the manager gets fired. When a magazine is in trouble, the nameplate gets changed. When a retail store is in trouble, the fixtures get moved. The tendency drifts towards the cosmetic and superficial.
Like The Apple Store…But Not
Blockbuster, HMV, and Borders are all trying new “concepts” at the store [...]
Over on the NYRB blog they announced their books were available for preview on Google Book Search. A publisher actually sending readers to GBS? That is pretty cool. I thought so. My bud Rob thought so too.
I was excited. I checked through the list. I saw Moravia’s Contempt and Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories…awesome…both without access.
And [...]
Historic �Blockbuster� Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past
I wandered into the new HMV store on the weekend. I had forgotten they were upgrading it. The one thing that tipped me off — it was smaller. They had closed the lower level. The inventory mix is equal parts music and movies with a smaller (but substantial) video game section. It wouldn’t slow a [...]
When you search for a book on-line that data is captured and funneled to the website inventory manager. When you search for a book in-store (or ask a bookseller — the scandal) that request is lost forever. Until now.
The Indigo Chapters 2008 annual report (PDF) lists a new smart kiosk as one of cornerstones to [...]
Indigo books launched a new boutique green brand at their AGM. The new brand will be called ‘Pistachio’. It will exist inside existing stores (does anyone remember the Indigo-owned Cruikshank’s gardening concept?) and may be spun off as its own storefront — possibly abroad. The store will sell organic paper and other non-book eco-friendly widgets.
Is [...]
Blackwell is buying the Espresso Book machine for its retail locations. An inspired thing to do would be to put the POD device in the shop window rather than the back room.
I was in the Bloor Street BookCity location on the weekend. I was saddened to see they had closed their second floor. The BookCity [...]
Peter Brantley considers what happens to our understanding of ownership, fairuse, and the ISBN when books move to the cloud.
The ISBN problem is particularly interesting. Is the ISBN simply for tracking sales? Or does it have a larger importance as an identifier for an artifact. Perhaps a more granular identifier is needed — an identifier [...]
Merlin Mann summarizes his latest MacBreak Weekly pick over on 43 folders. He offers three ways to get free books on the Kindle.
What got my attention about his pick was Feedbooks. As Merlin describes on the show (but not very well in his post) a Kindle user can download a single file to the device [...]
Joe Wikert asked How Can Sony Compete? on his Kindleville blog yesterday. I tried to post a comment with some suggestions on what Sony could do with their e-reader program. The gremlins in my computer didn’t like what I said. The comment deleted itself. Here are my thoughts…
I think the achilles heel for the Kindle [...]
I was intrigued to see another Canadian entry in the book social networking space. The Quill is reporting the launch of Juicespot.ca. It seems as if the Newmarket-based company Creation Nation has taken the Amazon affiliate API and built out a social networking front-end.
Does the world need another Facebook? Why not build an iLike-type service [...]
As the music industry looks to monetize the live performance and experiential side of band management, I have expressed skepticism that the book publishing industry can do the same. Would you pay $60 bucks to see an author in person? I wouldn’t but then again I am pretty cheap. The good stuff is on [...]
I loved one reaction I heard on The 404 in connection to the just announced download kiosks at Blockbuster stores– “Hey kids, get in the car. We are driving to the internet.”
HMV seemingly also has a sneakernet concept store on the way.
This all makes me think of when I worked at Indigo and we pulled [...]
A retail warrior I know talks all the time about the WOW. He says big box retail is predicated on delivering WOW to each and every customer, each and every time they visit. With no WOW, the casual bookstore customer won’t be convinced to buy when they wouldn’t otherwise. If the casual bookstore customer doesn’t [...]
In its first phase adding “social” elements to book production has failed, but I am liking how round two and round three are shaping up.
Round One — The Wiki Trend. RIP.
Wiki-novels and wiki books are really interesting experiments. They are failed experiments but good ones. Kevin Kelly made the astute observation that maybe, just [...]
Borders is about to discover how expensive video bandwidth is. They have launched Borders TV (bookzone.tv) using the Brightcove service. Embedding isn’t allowed (boo). There are video tips for aspiring writers. Readers can upload reviews of their own (with no embedding? come on). Overall looks pretty good. The interface is good. The offering is decent. [...]
When I saw the For Sale sign in the window at Swipe Books on Richmond Street west, I got worried. Then shortly after that the Sold sticker went up. I started to panic. Then this sign went up
Turns out SWIPE is moving not closing. They are off to 401 Richmond West at the beginning of [...]
Have you ever been at an Indigo or Chapters store and wondered “Is this cheaper on Amazon?” It nearly always is, but now you don’t have to wait until you get home to buy it — do it on the spot with Amazon’s new ordering service via mobile. Oh wait — you need to be [...]
PersonaNonData suggests publishers should be weary of having a single point of contact with their readers. He says…
publishers have hesitated historically to mess with the retail channel and I recall in the early days of the internet there was a lot of discussion about publishers creating channel conflict with existing retailers if the publisher set [...]
This just came over the wire. Greenpeace is looking for publicity. I am giving it to them. It seems a rather random selection of targets. The press release doesn’t elaborate as to why these retailers were chosen. Four of the retailers have stores at Yonge and Dundas, so I am speculating that mere convenience [...]
Inspired by Twitter asking “What are you doing?”
Here is an idea for Indigo Books (and maybe Magnet Mobile Inc.) — setup a “Book Ping Machine”. A consumer can ask “What should I read next?” via sms shortcode, the server would then ping the customer back with a single book recommendation. A new recommendation is delivered [...]
I merchandised the front page of the chapters.indigo.ca website a long time ago. We used to change the story on the front door several times a day. They still do. When I asked my boss why we went to all the effort, especially when most customers were sidelinking in from Google, she responded “we have [...]
No comment on this one –> The 9 Most Annoying People I Always See at the Bookstore
via The Quill Blog
Google’s secondary search feature got some attention in the New York Times. In turn it bubbled up at Techcrunch.
When I first saw this feature, I thought no big deal. Google is trying to keep searchers within their ecosystem for longer. Consumers looking for sites with bad internal search will benefit. You can bypass Canadiantire.ca’s stupid [...]
I was just looking around the inter nets for video of the Lab with Leo. No luck. I really like when Leo blurbs a book that he likes on air. He also has Mr. Excel on the Lab from time to time. That got me thinking — Leo Laporte (or similar G4/Greedy Productions personality) could [...]
Paidcontent is reporting that Overdrive — an ebook reseller — is adding DRM-free audio books.
Overdrive has quietly come to dominate the ebook space. I would have thought that Ingram or Amazon would be out front but that is not true. Now they are adding DRM-free audio books to their portfolio. Not really a surprise. They [...]
Authors love Amazon rankings. Consumers love Amazon recommendations. Both are bunk. How do I know? Because no one — not the smartest minds in mathematics — has figured out how to pattern demand effectively. At Amazon it is all smoke and mirrors. See Chris Anderson’s book The Long Tail for the (lack of) details [...]