Like The Apple Store…But Not

Blockbuster, HMV, and Borders are all trying new “concepts” at the store level. The HMV concept store is underwhelming. The Borders store is missing that je ne sais quoi. It is like they are trying to Apple-ify their footprints — as if removing fixtures will make consumers magically appear in their place.

For the record, the-Apple-store-as-the-new-information-commons is fine by me. And I don’t blame these retailers for trying, but it seems misguided. Change the way your store works, not merely how it looks.

Book Retailers — Amazon is Making You Look Old

In the past, an improved store experience was an excellent proxy for improving the customer experience. But not so much anymore. Being a good retailer these days has more to do with relevance than it does with ambiance. Being relevant to customers means removing barriers, not adding new ones. Amazon has removed a ton of barriers in book retail. That has made Borders and B&N seem puffy. The bloat is going to become even more obvious as books are digitized.

Get a Clue. How Many Times Does it Need to Be Said?

So how do you make big book stores more relevant? The web provides the greatest tool in history to connect with customers. Why not use that?

I am not just talking social media. To become more personal you need to become more porous and more transparent — all that stuff from the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Experiment with Tech Books: Nothing to Lose

Let me use the present state of the computer book section at Indigo Books as an example.

Computer book sales have been in decline since the millennium.
In response Indigo first sold off swaths of shelving space as merchandising space. Publishers were able to buy rights to whole sections month-by-month.
That didn’t work.

They introduced new products — software and games mostly — while also rejigging the taxonomy in-store.
That didn’t work.

Now talk is the they will shutdown the department entirely then launch a lighter digital lifestyle concept, similar to — you guessed it — the Apple store. A physical space as digital signifié seems to miss the point. They should stop competing with the internet and instead use retail judo to make the internet’s strengths work for the stores.

To Reinvent Tech Books at Retail, Open the Kimono at Retail

• Crowd source category management — there is a whole lot more to know about technology and tech books than one person can possibly know. The incumbent buyer should tap the wisdom in the community.
• Open up inventory management — what books, in what stores, in what quantity is just a guess. By adding community feedback you could improve your replenishment algorithm and better your allocations.
• Shopping needn’t be boring — use audio and video to educate, entertain, and build a customer base. The tech book buyer should do why-to-buy videos.
• Leverage your people — Go beyond making lists on Community. The tech book buyer should actively network (fb, twitter, blog, etc.) with tech book authors and readers. Make your employees brand ambassadors.

In short, connect with people. Skip the reno.

photo credit: Tony Ding, AP
photo credit: Jordan and Lee

PW pointed to my boy Glen Greenwald last week. His post is poorly constructed, but the above YouTube video makes a strong enough impression on its own.

Esquire magazine is reminding us on September’s cover that the “21st Century Begins Now“.

Uh. “All the news that is fit to print” and “irony is dead” had there day, but Esquire is into Sunset Boulevard territory with this one.

Here is to hoping they don’t kill their margin so bad that they have to go under.

Next up, paperbacks that convert to flashflights.

Thanks Brad.

“During the war, they cut out all the pacifist parts of the film—the High Lama talking about peace in the world. All that was cut because they were trying to inspire those G.I.’s to get out there and go ‘bang! bang! bang!’ which sort of ruined the film.”

youtube via kottke

Grawlix — that string of typographic symbols that substitute for swearing in cartoons.

Qualia — properties of sensory experiences. “I see red!” or “I see @#$%&? red!”

Michelle Shepard published an account of the Omar Khadr case in May called Guantanamo’s Child. Judging by the covers of the major newspapers yesterday, the timing couldn’t have been better. Michelle has tirelessly followed Khadr’s plight. The book is very good. But the story is hardly over.

Peter Brantley noted yesterday that publishers are missing the boat by not developing new content channels. We are happy to sit on our hands and let others do it for us.

Seeing the Khadr story still unfolding, I see yet another example of a publisher sitting on its hands. It would hardly be revolutionary to send readers of the book updates as events occurred via a blog or syndication of Shepard’s newspaper articles. That is just not going to happen. Why? Shepard works for a newspaper not for the publisher. The book — and its success — is caught between the two.

Similarly, Jeremy Scahill wrote an expose of Blackwater in Februrary 2007. Nation Books created a website with a blog included. When the book tour ended the blog went dark. Now Scahill is back with an 2nd edition. What happened to this story in the last year and a half? I am certainly not going to buy the book again to find out, but perhaps I would have, had the publisher kept me engaged on the blog.

In neither of these cases does the publisher have to hire a software developer to build an iPhone app, they simply have to see beyond the product and put the reader first.

1. It is different this time — just because the Rocket ereader didn’t take off doesn’t mean you can keep your head in the sand
2. Print is not dead — the book won’t change, but the industry sure will
3. The price of the printed book can’t be the same as the ebook
4. The current industry supply chain cannot be sustained — future combined print/digital revenues won’t support it
5. Pirates and filesharers are not the same people. Don’t sue the readers.
6. Give up hope re: DRM — Copy protection didn’t work in music, tv, and movies — it is not going to save us.
7. Change is geometric — when the crisis comes it comes suddenly. We can’t control how/when the industry will flip, but we can prepare for it.
8. Open standards pay off. Closed ecosystems stunt growth. Proprietary formats strangle it.
9. Non-traditional filters and gatekeepers are allies not enemies.
10. The internet isn’t a printing press. You can’t publish to the net and forget.

Then everything mattered and I mean everything. I thought that title meme was dead until today. I saw the review for a new book subtitled Why Men Matter. Really? The trend has been towards the more obvious. Can we stop this?

Now Gwen Dawson over at the Literary License blog identifies a new meme I wasn’t aware of and it is already out of control. I can’t wait for five more years of daughter books — My Mom’s Daughter has to be coming soon.

photocredit

“The fact that the box office has held up as well as it has, even in the face of tough comparisons, may indicate that going to the movies is still considered by the public to be a relatively inexpensive leisure activity,” Fox co-topper Tom Rothman says.

The business is saved because the economy is hurting. So the sky isn’t falling? Hooray!

If people are staying home, shouldn’t the book business see a similar bump? More likely, simply better movies were released this summer (I am blocking Indy 4 from my memory) … and Batman opens on Friday. Can’t wait.

The doubt creeps in. Then the fear. You turn things over and over in your head. Maybe digital is the answer. But where do you start?

Does this sound familiar? There is a lot of talk these days of the publishing business becoming hit driven obessed. That means little attention to developing new talent. That means jettisoning old talent arbitrarily. That means becoming like the movie and music industries. Is it true? Could it be? And if you are an author on the bubble what do you do?

I recently talked with an author — formerly with Random House — about where the opportunity was in digital. An outline of what I told him is below. I am wondering if you were asked about making money in electronic publishing, what you would say? Or not say? Let me know in the comments if I am on target.

• Internet marketing is easy but internet commerce is hard. Digital commerce simply won’t bring in enough money to cover the revenue lost by declining print sales. This isn’t a bad thing. It will simply be an adjustment for the industry. The digital business needs to mature a little more before publishers can rely on consistent returns.
• I don’t know of any author making heaps of money on the internet right now. Stephen King hasn’t seen a windfall from his digital experiments. And the most dedicated and networked authors still aren’t able to quit their day jobs. If you are hoping to see a significant amount of money from your internet efforts, it is probably still too early.
• Things are changing pretty fast. What is hard today is easy tomorrow. I am bound to have a different opinion in six months.

There are three ways to look at digital as an opportunity…

1. If you just want to write & be read and you don’t care (so much) about a pay cheque then the internet is a boon. There are a couple of previously unpublished authors that are doing amazing things with the internet. One guy named Scott Sigler and another named Tee Morris — incidentally both are horror/sci-fi authors — have built up large followings independently using webtools. They have pioneered what are called podiobooks — where the author does a voice recording of a unreleased novel and releases a chapter or two at a time. The audio files are typically recorded on the cheap and offered to fans for free. You can find them on iTunes. Similarly in print, sample chapters — and sometimes whole works — are given away by authors. This helps overcome obscurity but it doesn’t necessarily help your wallet. Once a large enough fanbase is established these authors, likely, will land a contract with a publishing house or they will be able to profit from selling self-published print editions directly to fans or selling self-published digital editions through Amazon.com or sites like mobipocket.com. For now, as far as I know, authors like this aren’t making a living from it. Also see the example of Cory Doctorow. Cory built up a fan base by blogging and being a general internet gadfly. He gives away his novels and has now been signed by Holtzbrinck for his latest YA book — LittleBrother.
2. If writing is your livilhood and/or you feel you should at all times be paid for your work then the options aren’t as exciting or as numerous. The number of online magazines publishing fiction are few. The ones willing to pay well are fewer. Success getting paid depends heavily on the genre you work with. Online publishers may take on your work on a revenue sharing basis — meaning they serve ads around your story and they give you a percentage of that money. You would need to approach magazines independently and work out terms. I don’t know of any that serialize whole novels. Alternately you could simply submit your novel directly to an ebook distributor. Or you could record an audio version of your book and sell it exclusively through iTunes. Both iTunes and Amazon allow for independent authors to submit digtal files to sell. Amazon even offers authors better terms than they would get through a publisher. On the down side the submission process can often take a long time and it is hard to drive awareness. Lastly, you can also approach companies like Lulu.com, iUniverse, or Trafford publishing to do a short run of printed books. Of this bunch I find Lulu the most attractive because you set the terms. You get to choose how much the book is going to sell for and they only print a copy after you have sold it — so your risk is minimal. See this example by 37signals.
3. If writing is your passion and you don’t want to give it away — and you can also wait awhile to profit from it — then you may want to consider simply marketing yourself more aggressively online. Sure websites are great, but there is a whole lot more you could be doing to let people now who you are and what you are about. This is known as conversational marketing. It is the equivalent of talking to strangers for fun. The idea is that you put yourself out there instead of your work. This can take many shapes and it has many flavours but it also takes up a lot of time. With this option, for every one hour you spend writing, I would recommend you spend an hour managing your reputation online. That isn’t for everyone but it is a worthwhile third-way. The market can change and the once hard-to-publish novel can become fashionable in time. When that happens you will hopefully have a large ‘following’ on the internet. That following will make it easier to sell books and that will make your project more attractive to the publisher.

These are the only three approaches but, in summary, it comes down to what your expectations are. If you are free and easy with your time and content then amazing things can happen. If you want to follow a more traditional model in the digital space, that opportunity is there. If you want to play wait-and-see but still get your feet wet, you can do that too.

Images 1, 2, 3, 4

Andrew Keen is similarly lost in the weeds of his own biases. He is quoted in the Bookseller as saying “When you take away the gatekeepers everything becomes crap. Writers don’t get rich and famous on their own.”

Right. So the point of being a writer is to become rich and famous? Is that really self-evident?

And who is taking the gatekeepers away? Gatekeepers are here to stay. In fact they are multiplying. Why do gatekeepers need to be attached to large warehousing operations? What is important in Keen’s world, seemingly, is not how smart you are, it is the size of the company you work for.

I do agree with him that there is a tyranny of free. That pendulum will swing back in time, but the idea that books should remain the same price forever is ridiculous. I will pay for your good taste, but I won’t pay to keep the lights on in your dusty, inefficent, forgotten supply chain. Digital copies will make you less revenue. Publishers better start coming to terms with that.

Incidentally, who wants to be rich and famous anymore? Everyone is famous. Money, vexingly, remains unevenly distributed.

The 75 words that appear most often are in the included image.

I was excited. I checked through the list. I saw Moravia’s Contempt and Mavis Gallant’s Paris Stories…awesome…both without access.

And … fail. So close.

In related news the London Review of Books Store is still open. It turns five this year.

1. Add more titles
2. Sell more copies of existing authors and titles
3. Increase output per author
4. Diversify the offering
5. Cut costs

The best bit is on traditional houses losing their advantage…

Once digital distribution and print-on-demand technology enter the mainstream. When that happens, publishers will lose their greatest competitive advantage: the ability to distribute books widely and effectively. Those who publish generic books for expedient purposes will face new competitors. Like the music companies, some of those publishers may shrink or die.

In a corner of the upper floor, I found six iMacs and three big screen tvs — one each for the major game consoles. These were available for public use. The ‘lounge’ itself was done up with new branding. The iMacs offered 15 or so websites to browse in a locked down state. The ads on these sites had been stripped out. An HMV-browser bar had been added to the page.

Sorry. No screen shots or photos.

The concept was clean bright and shiny (a la the iTunes store) but at the end of the day it was underwhelming. This is nothing risky on HMV’s part. That is fine. Do what you do best. Don’t try to be something you are not. But it presages the changes due for big-box book retail. It is an island. The tide is encroaching from all sides. You can be the best retailer in the space — but in the long term there is no escape. There is simply too much square footage out there.

Here is a link to the Telegraph’s coverage of the UK announcement.

To that legal point, I was recently chatting in Seattle with a guy who runs the largest collection of server farms in North America outside of Google–he actually owns many of the facilities that Amazon’s EC2 service and Microsoft’s cloud computing initiatives are running on. Like everyone in that business these days, he’s all about finding cheaper electricity. But although his facilities are all in the Pacific Northwest, using clean and relatively cheap hydro power, he hasn’t crossed the border into Canada, where the hydro power is even more plentiful.

Why not? Because of political instability. Canada’s governments shift from right to left too often, he said, and the threat of regional secession was too real to risk putting multi-hundred-million-dollar data facilities there–between changes in the laws to even the slight risk of nationalization should the wrong person be elected, he thought Canada’s political liabilities outweighed its energy assets. Surprised? I was.

Ha. I hope this guy tells everybody we only have salt water in our lakes.