tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35428618.post1816241319799305793..comments2024-01-20T00:59:08.689+00:00Comments on Brave New World: How will shrinking shelf space impact publishing?Martyn Danielshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02134633193540004531noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35428618.post-55729388881637501552013-01-30T20:18:14.771+00:002013-01-30T20:18:14.771+00:00Well let's hope Amazon isn't the only game...Well let's hope Amazon isn't the only game in town. Even in the digital world, there should be room for special marketers who can handle niche books as there was in the physical book world. What's to stop digital African-American Bookstores, digital textbook stores, digital gay/lesbian bookstores, or a host of others?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16467502568345526538noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35428618.post-1421519552428007822013-01-29T23:32:19.847+00:002013-01-29T23:32:19.847+00:00B&N and Borders created their own problems. Wh...B&N and Borders created their own problems. When Amazon was still a tiny company they had the chance to step in and become the big names in online book purchasing. They didn't, because they didn't think "this Internet thing" would take off. The conservative, risk-averse nature of traditional publishing is what is killing them.<br /><br />Book stores won't go away anytime soon, though. Th generation that grew up with print books will still want them.<br /><br />Just as B&N and Borders killed small independent bookstores, so they are being killed by the Internet. There will still be people who want print versions of books, though, and like to be able to get them the same day the urge to read something hits them. Used book stores are filling this gap right now. <br /><br />A really smart new book retailer could find value-added extras that attract customers to their brick-and-mortar location. You won't see nearly as much cash flowing through the brick-and-mortar environment as in the past, but there will still be room for some people to profit from it.<br /><br />Bezos is a very, very smart man who had to fight extremely hard to get his business where it is now. I remember when he first started Amazon, and was basically drop-shipping directly from publishers. He "won" because he worked very hard, took risks, and rethought all the basic assumptions. There are not many brick-and-mortar bookstore owners out there who do all that - most work hard, but don't take many risks and don't rethink their operations from the ground up.<br /><br />This is more of a nightmare for publishers and bookstore owners than it is for readers and writers. Readers can still go to used bookstores, and Amazon provides them with a way to find a much larger variety of books and pay less for them. Writers have realistic opportunities to make money from their writing by self-publishing on Amazon. They can also advertise their books more heavily on their own than publishers ever would for them (unless they are best-seller authors). <br /><br />The real losers here are the publishers and the bookstores, who brought all this upon themselves. I feel bad for the people who work at those places and are losing their jobs, but not for the people at the top who have been making bad decisions for 15 years due to their hardnosed conservative "we have always done it this way" attitude.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com