Posted on 08/17/2010 2:01:07 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- Are we about to see bookstores closing across the country? I suspect so.
Look at the depressing proxy battle for what remains of Barnes & Noble Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!bks/quotes/nls/bks (BKS 15.35, +0.29, +1.93%) , the world's largest chain of bookstores. You could hardly dominate an industry more than B&N has dominated the landscape of traditional bookstores. Yet its fortunes have fallen so far that management has hoisted the white flag and put it up for sale.
Barnes & Noble stock, which was flying high above $45 five years ago, has plummeted below $15. Wall Street's view of its prospects is so dim that not even the news of a bid battle has set it alight. The only bright spot: The company's e-book sales, which rocketed 51% last quarter.
(A vignette of a company in decline: Barnes & Noble's annual filing shows that management and staff owns 5.5 million stock options, granted to them in previous years to give them an incentive to work harder and smarter. The options have an average exercise price of $20.19 -- meaning most of them, if not all, are now seemingly worthless.)
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
I hate that books are being overtaken by e-books. I personally like a book in my hand, but my husband loves his kindle. Progress....
I get ALL my fiction at garage sales. Heck I even got my SQL SERVER 2008 book at a garage sale.
I do think the book stores are going to go the way of the CD stores though. And the Video Rental stores.
Mrs. 2ndDivisionVet loves her Kindle, but I’m old school.
As some sage once said "The reading of a book is just the start of a relationship with it."
I hate e books, the wife offered to get me a kindle for my birthday I told her “please don’t”
the reason I like books is because they are portable do not require batteries or powercords and if I like it I can give it to a friend and share it.
What’s killing Barnes and Noble are places like Half-Price Books.
I don’t think its progress: someone else directly controls what is on your e-book. Censorship therefore can be direct and immediate.
I hope not. I love to read, I love to curl up on my bed with my dog with a good, old-fashioned page turner, and when I’m done, I like to pass it on to someone else who will also enjoy.
I spend a lot of time reading on the net during the day, but at some point, I want to turn off the monitor and read old school style.
The writer is taking one chain’s failure as the proof of the end of print.
Ain’t gonna happen. Book sales are doing very well, and people like reading books.
I seem to recall how television was going to destroy movies, too. Fifty years later, I still see these movie theaters around here and there, and the industry is doing quite well—especially since television sets are sources of most of their income these days.
I doubt it (@ the title). I think enough people prefer physical books that bookstores will keep going. Book sales are not like movie rentals where you don’t expect to keep the content (which makes it easier to settle for a more ephemeral delivery mechanism). E-books are for portability, and are, I expect, a parallel market to physical books.
And I own a Kindle.
I won't be going back there again soon. It has only been about 6 years since my last visit.
The checkout system is ridiculous.
The woman with the widest ass ever known to man held up the slowest check out person ever.
Going Cyber, 100 per cent.
I am all done with such archaic transactions as are done at the B&N store.
I recently read a Stuart Woods book on my iPhone with the e-reader from B&N. While it was generally a good experience, I guess I still prefer the tactile effects of the weight of the book and turning the pages. I don’t see me spending the money for a dedicated reader device like the Kindle. My wife and I enjoy making a date out a trip to the bookstore and getting coffee.
I agree. Key components of civilization should not be dependent on raw materials imported from Muslim countries.
I just got a Barnes and Noble eReader (The Nook). That may have been a mistake. Oh well.
“Can’t imagine a world without bookstores”.
...I can imagine a world without smelly, Starbucks swilling hippies hanging out in a stinky, worn out arm chair all day at a Barnes and Noble. I can imagine a world without every display featuring “Dreams of my Father” and “Clinton” staring at me when I walk in. Or the sneer the little filthy clerk gives me when I ask “do you have any copies of ‘Liberty and Tyranny’ by Levin”?
the market is telling you where ppl prefer to get their readings from. If physical books are dying, thats its only the fault of those who support physical books fault. Theres not enough buyers to keep that market growing
Got the iPad, and love reading books with it. At 1.5 lbs I have 50+ movies, 2,200 songs, a couple dozen books, 2,000 pictures and 80 various applications.
What amazed me (and I’m an engin-nerd) is the resolution of E-Ink. It’s utterly amazing how good it looks at 40x and even 400x magnification. Where the iPad is just some pixels, the E Ink looks like a magnification of a printed page.
Given near zero distribution costs, zero freight costs, zero manufacturing costs, zero storage costs, zero shelf-space, zero damage from the elements and the fact that my Amazon account can be created on a number of computers, iPhones, iPads and laptops - with each resource tracking the last page I read - ebooks are going to take over in a very big way.
At the end of the day, the important thing is that we are reading and expanding our minds. Whether paper, E Ink or iPads - the medium is really unimportant.
It is amazing how truly baffled people get at the complexity of those financial transactions.
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