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 ...
It wouldn’t surprise me if there continues to be a mix for a while. There was quite a bit of the same type of talk that Blockbuster and Movie Gallery would put cinemas out of business. Cinemas are still going in one form or another; Blockbuster and Movie Gallery are gone.
Kids go to the library much more than we did...
When they have a used book sale at our library, you can get a shopping bag full for $3.
ML/NJ
Used bookstores are doing OK.
Free Source for mobile device e-books:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device.
MobileReader Devices How-To http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:MobileReader_Devices_How-To
Reminds me of the days when CD’s overtook LP’s and everyone had a great gnashing of teeth over the ‘digital’ sound that was destroying music. What killed music then wasn’t the medium, it was the quality of the product the RIAA put out.
Today, there are those who love paperbacks and hardcovers; and although they may fight it - it’s a losing battle. What microfiche failed to destroy, eBooks will succeed at doing.
What was so hard about the checkout? I was just at B&N a couple hours ago, took all of 30 seconds to check out, zip my member card, zip my debit card, bang we’re done.
I’m a book buyer as well. I have over 2,000 books. then again, I guess I don’t count. I also have over 1000 LPs. I buy new and used, both LPs and books. I love B&N and I’m very sorry to hear this news. I do think new hardcover books are overpriced. If they were $12 out the door, I would buy many more of them.
The market data isn’t nearly as clear as this article is saying. Yes B&N is having trouble, but there’s a lot more to B&N than books, they devote a lot of expensive real estate to magazines, coffee shops, CD and DVD, and they aren’t always price competitive (especially in DVDs). And sure Amazon SAYS e-books are out selling real books, but only within their sales, they aren’t publishing any data on overall sales so we have no idea how the e-book sales compare to the world, and even what they are saying should be taken with a grain of salt since only a couple of weeks ago they said e-books beat hardbacks but not over all books.
Meanwhile the e-book market is heavily fractured, and the “all in one” iPad has had sales slow. And even folks that have the readers still seem to buy books hand over fist. And independent book stores seem to be on the rise.
There will always be some book stores, just as there will always be some libraries. But, the changes will come very fast now.
Libraries - dead. Why cities still build them is crazy
Bookstores - dead
Blockbuster - almost bankrupt
Music stores - dead
Newspapers - dead
Magazines - dead
Some are just hanging on, but they will be pushing up daisies soon.
It’s just progress. Where we are all in trouble is if the federal government starts funding some of these dead entities.
Of course LPs have made a major comeback, because they still do have a deeper richer sound than most CDs. And the e-book data is very questionable.
I’m not sure I buy the argument that Amazon dominates e-books. What Amazon is really good at is running a physical distribution network. If all that is required to get the book is to down load it, why do you need Amazon? You could buy the rights and down load right from the publisher. As far as e-readers go, I don’t think they survive the next generations of smart phones.
Killing the bookstores is a good thing. It is 125,000 hippy/leftist jobs gone. Books will survive, but the hippies will have to find something more productive to do than hiding conservative bestsellers.
The author is viewing the world through their own lens. Amazon is killing retail bookstores, but not because of the Kindle.
1. Amazon is cheaper on new books. Any book you can get at B&N can be found at Amazon cheaper and with free shipping.
2. Amazon has a huge used book inventory (through 3rd party vendors). You can find a used version of just about any book from multiple vendors. It’s pretty common to find used books listed for under $1 plus shippping (about $5 total). I’ve purchased a lot of reference material that would have been out of my price range this way.
This setup has also given them an incredibly wide selection of used books. I’ve purchased several older reference books via Amazon that I literally couldn’t find any place else.
3. Amazon has a large, efficient print-on-demand service. They print their own versions of paperbacks, which eliminates inventory and allows them undercut their competition on prices.
4. Amazon (via CreateSpace) has become a real force in self published books (they also do music CDs and video DVDs).
None of this even takes into account any electronic versions.
I think the only reason LPs have made a come-back is not because of superior sound - it’s because the kiddies are all wannbe ‘rap’ stars and the only way they can do that is spinning the LP back and forth under the needle.
If the LP were truly making a come-back for audiophile reasons, there would be a resurgence in Technics and Nakamichi turn-tables and Crown ruby needles. You would see Pre-Amps making a resurgence with dbx and autocorrelation noise reduction circuitry becoming standard fare. I think you can see in the marketplace that this is not the case.
It’s all about the talent and skillz of spinning vinyl under a cheap saphire, vertically mounted, conical needle that sounds oh-so cool and gets the chickies hot and bothered. Add some gangsta pants halfway down your backside and some platinum Grillz and you are there.
But, what is questionable about the e-book data? Seriously, or the 1’s and 0’s non-standard size?
I'm not really a library user, except occasionally research libraries. But that's because I own my own library now. Part of the way I built that library was by buying the things I used to go to research libraries to look up. Libraries can excite young kids about books too. I'd sooner see us do away with public schools than libraries.
ML/NJ
bttt
you don’t need a killer system to notice the difference in sound quality between LPs and CDs. And the record players you can buy at Bed Bath and Beyond aren’t real good for any kind of rapping, and really the whole scratching thing is very 90s and nobody does that anymore.
What’s questionable about the e-book data is that Amazon give ZERO specifics about their sales and has always been that way. They like to give highlight data, especially when it makes them look good, but we have no specifics, and lacking specifics even the highlight data is suspect. A couple of weeks ago Amazon said their e-book sales passed their hardback sales, now they’re saying their e-book sales have passed all their book sales, but we have no idea what any of those numbers are. We don’t know what their e-book sales are, we don’t know what their physical book sales are, we don’t know how any of that data relates to the market in general, we don’t know if they’re counting all book sales including Amazon marketplace (3rd party via Amazon). In the end we don’t even know if they’re telling the truth.
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