Bookmobile 2.0

Welcome to the all new Digital Bookmobile, the world's first bookmobile without books. This 18 wheeler is 69 feet long and packed with the latest digital technologies. It was created by Over Drive to be used as an outreach tool for public libraries to promote their digital offerings.

How it works:

"The Digital Bookmobile, developed inside a high-tech tractor-trailer, will present programs that promote the host library’s download digital media catalog and ‘virtual branch’ website. The vehicle is customized for each library event and equipped with broadband Internet-connected PCs, high definition monitors, premium sound systems, and a variety of portable media players. Hands-on learning stations demonstrate how to search the digital media catalog, use supported mobile devices, and download and enjoy eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video from the library."

It kicks off it's national tour August 10th at the main branch of the New York Public Library. Current tour schedule here.


Thanks to LIS for the lead

Barnes & Noble Not Giving Up on Rare and Out-of- Print Books

When Barnes & Noble decided to close their Chelsea store in New York City many thought that the small rare- and out-of-print-book department that was housed at that location for the last 8 years would disappear too.

Instead the company decided to not only relocate the department to a larger store on Broadway and 66th Street but is also "spending a significant sum on the department, installing custom display cases with locked glass doors" and moving it to a more prominent location on the second floor of the store.

Although they are claiming that there are no plans to "replicate the effort in other stores" and are calling it the pet project of Karen Catalanotti, who set up the department in the Chelsea store, there exists a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on this growing market.

One can imagine in the not to distant future a Barnes & Noble Rare Book command center which would house seasoned booksellers and an extensive reference library and uses the latest technology to communicate with their various stores and booksellers on the front lines.

Picture this: Someone walks into a Barnes & Noble in Des Moines, Iowa with a box of books for sale. The trained used bookseller on staff deals with the general out of print material using a comprehensive internal database and if there is an item that might warrant further work they simply image or video it and send it off to the command center. A short time later the command center responds with either further bibliographic questions or a fair offer price.

For one, the profit margins are significantly higher than new books but more importantly it bolsters the role of the bookstore in the community and brings the company closer to being the full service bookstore they aspire to.

The future is near!

Celia McGee's piece, Rare Indeed: A Chain Committed to Selling Out-of-Print Books, in the New York Times

Another online book...

...I like a lot, this time a children's picture book. Christoph Niemann's The Boy's and the Subway is his charming account of his sons' love affair with NYC transit. Nicely captured.

Power Moby Dick

I really like this elegantly annotated online version of Moby Dick. Simple and well-designed.

Book Umbrella

For a mere $7 you can enhance your beach reading experience with The BookShade from Neat-O Concepts. Simply attach to the spine and The BookShade eliminates eye strain and sun glare. It works for both hardbacks and paperbacks and can be rotated into any desired position.
Is the Kindle version far behind?

Available here

Via

Zoomii : A Virtual, Virtual "Bookstore"

When Amazon.com burst on to the scene as the world's first virtual bookstore who knew that it would eventually turn an entire industry upside down. Overnight, practically every book in print was made available at discounted prices to anyone with computer access. It wasn't long before the traditional independent new bookstore began to die.

Now comes Zoomii "an online version of a real bookstore with Amazon's low prices, secure payment and fast shipping." Zoomii takes Amazon's entire catalog and turns it into a visual browsing trip. Essentially an Amazon affiliate, with all order processing done by Amazon, that utilizes Amazon's powerful Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) Zoomii is banking on the armies of readers and book buyers who do judge a book by its cover.

While it feels a little gimmicky, and their claim of being "an online version of a real bookstore" is a bit of an oxymoron, I can see potential crossover application to the antiquarian market. I can imagine a bookseller using the technology to create a visual online representation of a catalog or to highlight particular sections of their shop.

Here is a two minute video of how it works:




Thanks to ReadWriteWeb for the lead

An Interview With AbeBooks CEO, Dr. Hannes Blum

AbeBooks.com is one of the world's leading marketplaces for new, used, rare, and out of print books with over 13,000 vendors offering over 110 million books. I recently had a chance to interview their CEO, Dr. Hannes Blum. An edited version of the interview will appear in the July issue of Amphora.

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Book Patrol - Firstly, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule, it is appreciated.

AbeBooks recently announced its acquisition of Chrislands, a website provider for online booksellers. This comes on the heels of AbeBooks previous acquisitions of Fillz and BookFinder.

The earlier acquisitions of Fillz and BookFinder seemed to complement Abebooks in some way, at least on the periphery, whether it is the fulfillment and date routing that Fillz provides to booksellers or the book search functionality offered by the meta searching of BookFinder but Chrislands on the other hand seems to be in direct competition to the AbeBooks model as book aggregator.

It would seem that one of the greatest threats facing AbeBooks would be in the booksellers building of their own websites. Coupled with Google's dominance in the search arena and Amazon's far reach and you potentially have a situation where the user will eventually bypass the traditional 3rd party books sites like AbeBooks, Alibris and Biblio.

What is the overall acquisition strategy for AbeBooks and how do these recent acquisitions fit?

Hannes Blum – A couple of points here.... We expand AbeBooks in two ways – organically such as by setting up new sites like the recently-launched www.abebooks.it and by purchasing companies. When we decide to purchase a company, we look for firms that are successful, have potential to grow and are all about books.

Booksellers realize that they have to offer books for sale through as many different ‘channels’ as possible. Before the internet, that meant auctions, book fairs and catalogs as well as bricks and mortar bookstores. Today, the same rule applies and we accept that sellers are going to sell through other online marketplaces and also develop their own retail websites. We understand this and accept this. This is a part of the online bookselling world that we want to be involved with – Chrislands already does a great job and has fantastic potential. We’re not straying away from online bookselling but simply making sure we have a strong presence in another developing area of internet bookselling. We are prepared to diversify but we stay loyal to books. Chrislands complements AbeBooks very nicely – just like Fillz and BookFinder.com do. Each business gives us some influence in another part of online bookselling.

BP -Does the acquisition of Chrislands signify a change of course for AbeBooks?

HB – No. The Chrislands acquisition can be compared to our purchase of BookFinder.com in 2005. Both BookFinder.com and Chrislands have different business models to AbeBooks but they’re still essentially all about online bookselling.

BP - In addition to these acquisitions AbeBooks also has a minority stake in the leading book social networking site, LibraryThing.

-Are there any future plans to incorporate more of LibraryThing’s functionality with AbeBooks?

HB – Not at the moment but we could do more with LibraryThing in the future. We already have the BookHints recommendation system which is based upon the libraries of LibraryThing.com members. At a very basic level, we are constantly learning from Tim Spalding at LibraryThing. Tim’s site leads the way in social networking for book people.

BP - AbeBooks recently announced some changes to their pricing structure by extending the 8% commission on books sold to include shipping charges. These changes, much like the decision a couple of years to partner with Chase and bring the credit card processing in house, has met with much resistance in the bookselling community.

The credit card processing initiative left many booksellers up in arms and resulted in a one week boycott of AbeBooks by members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABAA). At the time, most booksellers were paying 3.5% or less for their credit card processing fee and where now told that AbeBooks will be taking care of all the credit card transactions and charging them a whopping 5.5% fee for the transaction.

-Why didn’t Abebooks simply raise the commission rate from 8 to 13%, inline with other online book aggregators, and leave the credit card processing fees out of it?

HB – You are referring to a change made in 2006. At the time, the ‘boycott’ was limited to a small number of sellers and had no impact on our business. In April 2006, AbeBooks began processing Visa and MasterCard transactions on behalf of its booksellers.
This decision was taken for several reasons. Mainly, we wanted to take control of credit card processing in order to better tackle online fraud. This was the first step in an on-going process. Today, we have to undertake stricter than ever measures against online fraud because of PCI (Payment Card Industry) requirements and the sheer volume of transactions that go through our sites. Since making those changes in 2006, we have invested millions in new PCI-compliant hardware and a new state-of-the-art data storage facility in Calgary, Alberta. The revenues from credit card processing fees are being used to good effect to protect buyers and sellers, and to ensure AbeBooks remains secure and robust.

BP - The recent announcement of extending the 8% commission on sales to include the shipping charge has met with equal opposition. The Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) issued an open letter addressed to you citing their concerns that this new fee structure will unduly affect their international member booksellers who frequently ship books to the United States . On the other hand, and more importantly, the new fee structure also seems aimed at the mega-sellers or penny sellers who are selling books that are less expensive than the actual shipping charges and who are using the shipping charges as a profit center.

-Why not apply the new fee structure only to those sellers? There are an infinite variety of booksellers on AbeBooks and to place a blanket pricing structure on all of Abebooks vendors seems to stir up controversy at every turn.

HB – We decided to apply commission to shipping charges for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to increase our revenue because we are being affected by higher operating costs. Increasing costs of hardware and in online marketing, and also the strength of the Canadian dollar combined with the weakness of the American dollar have all had an impact.

Secondly, our customers are unhappy when they find an apparently cheap book but then discover it has a very high shipping fee. This practice is not confined to any single type of seller but a number of booksellers across the board. We want to encourage sellers to lower their shipping fees because high shipping fees are unpopular with buyers.

I think we remain a very competitive online marketplace for books. Importantly, we offer flexibility in that sellers can set their own shipping fees, we offer a very high level of customer support to our booksellers, including 1 800 telephone support, and – very importantly – we offer access to international customers because we have a single database serving six different sites for North America, the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spanish speakers.

Whenever we make a change at AbeBooks there is a reaction from our booksellers. A small number are very vocal. We have been very clear about why these recent changes have been made and answered countless questions from booksellers. We have staged online roundtables and met sellers in person during April at the London Book Fair and at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

BP - For most booksellers that I know, and many are the ones that have been selling on AbeBooks the longest, AbeBooks has become a declining revenue stream in the last few years. Most are seeing double digit declines in sales on AbeBooks with some booksellers claiming sales down as much as 60%.

-What do you attribute this across the board decline in sales to? Increased competition? Saturation in the marketplace?

HB – Sales across AbeBooks’ network of sites as a whole are actually increasing and we outperform most of our direct competition based on our knowledge – we facilitate sales of up to 30,000 books each day, sometimes more at the height of the college textbook seasons in August and January. On all online marketplaces, competition between sellers has increased – selling books online has become an extremely popular occupation. Anyone who sold books on AbeBooks before 2000 was part of a small number of booksellers and those same booksellers now face stiffer competition. There is also increased competition between the marketplaces themselves – the marketplaces compete for traffic and then the sellers on the marketplaces compete for the sales. Remember business changes much faster on the internet than in traditional commercial environments.

Nowadays, sellers list far more books for sale than they used to, so we try to encourage sellers to improve sales by offering better and more in-depth book descriptions, and give each listing an image, and also by closely monitoring their pricing and making adjustments when necessary. We attempt to give sellers as much guidance as possible so they are equipped to attract buyers.

BP - What steps is AbeBooks taking to try and increase sales through AbeBooks.com? The model of trying to increase revenue through increased fees for your vendors, as opposed to increasing revenue through the front-end and attracting more customers seems unsustainable.

HB – Our model is very sustainable because we keep it carefully balanced and we continue to see decent growth in buyers. As I said before, business evolves very fast on the Internet and online companies fail exceptionally quickly when business turns bad, so we wouldn’t be around if our business model wasn’t sustainable.

We make huge efforts to attract buyers through online marketing and more traditional marketing practices. Our marketing budget doesn’t compare to the money spent by the likes of Amazon but we make every dollar work for us. We drive traffic to the sites through extensive search engine marketing, thousands of affiliate websites, a regular stream of highly targeted e-newsletters, meeting buyers at book fairs, sponsorship and public relations.

Let’s take April as an example. In April, we launched a new website dedicated to Italy – that’s a huge undertaking and we’ve just opened up a new market for our sellers. It immediately had an impact and our most expensive sale in April was facilitated through AbeBooks.it when an Italian buyer purchased an Edward Lear letter for $11,491. We attended the LA Times Festival of Books where we had two booths and five members of staff who met thousands of bookloving people and told them in person about AbeBooks. We sent out around 18 different e-newsletters from our North American office and more went out to European buyers from our office in Germany. On our websites, there were author interviews, contests, and original content – all designed to draw buyers in and hold them on the site.

Clearly, we are doing something right because Which? – a consumer protection organization similar to Consumer Reports in the US – shortlisted AbeBooks.co.uk as one of the three best internet retailers in the UK. Just two months ago, the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper listed AbeBooks as one of the 101 most important websites in the United Kingdom. Having said that, we appreciate that there is much more work to be done.

Aside from our marketing efforts, we are also continuing to improve our own websites so that once a buyer arrives at AbeBooks they have a good buying experience and come back for more books. I can’t stress enough how important this behind-the-scenes work is. We want a first-time buyer to become a regular customer so they will buy from AbeBooks for life.

BP - The antiquarian, rare and out-of-print bookseller has been a seminal part of Abebooks vendor base since its inception. You will be giving the keynote speech at the upcoming Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar in Colorado Springs .

-I was wondering if you be so kind to allow us a glimpse of what you plan to talk about that evening.

HB – I’ll be talking about several industry trends, including how we intend improve the visibility of used and rare book listings on our sites.

BP - It is amazing how much bookselling has changed in the last 10+ years since the advent of Abebooks and online bookselling. Abebooks has always been at the forefront of this brave new world, One of the company's tag lines is "AbeBooks is changing how books are found, sold, and shared with the world."

-What kind of changes in the ways 'books are found, sold and online and shared with the world' do you foresee in next 5 to 10 years?

HB – Firstly, books are not going away. The book remains the greatest technology of all time – they are portable, they are easy to use, they are durable, they convey a huge amount of information. But most importantly, books are loved and treasured, and inspire readers. We watch with great interest what is happening with the Kindle and other e-reading devices but these things are a long way from making a significant impact on the book world.

Looking ahead five to 10 years is very difficult. AbeBooks is 12 years old and look how we have developed. The founders were amazed when the site’s inventory reached one million books and then they swore that three million would be the absolute limit. Now we have more than 110 million books for sale and sellers continue to load up more books.

We expect new online bookselling markets to develop around the world – Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, India. We saw this coming a long time ago and have been ‘internationalizing’ AbeBooks’ business since 2002 so that we were not totally dependent on our core market in North America.

Perhaps the most accurate thing I can say is that things will continue to happen fast on the Internet. Bricks and mortar businesses can take decades to develop but online firms can make an impact in a very short time. Look at Google.

Last year, we conducted an extensive bookseller poll and they told us they intend to keep loading up books to increase their online inventory, so the choice for buyers is going to become even wider.

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The Bright Spot at Barnes & Noble : The Rise of BN.com

In 2003 Barnes and Noble took over the reigns of BN.com and in October of last year relaunched a much improved website. In the last year traffic has almost doubled and sales have risen over 7% (compared to only a 1.1% increase in stores). It is safe to say something is working.

What I am most impressed with is the Barnes & Noble Studio. It is a rich, multi-faceted approach to the world of books and for those who follow Book Patrol you know that one of my main frustrations in the book world is how segmented it is. Barnes & Noble Studio is a valiant attempt to bridge the gap. Though the content so far leans toward the popular genres with only the latest in-print version of the books discussed being offered the seeds are in place for Barnes & Noble Studio to become a potential prime destination for book people everywhere.

Channels include:

Tagged! A weekly video magazine on the world of books.

Cover Story - video interviews with book designers.

Book Files- an in depth look at the stories behind particular books.

Book Obsessed - a look inside the lives of book collectors.

Here is the latest installment of Book Obsessed.

It is a look into the home and bibliomania of Leonard Schrader.
Schrader, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his screen adaptation of Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman and is the only screenwriter to have written screenplays in both English and Japanese, was a book junkie who had over 100,000 books in his house. His collection included a significant Kurt Vonnegut collection, whom he studied under, and a world class collection of Japanese language books on Japanese cinema.

82% Still Curl : Zogby Polls Readers

Random House hired Zogby International to get out there and find out what is going on in the world of reading and book-buying. They polled a little over 8,000 people and here are some of the highlights and lowlights:

82% say they still prefer to "curl up with a printed book" rather than reading online or using an e-reader or smartphone.

Only 3% of those surveyed currently own an e-book reader, and only 4% have plans to purchase one.
A whopping 80% reported that they have no plans to purchase an e-book reader!

Independent bookselling did not fare so well in the survey either:
The top three retail choices for buying books were buying online (77%), buying books from a chain bookstore (76%), and buying from an independent bookstores (49%).

When asked if they "regularly" shop at an independent bookseller only 33% said yes and 64% said no!

When asked if "the trend toward bookstores with a 'community center' feel make you want to visit and linger at bookstores," 41% said yes and 43% said they it didn't make much of a difference.

Most book buyers head to a bookstore with a purpose but often they buy something in addition to what they came for.
77% say they end up buying something else. These unplanned book purchases are heavily influenced by subject matter (48%) though the book's design also plays a key role.

30% of the readers surveyed said that they had spent less time reading books over the past year 23% reporting that they had spent more time and 53% said that of the books they bought last year between and one and five of them have yet to be read.

In the end, the good news is that the printed book still reigns supreme, the bad news is that where and how people buy them has changed drastically.


Story at the ABA's Bookselling This Week
Random House press release
Zogby International's Poll final report (pdf)

Kindle: Smoldering in the Uncanny Valley?

A loupe is something every bookseller should have in their toolbox. I most frequently use mine to help identify prints in books (etching? engraving? woodcut? mezzotint? aquatint?). They are also useful for making out faded, erased, or otherwise-difficult-to-read writing, differentiating between printed and authentically signed autographs, and the like.

Yesterday, I decided to turn my loupe on the Kindleto see what the type looked like under closer examination. I was rather shocked at what I saw. The letters, even under high magnification, look remarkably like type on a physical page. I expected to see at least some evidence of pixelation, and arguably there is a bit of it around the edges. But what this ends up looking like more than anything else is the slight irregularities one sees at the edges of any type on a page due to the tiny variations on a piece of paper. It's a little eerie.

And I began to wonder if perhaps some of the resistance among bookaholics to e-readers such as the Kindle was due in part to a kind of biblio-version of The Uncanny Valley:

The uncanny valley is a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.

Is the Kindle - in the words of this classic bit from 30 Rock - just a bit too much "Tom Hanks in Polar Express" and not enough "R2-D2"?

Perhaps. But not enough to deter many buyers. Though previous estimates of Kindle sales have hovered rather ridiculously around thirty- to fifty-thousand (Amazon refuses to release sale info), Tim O'Reilly more convincingly argues for unit sales of closer to one million. And in Britain, buyers are snagging Kindles even before they are on sale overseas.

The Enduring and Evolving Codex

Is the end of the book near? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer boldy claims in his talk with the Washington Post that "In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down" and there will be "no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network." Though talking particularly about newspapers and magazines there are many who would include the future of the book in his assessment. While I agree that newspapers in there current state are doomed, magazines less so, the book will continue its reign as a premier mode of content delivery. Yes, there is a good possibility that most book content will be available digitally in the next 10 years but this will simply be a complement to the printed book not a replacement.

Before we continue with the funeral arrangements Joyce at Bibliophile Bullpen reminds us that printed book is most enduring media element in the history of mankind.

Here is how it stacks up:

CD-ROMs are estimated to last from 30 to 200 years.
CD-Rs, before they are recorded, have an estimated shelf life of five to ten years.
CD-Rs, after recording, estimated 70 to 200 years.
CD-RWs are expected to last at least 30 years.
Photo CDs have an expected life of over 100 years.
Magnetic tape has a life of 30 to 100 years
Hard drives expected to last 114 to 170 years
A vinyl record has a life span of 100 years
Solid state drives last about 145 Years

while The Archimedes Palimpsest, written on parchment in the codex form, has survived since the second half of the tenth century!

For a comprehensive look at how the codex is evolving in today's world there is the newly published 500 Handmade Books : Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form from Lark Books.


500 Handmade Books is a visual journey through the world of contemporary book arts. The only requirement is for each piece to "function like a book." The books were chosen by Steve Miller who studied under legendary book artist and teacher Walter Hamady and teaches in the book arts program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The book is a stunning testament to the book form and to the artists who continue to find in the book a means to communicate.

Book Details:
500 Handmade Books: Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form. New York: Lark Books, 2008. First Edition. 8" X 8". 419pp. Pictorial french-fold wraps. Illustrated in color. $24.95

Book available here

Biblio.com to Offer Bookhound Software for Free

UPDATE : Luke Lozier, co-founder of Bibliopolis, has alerted me that Bookhound is now available for free to ALL booksellers not just Biblio.com members.

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AbeBooks.com has Home Base, Alibris has its reincarnation of Bookmate and now Biblio.com has Bookhound.

Biblio.com will begin offering the Bookhound inventory management tool for free to its sellers. The Mac version will be released first with the PC version to follow in July. Bookhound, a product of Bibliopolis, has been around for over 10 years and is currently used by many leading bookshops and booksellers both here in the U.S. and around the world.

From the press release:

"BookHound boasts many features, such as an integrated BISAC subject library, integrated spell checking, advanced searches and global editing of data, and easy-to-use options for managing inventory across multiple online sales venues. BookHound also includes tools specifically designed for brick-and-mortar shops."

Brendan Sherer, the CEO of Biblio says “We believe that delivering a high quality, mature product for inventory management will materially contribute to the growth of their businesses, and therefore, to ours as well.”

Let's hope so. For out of the big 3 non-new book aggregators (Amazon is a different animal entirely) Biblio's focus is on the more traditional and professional independent bookseller, there are no mega-listers and no penny sellers allowed and their model is guided by the triple bottom line approach using the "three goals of achieving profit, serving people, and preserving the environment as the benchmark measurements for a company's success."

"In a world increasingly globalized and seemingly spinning faster, we are working to position ourselves somewhere between the old and the new, somewhere between our local community and the world around us, between dreams and practicality, between profit and social responsibility."

Hard to argue with that but a business with a conscience faces tremendous obstacles in the current marketplace. The addition of Bookhound is a big plus now they have to work on increasing their exposure as a sane alternative to the increasingly confusing and saturated online bookselling world. A tremendous need exists for an alternative marketplace and Biblio is in a position to take the lead.

Biblio.com Press Release

IndieBound or Bust

That's the title of Jim Milliot's piece for Publisher's Weekly on the unveiling of the American Booksellers Association (ABA) new marketing “movement/revolution” initiative, IndieBound.

The good news is that it replaces Book Sense which has failed miserably in helping independents remain competitive in the fast changing world of bookselling. The bad news is that IndieBound won't fare much better.

What is IndieBound? Here is their Declaration:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for individuals to denounce the corporate bands which threaten to homogenize our cities and our souls, we must celebrate the powers that make us unique and declare the causes which compel us to remain independent.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all stores are not created equal, that some are endowed by their owners, their staff and their communities with certain incomparable heights, that among these are Personality, Purpose and Passion. The history of the present indies is a history of experiences and excitement, which we will continue to establish as we set our sights on a more unconstrained state. To prove this, let's bring each other along and submit our own experiences to an unchained world.

We, therefore, the Kindred Spirits of IndieBound, in the name of our convictions, do publish and declare that these united minds are, and darn well ought to be, Free Thinkers and Independent Souls. That we are linked by the passions that differentiate us. That we seek out soul makes to share our excitement. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the strength of our identities, we respectively and mutually pledge to lead the way as we all declare that we are IndieBound!

Their kidding, right? How is this going to help their members sell books? In the last 20 years independent bookstores have gone from selling 100% of the books sold in this country to less than 10% today! And for most of those 20 years the cries of 'support your local independent bookstore' has been heard loud and clear in communities throughout this country. New t-shirts are not going to make a difference.

Simply providing cheerleading merchandise and tools won't solve the fundamental problem.

What is needed is a comprehensive e-commerce solution that provides independent booksellers an opportunity to compete with the big boys. What is needed is a portal, call it IndieBound if you wish, that offers the same book-related merchandise, content and convenience that Amazon does. A place where one can order any book in print and have it at their door in a reasonable amount of time. You don't need to be price competitive you need to be technologically competitive. People will pay more if they know that their purchase is helping their local independent bookstore. Don't ask them to put their zip code in when they hit the home page- let them shop- and when they put their zip code in at checkout up pops a list of the independent stores in their area. Let them decide which store will receive a portion of the sale, then keep a portion for website maintenance and marketing.

If the distributors don't want to play and adjust their shipping model to provide direct to consumer shipping than do it yourself. Use some of the $39 million that you have in reserve and invest in a distribution center for your members.

There are plenty of people out there who would support an alternative to Amazon and Barnes & Noble but a viable online alternative has yet to be created.

“I want to be enthused about IndieBound. I don’t think it is much more than Book Sense renamed. I kind of felt like a teenager who only got to second base last night.” said Maryelizabeth Hart, co-owner of Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego, after witnessing the unveiling of the new initiative.

Unfortunately, they are still on first base.

They same issue persists in the non-new book world as well. The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) has also failed to provide its members with a viable alternative to the used book aggregators like AbeBooks.com, Alibris and Amazon.

I wish I knew what everyone is waiting for.

I have a confession to make...

I bought a Kindle.

It arrived today.

I feel a bit like a pastor caught with a Playboy under his arm.

I've been considering (albeit rather idly) a purchase for some time. After all, the reviews and press have been largely positive. Yes, I love gadgets and technology (I'm not quite sure how I checked email before my iPhone). And I really like the idea of being able to carry around enough titles to satisfy most any reading mood that strikes me, as well as the ability to get a book immediatelyfor those times I don't. And I'm as curious as anyone to see the e-ink screen for myself. Plus, the overwhelming demand impressed me and Amazon's marketing campaign (prominent author endorsements, Jeff Bezos' hour-long Charlie Rose interview) was persuasive.

But as someone who for the better part of the last dozen years has made his living in one form or another from books (real, physical books), none of these reasons were enough to convince me.

Until I found an ugly and seemingly innocuous ex-library tome at the bottom of a box of books.

You see - about a month ago, I was evaluating some new acquisitions, either cataloging them in my database for sale online or tossing them aside. Most were scholarly texts - university press titles and the like. And when I came across an ex-library book, I almost rejected it right away. But the fact that it otherwise looked unread made me take a second glance. Only a couple of years old and on a very technical and obscure subject, it was the kind of book that even as an ex-lib can retain value. And indeed, a bit of poking around online found only two other copies being offered, both listed at well over $100.00 each. These prices struck me as optimistic, so I listed it at a still healthy $75.00 and was about to forget about it when I noticed something on the title's Amazon page.

"Kindle price: $44.95"

And I knew.

I knew - in a way that was much more immediate than any previous exposure to e-books had been - that this device's ability to offer scarce out-of-print titles at cheaper prices had huge implications for my business in particular and for the future of bookselling as a whole. And it would be foolhardy not to begin to understand and appreciate (and adapt to) those changes as soon as possible.

At least, that's what I told myself.

Of course, the fact that Amazon cut the price by forty bucks on Tuesday didn't hurt either.

And so now I - avid reader, casual book collector, irrepressible book accumulator, devoted lover of the codex, former independent bookstore employee and current purveyor of used, rare, collectible and antiquarian titles of all sorts - I am the unlikely owner of an e-book.

Over the coming weeks, my plan is to blog (in addition to the usual posts) my impressions of and experiences with the Kindle, and to consider what it and similar devices might mean for the future of the book and of reading and bookselling.

But right now, I have to go play with my new toy.

Oh. And the first book I downloaded to read? Jeff Gomez's Print Is Dead: Books in our Digital Age.

Library a-Go-Go Gets Going

The first public library book dispensing machine in the United States has arrived. Beginning today commuters with a Contra Costa County library card will be able to check out items from a book lending machine at the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Pittsburg/Bay Point station. The machines are built by the Swedish company Distec and cost about $100,000 each.

How it works:

"A touch screen, similar to an ATM screen, is used to select from up to approximately 500 items that are delivered through an opening in the front of the unit. Materials are returned in a similar way. A robotic arm controls the selection and data input creates attractive screen displays with book jacket images, reviews, and tables of content and other enhanced content information."

“Library-a-Go-Go offers passengers a library experience that is fast, available at convenient hours, easy to use and customer focused.” says BART District 2 Director Joel Keller.

And you don't need a car to get there!

Three other locations are set to receive the machine during Phase One.

Contra Costa County press release

Screen vs. Book

Gary Frost, at his blog FotB (Future of the Book), offers up "ten popular fallacies of screen reading advocates" with his take on each one.

1. There is an analog/digital divide in the technologies of information transmission. (If there is any divide it is between paper and screen based reading.)

2. There is something distinctive about being "born digital". (All information is born digital. How it grows up provides the distinction.)

3. We are experiencing a one-way transition from paper to screen. (Its actually a two-way, not a one-way transition.)

4. Screen based books can be equivalent to print books. (This assumption overlooks legibility, haptic efficiencies, default persistence and self-authentication attributes of print transmission that are not provided in screen reading.)

5. The only history is the future. (Every revolutionary functionality of the book awaits rediscovery out of the past.)

6. The print book is at best an accessory of screen reading. (Screen reading and digital connectivity is an accessory, or bibliographic utility, of the print book.)

7. We can dismiss the functionality of the physical book because the attributes of screen reading are overwhelming. (Dismiss the attributes of the physical book and you also dismiss the functionality of sustained reading. The constraints of the physical book are instructional efficiencies that the nurture of reading skills of all kinds.)

8. Screen based delivery of text is self-indexing and searchable. (Print, unlike screen text, is self-authenticating. Print text is immutable, content encompassed and a reliable witness, all opposite of screen characteristics. Touch screen voting, census automation and many other automated tabulations from traffic control to genetic modification confirm the importance of authentication.)

9. Change is speeding up, leaving the print book behind. (The digital technologies will also engender a Renaissance of print. Paradigm change occurred in the 19th century with the advents of instant telecommunication, electrical power, digital encoding, keyboard interface and photo imaging. Since then change has been slowing down)

10. Print reading will die off with aging readers. (Youthful readers are perennially attracted to audio and visual reading while mature readers perennially assimilate sustained print reading.)

I agree with Mr Frost that we are looking at technologies that at best supplement or complement the book. Any talk of replacement is utopian (or dystopian) and minimizes the significant role that the book has played throughout our history. Yes, change is good and welcome but replacement is bound to have enormous cultural consequences.

Gutenberg, Gutenberg, Gutenberg

Amazingly, the Morgan Library owns 3 copies of the Gutenberg Bible, two on paper and one on vellum, and they all are unique in some respect. Beginning tomorrow all 3 will be displayed together for the first time in 10 years.

The Gutenberg bible was the first substantial book printed in the Western world using movable type. It is believed that Gutenberg and his successors printed between 120 and 135 copies of the Bible on paper and between 40 and 45 copies on vellum. Only 50 survive and some are pretty beat up.

The exhibit runs through September 28th.

Morgan Library Press Release (pdf)

Two complete digitized versions at the British Library

Image of the Huntington Library's Gutenberg on vellum by Ken Leonard, 2007

Author's and Their Websites

Forget the act of writing, the pressure to create a web presence is becoming almost as intense for many authors. Jeff Barr, of Book Design blog fame, has launched a new website, Books Written By, which features authors and their websites. Each entry provides a screenshot of the author's homepage with a link to their site.

The gallery gives us a glimpse into the wild west of website design and authors and seems poised to become a valuable resource for what to and what not to do when developing one's literary website. They make "no attempt to rate the quality of the sites" and hope that "authors and designers can use this gallery to gain inspiration for their own sites. And everyone just might discover some interesting writers."

DQ : The Ultimate in Online 'Books'

from Beneath a steel sky

We have ebooks and book social networks. We have book trailers and internet book tv but the folks at DQ Books (nothing to do with Dairy Queen) have come up with what just might be the perfect marriage of technology and the book form.

DQ Books brings together artists, illustrators and photographers and places their visuals within the context of the book form using Flash technology. Each thematic issue is accompanied by a soundscape created by French composer Avril.

The first 4 issues are:

Invasion - 7 days of graphic improvisition by Festo and Telemolindo

Seasons - 16 illustrators, artists and photographers invent a life of a woman according to seasons

Where's the Party - Brazilian, Italian and French artists for a narcotic party, carried out with a blue Bic pen

Beneath a steel sky - From Brooklyn to Central Park beneath a steel sky, analog photography by Festo

These are the wordless novels of the 21st Century.


Thanks to Brian Cassidy for the lead

In Defence of Amazon : Their New POD Strategy as Opportunity.

Much has been written about Amazon's new strategy of offering print on demand titles sold on their website exclusively through their POD company, Book Surge. Cries of monopoly and unfair business practices have permeated the discourse but there are I believe, potential opportunities for publishers and authors within this new paradigm.

Just as the arrival of Amazon changed the bookselling landscape forever their new POD strategy is sure to alter the publishing landscape in similar ways and how the publishers respond will ultimately determine their chance of survival. Will we lose as many publishers as we have book stores?

I see nothing wrong with Amazon's surge into POD. They are, after all, a business and are obligated to develop the most cost effective ways to succeed. By printing needed titles on demand to include or "marry" with other items will save them zillions of dollars in shipping charges and in shipping supplies. Just think of how many fewer boxes they will need or packing tape, or related labor expenses in being able to cut down on the amount of shipments without a decline in the number of items sold.

So where is the opportunity?

Publishers and authors can still produce books that will differ from the Amazon edition and be desired in the marketplace. The Amazon POD editions will be the mass market paperbacks of the new publishing era. There will remain a healthy market for other editions. The publishers can capitalize on this by offering their own editions that might include extra material much like the movie studios do with their DVD releases. An extra short story, an extra poem, interviews with the author, signed copies, manuscript pages etc.; the possibilities are endless. Not everyone wants their book the next day nor do they want a cheaply produced version. Quality still counts and many will still pay for it.

This is not a wake up call as some of said this is more of a last call. The rules of bookselling and publishing have changed drastically and the publishers that can respond in new innovative ways will be the ones that prosper.

Previous Book Patrol posts on the Amazon sales tax issue:

ABA Misguided In Their Support For An Internet Sales Tax

New York Booksellers Ask Spitzer to Reconsider Online Sales Tax