The future of paper books, yet unprinted.

[bronzeage]

A young friend of mine is considering buying a bookstore. It is a small independent store in a medium sized southern city. It belongs to her aunt, who will be retiring in the next couple years.

I wonder if she might be buying the 21st century version of a saddle and tack shop.

Right now, there are a couple million tons of used paper book in circulation. Those will be around for a long time, no matter what else happens. The market for used books does not seem to have been affected by the move to cyber books.

What is the future of conventional printed books? Could someone make a living by selling paper? Will there be enough releases of new books to support a retail business?

 

[oggbashan]

It depends whether it is a new or used book shop.

The margins for new books are very low and small retailers are undercut by large chains and supermarkets. Most new books are sold by the chains and supermarkets at prices BELOW the wholesale prices that are available to small retailers.

A new book shop can only survive if it isn't close to a larger chain. Books bought online can undercut a retailer with a shop.

Secondhand books are also difficult. Books sold on eBay, Amazon and AbeBooks.com set the retail price. A secondhand bookdealer used to be able to buy books at one third of the price at which the books would be sold, and make sufficient profit to pay for the running costs and staff. Now? Stock has to be bought at one sixth of the marked-up price. Sellers can find that offer insulting particularly as a trader can only offer the one-sixth on the books that could be resold.

Like all businesses, keeping the costs low is essential. The maxim "Small Profits, Quick Returns" is valid for most, but for bookstores it changes to "Small Profits, Slow Returns". Most bankers would find that impossible to finance.

Og

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

BRONZEAGE

If Rule #1 of business is, THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT, Rule #2 is, DONT FORGET WHAT BUSINESS YOURE IN. Newspapers went to hell cuz they forgot theyre in the entertainment industry.

So booksellers are in the entertainment industry, too. Consequently you wanna carry printed books, e-books, mail-order books, print-on-demand books, all kinds of books including audio-books and videos. You may wanna sell local amateur stuff on consignment, too.

 

[R. Richard]

I would think that a bookstore would be a high risk operation, for the reasons that Og stated.

If I were going to try to run a small, independent bookstore in today's environment, I would try to find a viable local market and specialize in that market. If the market were, say, romance, I would have lists of the best sellers in romance and I would push my suppliers to try to get the very earliest releases of new romance works and make sure that my customers knew when the newest stuff is available. However, it looks like a very hard road to travel. JMHO.

 

[TxRad]

Our local used book store closed last year but I think it had more to do with the owner dying than anything else. She didn't make a whole lot of money but she did it more to have something to do in her retirement.

She also had a wireless internet service and a small coffee bar to draw in people. It had a more intellegtial crowd than the local morning coffee groups at the diner.

As far as the future of books in general, I see nothing changing up to a point. There is something to the feel of a book as compared to reading on-line. Holding a book is somehow more satisfying than one of those readers. In my opinion anyway.

 

[Carnevil9]

Bookstores are in the same boat as Travel Agents - you can duplicate their basic service on-line from home, so why bother? So to stay afloat, you need to offer something extra.

Travel agents put together packages, specialize in certain types of hard-to-find vacations, etc.

A bookstore needs to offer an environment you don't get at home on your laptop: coffee, booze, live music, artwork on the walls, discussion groups, etc.

I wish her luck! We need more places like that........Carney

 

[bronzeage]

Our local used book store closed last year but I think it had more to do with the owner dying than anything else. She didn't make a whole lot of money but she did it more to have something to do in her retirement.

She also had a wireless internet service and a small coffee bar to draw in people. It had a more intellegtial crowd than the local morning coffee groups at the diner.

As far as the future of books in general, I see nothing changing up to a point. There is something to the feel of a book as compared to reading on-line. Holding a book is somehow more satisfying than one of those readers. In my opinion anyway.

The advantages of books over e-readers is books have longer battery life and a greater selection.

The future of a new technology is difficult to predict.The real question which must be answered is this, "Are the customers for paper books, new or used, aging out to the market?"

There is one local bookstore left in my city. It has been in the same low rent store front for about 40 years. The owner will be retiring soon and I don't know what will happen. This store survived the opening of a Books-a-Million just a block away. The BaM is gone and he is still there.

My stores have a small used book and vinyl record sections. It's not a barn burner, but sales are steady. The record sales are very trendy. If I had a truck load of what sold well two years ago, I couldn't sell any of them today.

 

[sr71plt]

Even the large book chains are being affected by the duplicated on-line distribution services combined with the increasing propensity of buyers to do so on line--as Carnavil9 notes.

This is the point at which posters will chime in with "over my dead body," I'll never get over the feel of a physical book in a brick and mortar store. But the point here is that bodies feeling this way indeed are dying and fewer and fewer of their replacements are growing up in the same context. Increasingly buyers are Internet oriented. This is a reality that will creep (and is creeping) in, slowly (and not all that slowly at present) but relentlessly.

Buyers whose past dictates their present may say it just isn't happening, but ask a bookstore owner--even the big chains--about that, and they'll say it is happening and already is cutting into their "business as usual" margins. Painfully.

What I'm looking to with my own work now is to cover all bases--publish books available both in print (although paperback; I truly think that hardback is a dinoaurland for what I write) and in e-book. Then I let the buyer decide for him/herself without drawing any outdated lines in the sand.

For the author, what will happen in the future and/or what will endure longer, is irrelevant. The author needs to concentrate on today's sales and the buyers' choices today. It's for the buyer to decide the form they want. And although there's still a market for print, it's electronic form that is the "wave" market today. An author can choose to play in both markets with the same book.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Dear Reader,

SR71PLT does most of his reading from restroom stall partitions, or the walls the urinal is mounted on.