It seems like the key insight is that bookstores are no longer places to get books.
If I want a specific book, I already know where to go: the internet. No physical store is ever going to compete on inventory ever again. Amazon will eat you alive.
I go to bookstores to discover new books, and to enjoy the feeling of being around books and the people who love them. The CEO realized this, and leaned in hard.
It's a really, really smart recognition of when passion for the product is actually a business advantage, and not just a warm fuzzy.
It's very hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending. Those recommendations are now a bookstore's real product.
A few years ago Austin opened up a new main public library. When it was being proposed I thought "why are we spending millions and millions on a library in the digital age?".
Boy was I wrong, and I'll happily eat crow for how wrong I was. The new library building is beautiful, super inviting and some of my favorite architecture anywhere. I love going there to work or read. They also do a great job making the building welcoming and accessible to all, while at the same time preventing it from getting trashed by the homeless (looking at you SF public library) with a simple no sleeping/no lying down rule.
Welcoming, inviting public spaces can do very well if people understand why they are desirable.
Libraries and librarians always seem to far ahead of things on a meta level. My town (Halifax, Nova Scotia) also built a beautiful library recently. Once of the criticisms levelled at it was that it didn't really have stacks all over the place.
It has become an incredibly valuable community hub. Books are a bit of an excuse to enjoy its architecture and function. I've been there for countless hours with my children as they have grown up.
I'm also consistently impressed by the staff. In a time when every business is complaining about staffing and using it as an excuse for bad quality and bad service, it seems that most libraries are staffed with total professionals who do their job day in and day out and do it well.
I co-founded a library technology company, and I didn’t realize this until those initial discussions with my cofounders. Librarians were so far ahead of the curve of adopting electronic delivery. They came up with a variety of technologies and standards to accomplish this when nothing else had been specified or built. It’s quite inspiring.
I even met the librarian who invented the phrase “surfing the internet” at a librarian conference. Yes, a librarian was there to coin phrases at the dawn of the web!
I'm in loose circles involving archivists in addition to librarians and can confirm that they have some of the most nuanced and insightful takes on information management: discovery, curation, search, etc., especially how these systems serve human users as interfaces to knowledge. It seems obvious to say but feels important to reiterate.
My introduction to the Internet as an immigrant back in 1996 was hugely thanks to accommodating librarians at the middle school I attended. Netscape on a 486 running Win 3.11 was not ideal, but it's also where I created my first website, a Simpsons fan site on Tripod (rip).
The Halifax central library really is a sight to behold. That is the sort of investment i would hope the public could rally behind because it is visible and immensely useful. Even if you don't visit the actual building, the online services provided by Canadian libraries is among the best in the world.
Many Canadian cities are upgrading their libraries and i for one am overjoyed to see that!
Atlanta opened a beautiful new main public library, and they treat everyone who enters like a potential criminal. They check your bags for weapons and run metal detector wands over you. Basically the worst library experience I've ever had. Once you get in there, there are hardly even any books, and they close at 6 pm. I can see why people would prefer to chill in a Barnes and Noble.
Libraries are one of the last bastions of being able to be somewhere legally without spending money. With the homeless crisis we shouldn't be surprised that these places are used in this way - it's 100% an expected outcome.
It's a logistics and resources problem - libraries are: shelter, safety, heating/cooling, running water, restrooms, a place to sit... Truth is we don't afford that to everyone here and a lot of people ignore the cruelty/suffering. Hell - some even justify and celebrate it.
Churches were and arguably are, still a big one. Granted, only one day a week but still.
I think it's fine to encourage people to spend time at the library. I know as a kid, I grew a lot as a person at our local library.
They had after school activities once a week, it was about a mile down the road, so we had to learn to be responsible walking after school. The librarians were always kind to us, even though I'm sure as teenagers we probably weren't always a carbon copy of the model, upstanding citizen.
I could spend time with my friends discussing various topics, with easy information available if we couldn't agree on the facts. Plus, I kissed my wife for the first time on the bench outside. Libraries are great :)
Not just one day a week. A lot of churches open to homeless all during the week. It makes sense because it's a waste of resources to let a large heated building sit empty the other 6 days of the week that aren't Sunday when they can use that space to help the less fortunate.
I moved out of SF during the pandemic but before that the city had homeless and mentally ill people and there was no security check at the library, and it was full of books.
As an active library user w a 4 year old and 1 year old going to the bathroom at the sf library wasn’t a good situation- so for many folks (disabled, those w young children) the library was not available to them.
It was my experience at a bathroom on the SF main public library that led me to post my comment about it. It was beyond disgusting. There was literal shit smeared all over a stall, and bathroom had essentially been commandeered by mentally ill people living there.
I contrast that with the library in Austin. Obviously, as a free, warm, comfortable space, there are tons of homeless people there. But, unlike in SF, the Austin library doesn't let them trash the place - the homeless there are just using the library like everyone else. There is a strict no sleeping/lying rule (which I've seen enforced) which prevents anyone from basically taking over a section of the library. The bathrooms have always been immaculate whenever I've used them.
IMO the Austin library's policy toward the homeless shows how you can be respectful and welcoming to all while still requiring everyone who enters to respect the building.
>they treat everyone who enters like a potential criminal. They check your bags for weapons and run metal detector wands over you. Basically the worst library experience I've ever had
I don't believe there are many other parts of the world where this happens.
Let's split the distance. Every big city has some homeless, but no western European city has such problems with homeless people and guns to the extend to be a problem that requires screening visitors to a library, or having metal detectors, and drug and gun checks in public buildings...
Our local library here in the Netherlands is like this. The local archery club practices inside a few nights a week. There is a full court gymnasium, a stage and enough space to seat a few hundred people. There is a coffee bar, pool tables, plenty of seating and even a few books! ;)
The building is open until 11pm 4 days a week, with reduced hours on Friday and Saturday; closed on Sunday. I guess it's no surprise that the website describes as more of a "Multifunctioneel Centrum" as opposed to just a library!
Hoping you learned that this crow applies to libraries in general and not just this one library. They are way more than just books. Some of them even rent out small appliances and tools these days, as well as hosting classes.
I record episodes for my open-source-software podcast from the recording room at my city's main branch library, sparing me the need to invest in a professional-quality mic or a soundproofed acoustically-neutral room. Shoutout to the Boston Public Library.
The most beautiful reading room I’ve ever been in. I wanted to go into NYC’s public library reading room, but they don’t allow visitors, which was a bummer. (Or at the very least it’s strongly discouraged unless you’re truly there doing work, rather than just wanting to sit there for a few minutes and soak it in or read a little)
You’d think! Whatever the sign said (I didn’t take a photo), it was clear they were discouraging people to just step in quick to look around. Perhaps truly reading wasn’t discouraged, but compared to the lack of such a sign at Boston Public Library, it felt very different.
But the number of tourists in NYC compared to Boston is probably a big difference.
It's been a few years and, at one point, they were doing renovations but I've definitely hung out in the Rose Reading Room at the NYPL in the past. And there's nothing on the NYPL's current site to suggest it's not open for just sitting and reading.
Bingo, it was exactly this. I was pretty bummed, being a fan of libraries in general, a fan of Ghostbusters, and a fan of nice places to read and work.
If I’m coworking in NYC sometime, maybe I’ll ask what kind of research I must be doing to get to read there. I’m guessing with the physical books only available there?
Missoula, Montana (the veritable Hub Of The World, I know... eat your heart out, Boston) has a Makerspace in its public library, has classes for it, and allows people to reserve time so staff can provide one-on-one time and troubleshooting. It's a perfect use of the space. It also has things like D&D guilds for teens and adults and something called the Democracy Project, which is apparently a civic engagement project for teens.
Some college libraries are open to the public as well, and are often really amazing spaces. I grew up going to one with multiple levels of sub-basements, and even as a kid, I just enjoyed the sense of it. Like a secret that only I knew about, full of ancient knowledge.
...No idea if it's still open to the public or not these days, but if I ever get back there I'm going to make a point of finding out.
Just want to add some weight to how awesome Austin's library is, they rent laptops, have 3D printers, even a zine section, and an upper terrace with plants and a view etc which is the perfect place for study group sessions.
It's a great place, just wish there was free parking.
My local library is similar a new building going from a Brutalist design building (depressing) to a new all glass single floor building. With 3d printers, coffee shop, and all kinds of stuff.
>"why are we spending millions and millions on a library in the digital age?"
Because the less well off may not have enough devices or internet access to do things digitally. It's also good if you have young kids. You can't read that book which has different textures for all the animals digitally.
> Because the less well off may not have enough devices or internet access to do things digitally.
Is that really still true? I've traveled in many poor counties where people live in shacks with no plumbing, yet still all have internet connected smartphones. Only in the most remote villages with no electricity or phone signal are people still truly disconnected.
I don't know what their data plans are like or how good their network is.
In AU, you can still get really cheap prepaid plans that don't really have a lot of data all things considered. For example, right now I can get an Amaysim SIM for $100, and you get 60GB for 365 days. https://www.amaysim.com.au/plans/long-expiry-plans/
This is roughly 165MB a day. Probably amazing compared to a poor country, but it's all relative.
In FF, incognito window, uBlock origin allowed in incognito windows:
- google.com is 500kB
- twitter.com is 4MB
- tiktok.com is 5MB
- youtube.com is 6MB
- facebook.com is 300kB
- Commonwealth's Netbank is 2MB
This is not even considering all the other data you need for using those websites. If your mobile phone and your mobile data is your main source of connectivity, it's really easy to blow through it all just on basic things.
The data plans in most developing countries are actually quite good.
For example, the best overall plan I've used anywhere in the world is in Thailand. You can get unlimited 10Mbit service for $5 a month. The coverage is extremely good even in the mountains or islands, latency is excellent, and I've used over 100 GB without hitting any additional throttles. And that's with AIS. There are cheaper companies and plans if you wanted.
I'd argue it's not necessarily about the devices, it's about paying to rent electronic copies of books. I'm not poor, but I find that to be a prohibitively expensive way to do any appreciable amount of reading. Especially when there is a building down the street that can get me just about any book for free.
Maybe yours is inviting, the one near me redid sections that used to be used by the homeless or unemployed and made them "teen spaces" and directed huge chunks of money at turning the space into a community center... in the vein of a JCC or low rent country club for the folks who went to the universities surrounding it.
(I haven't been to the SF public library in a while, but the few times I went in as a Mozilla intern the staff were so rude I ended up buying books and selling them at a used bookstore when finished rather than be treated rudely by folks who were within a year or two of me, from the same department I graduated from. Maybe there's a reason people don't respect that space, and it's not just because they're mentally ill and/or down on their luck.)
It's an important Third Space, and one of the only noncommercial Third Spaces left: A Third Space is a space which isn't home or work which can be used for socialization and potentially other, more goal-directed things, like informal classes. Shopping malls and other commercial spaces can be Third Spaces, but they have a profit motive which incentivizes them to kick people out for "loitering" or otherwise using the space without paying money. Libraries, lacking that incentive, can host more relaxed gatherings without having to make people do things that can be monetized.
what's the problem with having a part of the library be intended for young people and students? That seems like a better use of the space than having the city turn the library into a daytime homeless shelter.
> That seems like a better use of the space than having the city turn the library into a daytime homeless shelter.
I prefer it being a homeless shelter, its cold as hell in chicago right now. It would be nice for them to have some some space there.
Whenever there is a cold wave we all wonder whats happening to the ppl left out there. It would be nice for them to have one more option. give everyone else peace of mind, lol.
I think the main reason isn't the shelter itself, but that being around a large number of fellow homeless people is dangerous because of the rampant mental health issues, drug abuse, and violent crime.
The problem is similar to what happened when low income housing (the "projects") concentrated the poor into economic ghettos.
If they're "poor", don't they have to rent or buy low income housing, and so "concentrate into economic ghettos"?
There is no policy concentrating the poor with each other, any more than there is a policy that concentrates the rich with each other. The market makes available different products, and different economic market segments purchase different products. With a policy, or without a policy, the poor will live with the poor.
I mean... That sounds great. Our library too has activities and spaces and it's brilliant. It helps bring in next generation of readers and get everybody engaged and it's awesome :-)
the one near me redid sections that used to be used by the homeless or unemployed and made them "teen spaces" and directed huge chunks of money at turning the space into a community center
My issue is they did this at the expense of other, more disadvantaged groups.
I myself have been coming in and out of their space trying to job hunt.
(Turns out a common trope is people don't want to socialize with someone who "lives with their parents" or is un/under employed.)
So picture you're trying to study for OSCP, and you can't find a space that's quiet. In a library.
And what you'd think would happen is someone would go "oh, you're in IT? I know someone looking for that" and solve the issue.
And then instead, they treat it like a game -- or worse, start acting purposefully othering.
That is my core complaint -- that both those spaces and those resources in the monetary sense divert disproporionately to folks who, frankly, sometimes interact in ways that make me question why they strive so hard to interact with teenagers all day.
(Also, it was often not new users -- just bigger, more elaborate programs for the same rich kids from the suburbs who used to pay for special camps and programs... but now having them held in spaces those who couldn't afford them used to do self education.)
I hope taking the time and energy to type that out helps.
Someone else commented that the library is one of the last noncommercial spaces... I honestly don't have that impression at all. I got the sense if you're not using it to do remote work, or as a community center, but to... check out materials and use them... you are unwelcome unless you're buying stuff (coffee, supplies etc) or part of one of the groups that makes substantial donations when they're not making noise.
Sadly in the UK, libraries continue on a decline of being underfunded, shut half the week, and sometimes sold off (usually to housing development companies).
A few have managed to keep going (mostly due to the communities taking direct control) and they have done wonders in keep up with the times.
Check out Nashille’s library! They even have a teen-focused makerspace, with 3D printers, a music studio, rentable Ardurino kits. Check it out - inspiring.
PS: +1 to Austin’s library. It’s an incredible space. Grab a coffee at the cafe, and hang out on the beautiful roof terrace. Breathtaking views, and it’s a great place to meet people (and what better people to meet than library people!); PS: they are building a makerspace there too - stay tuned…
The Calgary public library (downtown) is like this as well: unique architecture and lots of "non-book" things. I wish they did a better job with the drug users in and around it though.
I just visited Helsinki, and if you’re ever around there, go see oodi. It’s an amazing space. They even have a small makerspace in there with 3D printers, lasercutters,…
Not the author, but it seems like they are saying that, at first glance, it seems unreasonable to spend millions of dollars on a physical structure to hold books when all of the same information is housed online and accessible digitally. But, upon further consideration, there are secondary benefits that make a library a net benefit for the community.
The library in Linden, NJ--a working class town--is beautiful. My town is much wealthier, but our library is nowhere near as nice. I definitely appreciate that a town that probably has more challenges has such a nice piece of public infrastructure.
Last week I needed a copy of Atlas Obscura to gift to someone. I checked my local Barnes and Nobles website, they had a a copy on a shelf so I went and bought it.
No way I would ever risk buying such books from Amazon. I am concerned about the condition it would arrive in, scams and delays.
I bought a second book based on a librarian's recommendation. There was only 5 or 6 books of the kind I was interested in. It made choosing one easier.
I bought makeup as a present for someone and while they were appreciative of the thought and time that went into my gift, they had to ask me if I got it off Amazon because they couldn't actually use it if I did. Counterfeit makeup gives her skij condition a skin rash and she's been burned more than once on that so she has to be extra cautious.
A few days ago, someone asked on a forum suggestions for spending a large Amazon gift coupon on books and games.
I started looking for rare, expensive and/or old books that I know about, and at the first result page I realized how futile it was, between unknown quality, unknown marketplace sellers, unreliable listings, the chance of scammers, and the ridiculously inaccurate mass of irrelevant search results that drown out relevant ones.
Other people actually recommended, in harsh terms, to buy electronics etc. on Amazon and get books and games from proper sources.
It is quite obvious to the mass public, not a special insight, that Amazon doesn't love to sell stuff: not only books and media, but anything except maybe Prime subscriptions.
I don't even buy electronics from Amazon much anymore. Walmart and Bestbuy will price match, good return policy and most importantly not fear of knockoffs due to how Amazon comingles.
I use Amazon as a primary source for stuff that I know are generic, don't care about knockoffs and want variety. i.e iPad cases, simple furniture
Amazing just how far Amazon has fallen due to counterfeit products and scammy sellers.
It is unfortunate but understandable if you get scammed buying a pair of "certified" Apple earbuds or lightening cables from a Chinese seller at a price 70% less than you'd pay at Apple, Fair enough and buyer beware.
But if you can't even buy a BOOK that's sold by Amazon itself without getting scammed, then it seems we have a serious problem, and it is not surprising that Amazon stock is down over 50%.
There was a post here, a few weeks ago, by an author, complaining that Every. Single. Copy of his book on Amazon was a fake.
Books are ridiculously easy to counterfeit, and can bring in quite a bit of cash.
Amazon has made the conscious business decision to be a counterfeit souk. I guess they make lots of money from it, and I suspect they don’t really care about their retail brand anymore. From what I hear, it’s actually a loss leader.
i thought amazon would dominate and conquer books market but they never got beyond just super basic concept of selling a book online. Finding interesting books is awful, everything is an ad. reading on kindle is ok. i have prime and once or twice a year read a free book on it.
i assume the problem is complacency. I don’t think buying real solid books has really changed on Amazon at all in past 5 years. kindle digital reader is same as it was 5 years ago. i wonder how many people work in kindle and what they actually do.
Well, Amazon used to be ahead. I vividly remember using their "Find me this out-of-print book" service once and being very positively surprised that it actually worked. Signed up for the out-of-print book, got a message about 3 months later, and BANG, there it was, in my mailbox. That was one of the moment when I thought "well, they are really doing a great job" That has changed since, especially since the website design has been fucked up with ads everywhere.
amazon a product manager focused organization in many parts of their business. Person A comes to america to study for masters or mba. A gets hired by amazon. A is under pressure to release features to increase sales or show how their feature is attributed some top or bottom line metric increase. A fears losing job under amazon cut throat culture and will optimize for exactly that. No amazon job means bye bye visa you go home. if you have family, sell everything and move back.
so as you could guess customer benefit is not primary or even second third focus.
company leadership create culture of one incentive. workers output optimizing for that incentive.
You aren't trying to say that foreign workers are responsible for all the problems at Amazon, not the American management? Come on. I dont believe these "the management is innocent" memes.
To add to that, if I'm getting cheap knockoffs (non-books in this example), I might as well get them from Shopee/Lazada etc since they almost invariably cheaper than Amazon.
Potentially silly question, but how can a book be a fake? Do you mean someone copied the title and put their own text? If I order a book, let's say Infinite Jest, I care that the book contains the words that correspond to the novel written by David Foster Wallace. If that is the case, I got what I wanted. I don't really care who printed it or what the cover looks like.
Aside from the issue of the original author not receiving payment, counterfeit books can actually have textual errors as well. A few years ago when the 3rd edition of The Art Of Electronics was published, I saw quite a few warnings posted online not to buy from Amazon. These counterfeits were poorly printed and had many typographical errors, many of which made the information factually incorrect and caused that specific copy to be untrustworthy. So especially for a reference text like that, a counterfeit can actually cause harm if the information isn't correct.
Do you care about the value of your purchase? If you spend, say, $150 on a scientific textbook, and then you cannot show it in public because you would look like a pirate, you should care.
And that is the best case of a readable, complete book. Maybe you get only the first 500 pages, or the figures are cut off, or it is a degraded scan of a printed book.
The problem is of course much worse for collectible books for which even getting an official reprint or a different edition instead of the real thing would be a problem.
Well, this illustrates the issue that many corporate entities have about open-sourcing their software code.
A book is a bunch of words, delivered to a reader via some medium. In order for a book to work, the words must all be delivered in readable format; whether printed out on a physical media, or delivered electronically, as text strings.
Because of that, copying the text is trivial. I have a scanner, under my desk, that will completely scan a book, if I unbind that book, and drop in the pages. I also have software that will OCR those scans. I have heard of OCR software that does a lot better than mine.
Writing a book is hard. I mean, really hard. I've done it. It can take months for an author to write a book that I can read in a couple of days (unless the author is Mercedes Lackey, or James Patterson).
Software is similar. Once it is written, reproducing it is trivial. After all, it's just a bunch of words. To make it even more convenient, almost all software is already rendered into electronic form.
With both of these, the only thing preventing anyone from simply copying the text, is the law, and there are lots of people (nations, even) that have absolutely no respect at all for the law. They will happily copy and reproduce the text.
It's entirely possible to have counterfeits of higher quality than the original. You could, for instance, sell a fancy, gilt-edged, leather-bound version of a book that has only been released as a mass-market paperback.
But what gives it real value, is the text.
You could steal software that drives a fairly humble Web site, and convert it to drive a megasite, or a design for a limited edition, artisanal product, and turn it into a cheap, mass-market knockoff.
In any of these cases, the originator of the text; whether an author, or a programmer, derives zero gain from it, and it can actually do damage to them, as the knockoffs could have real problems, and do brand damage, or the fake book could be published with the seal of the real publisher, and that publisher could see reputational damage, if the book contains textual errors (like lots of OCR'd books do).
It's a fairly big topic, and there are organizations that are dedicated to either freeing up artistic copyright, or overenforcing it.
The basic deal, is that, if you want art, you need to compensate the artist enough to make that art. AI might be at the point where that art could be faked, but I'm not sure if we are really there, or this is all a bunch of hype.
I ordered a paperback a couple years ago. Kundera, not a completely obscure book. The page on Amazon showed a Harper Perennial paperback with the squiggly line drawing cover art like I was expecting.
What I received looked like the cover head been designed in Word. Solid red, some generic oil painting print, and black text. The contents of the book was even worse. It looked like it was printed on a dot matrix or something.
Needless to say I returned it and have not bought a book from Amazon since.
Splotchy hard to read type, low quality paper and binding, poorly aligned text, rough edges from blunt cutting, weird cover possibly in a different language, and the knowledge that the authors aren't getting money from your purchase.
The latest version of "look inside" has become super stingy. The default is to show you the first twenty pages or so, then you have to use "Surprise Me", which feeds me one page at a time at some random location, most of the time in the first twenty pages I've already seen. In technical books, that's not enough to get a feel for the actual content. It used to be better, you could read several pages for each "Surprise Me".
It's really off-putting. In a bookstore, I can stand there ten minutes and make sure the book is worthwhile. Technical books are expensive.
Amazon treats me like a deadbeat, even though I buy lots of books from them.
> The default is to show you the first twenty pages or so,
For anything other than a novel, that's usually the least representative sample. That'll give you the copyright, table of contents (admittedly useful) and the Preface and the Introduction and a page with a couple of quotations on it.
Not really great to judge the quality of writing / code samples or whatever you're interested in.
I always used to use zlib for "flicking through" a book the way you would in a bookshop to see if it was worth buying it.
> It's really off-putting. In a bookstore, I can stand there ten minutes and make sure the book is worthwhile. Technical books are expensive.
We have a local chain that sells well curated used books and it's brilliant. Picked up my copy of Godel, Escher, Bach because I saw it on the shelf and flipped through and was like 'Yes, please!'
> The latest version of "look inside" has become super stingy. The default is to show you the first twenty pages or so, then you have to use "Surprise Me" [...]
Note that this is only for print editions. For Kindle editions it does not have "Surprise Me". For those "Look Inside" seems to just show you the same sample that you get if you ask it to send a sample to your Kindle.
I've found this is often completely useless for music books and math books as the sample doesn't get far enough in to actually have any music or math notation, and it is terrible handling of such notation that often makes an otherwise good Kindle book unreadable.
I once bought a Kindle edition of "Proofs from the Book" and it had been produced apparently using OCR which didn't know how to handle anything other than normal letters, digits, and common symbols. Things like integral signs, summation signs, and set relationship symbols showed up as whitespace.
Another math book I bought had many of the equations as graphics. Reading on the Kindle app on a computer or tablet was fine. The images were scaled to a reasonable size and were quite readable. On an eInk Kindle however they were not scaled. They were tiny and required more magnification than my best magnifying glass had for me to read them comfortably. I had to tap them to get a menu that would let me show the image full screen. This made reading the book incredibly tedious both from the slowness of the Kindle and only being able to see one equation at a time this way.
I'm puzzled where you see that "key insight" in the linked article. I came away with the feeling that the key insight was: if you want to sell books, you must love books.
Did you use the present tense to describe the past, before James Daunt took over, perhaps? I could understand "the key insight was that bookstores were no longer places to get books," but the entire article seems to be about how B&N has become a place to get books, because the CEO loves books, and empowers local stores to also love books and therefore sell them well.
I think your comment actually highlights the key insight.
For a long time, the fact that the bookstore was the _only_ place to “get books” occluded the fact that it was the _best_ place to explore and appreciate books. Amazon stripped away the veneer by showing that, actually, bookstores weren’t so ideal for “getting books” after all (book not carried, book not in stock, can’t find the right shelf, etc). Daunt is therefore succeeding by refocusing on “loving books,” as you put it, rather than on transacting books.
You might “get books” at a bookstore, but that’s probably not why you went there in the first place.
> Daunt is therefore succeeding by refocusing on “loving books,” as you put it, rather than on transacting books.
New B&N is much more focused on transacting (whether its books or other merchandise) than at any time in its past history. That’s why it works: B&N in the past has focused more than the current B&N on speculative/aspirational attempts to build demand and novel businesses (whether its effectively selling prime space for publisher’s promotions as discussed in the article, or the attempt to build B&N’s own Nook business by large dedications of space, or B&N’s bizarre restaurant business), the current version is focused on stocking and moving what the local stores know they can move.
Maybe my reading of the article is colored by the fact that I have become a frequent shopper at B&N within the last two years, but no, I go to B&N to get books, and so do many others, as evidenced by the statement in the article that sales are rising.
I don't know that I really disagree with anything you're saying about discovery and so on, but you keep describing it as a key insight of the article which doesn't seem to talk about it even a little bit. It sounds like your key insight, maybe, although the article seems to offer counter-evidence to your claim.
> Amazon seems invincible. … If [Toys R Us] couldn’t compete with Amazon, how could B&N hope to do any better?
> Daunt started giving more power to the stores,”
for example by
> ask[ing] employees in the outlets to take every book off the shelf, and re-evaluate whether it should stay.
I suppose I drew from this that those local employees were producing a better atmosphere for book-browsers than publishers’ marketing budgets had, and took that as evidence of this “discovery” strategy. Does that strike you as a stretch?
The “get books” wording may have been more confusing than clever. For my part, I hoped to convey that I (maybe you too?) go to B&N to browse books even when I’m not looking for anything in particular, not that I go for things other than books.
Bookstore buying has one benefit in that you can verify the condition of the book. I'm really sick of getting bruised books in the mail. So, with expensive hardbacks, I've shifted to ordering through a b&m so I can be sure of getting an undamaged book.
I feel like Amazon used to be a good place for discovering new books and that they decided at some point it was more profitable to steer customers toward sponsored (if that's the word for it) items. Nowadays I look at Librarything for suggestions.
Like pretty much every big tech company they have figured out that it's more profitable to give you what you don't want. If they give you what you want right away it's less time you spend looking at ads or potentially getting exposed to new things to buy. Google search results haven't become worse on accident. Amazon and eBay are the same way, poor search results create more conversions and more time engaged. It's the digital equivalent of grocery stores putting milk on the back wall.
i understand this is a drifting a bit, but to your grocery stores with milk on the back wall comment: we did a grocery store trip yesterday (full size grocery store) and i counted 7 different places they had salsa. different types of salsa at each location. four different locations (opposite corners of the store) for different types of cheese.
it’s maddening the direction these companies are pulling us towards.
They are a case study in business school that selling tchotchkes and trinkets is more profitable than books. I disagree with GP's article. It is the same myth in tech that "engineers make better founders" and "companies ran by execs with engineering backgrounds are more successful". It is feel-good masturbation for professionals without objective data backing it. In this case they are running with "booklovers run better bookstores". Not necessarily generalizable to all booksellers. The pandemic has shown that cheap rates play an oversized role in picking winners and losers.
Nonetheless what TFA says is absolutely true about both his original stores, Daunt Books, and Waterstones here in the UK. Waterstones is immeasurably better under his stewardship than it was before. If he’s turned around the biggest bookshop chains in both the UK and the US, he must be doing something right.
It’s possible that there’s more than one successful business model though, right?
I think the lesson may be that B&N wanted to be a successful bookstore and they achieved that by doing a better job serving book buyers mostly by giving individual stores more autonomy. That doesn’t mean another chain couldn’t succeed by turning into a books & trinkets store with a focus on high margin trinkets.
I can see where you're coming from, there are multiple angles. B&N is setting themselves up as a bookstore for book lovers, and Inigo is setting themselves up as a book store for culture lovers.
My local bookstore can generally match Amazon in terms of delivery times, including next-day, although I have to go and collect it (but they're local, so they're easy to get to). They know me now too, so I just drop them an email and they reply when it's arrived. I'm in the UK though, so I guess the smaller distances may help compared to larger countries.
I mostly agree, but for me Goodreads has given some good suggestions over the years as well.
But one thing especially is the “friend activity”. There are some friends that I have connected with whom have a similar reading preference to me. Discovering what they are reading / have read and rated has influenced my buying decisions quite often. When I lived near those friends, we would talk about the books as we had more contact, but since moving halfway across the world that does not happen as often. Goodreads is great for that (imo).
I don't understand how the same people who hang out around bookstores + make recommendations (which you classify as "good") aren't the same people on Goodreads writing reviews/making recommendations as users (which you recommend as bad?)
The incentives for the reviewers are different. On-line reviewers (often) get caught up in review-counting and status-seeking. They want to be a "Top Reviewer".
In a store the person has to go out of their way every time they recommend the same book. It's one-to-one vs. one-to-many. There's more of a chance they really do think highly of the book, maybe even years after reading it. That's valuable.
Goodreads is extremely annoying to use. It’s annoying to write interesting reviews which don’t surface compared to uninteresting reviews anyway. It’s annoying to look for books with interesting reviews and searching for anything a bit specific is completely impossible. I don’t know anyone who seriously like reading and use it.
The recommendations you would get inside a bookstore have nothing to do with this kind of experience. You are having an actual conversation about what you like and are looking for.
I tried using GoodReads and my problem was it was terrible for discovery, which is the only thing I cared about. Now it’s really just a tracker for books I read on Kindle.
> It's very hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending.
But is that a property of the recommendations or of the circumstances under which they are received?
It's possible that the quality of a recommendation generated by an AI based on psychological profiles is superior, so that if it was followed, the book would be enjoyed. But it's not being followed, because it appears too unlikely and the reader doesn't trust the AI.
If that's true, the competitive advantage of the physical interaction would not actually be the recommendations themselves, but the atmosphere it creates which makes readers susceptible to listening to them.
That is not how AI works and that is not what it is designed to do. AI doesn't understand you, nor does it care to - it just puts you into a bucket and recommends a set of products people in that bucket are statistically more likely to buy and keep buying, regardless of their quality. It's only if you land in a bucket with people who only buy good stuff that you get recommended good stuff. If you even get clipped by an edge of one of the ginormous junk buckets - it's over - junk central for you.
Now, some people, maybe most even, will try and do the same to you. But not all, and store owner can optimize for those who won't.
Definitely. For a long while (pre-covid), bookstores where my favorite place to hang out, drink a coffee, and browse! There's still something wonderful about having a physical book in your hands.
Maybe if you want the latest release of a popular author. In my experience, book inventories held by bookstores have decreased dramatically, which fits with the “carrying a curated selection” narrative. If I want anything released more than two years ago, the book store rarely has it, unless it’s a staple like 1984.
Depends on the store. I can have Amazon deliver me Egan by January 6 (9 days from now), or I can walk down to the local sci-fi store and pick one up off the shelf today. Of course, Barns and Noble don't even stock his books.
I'm not a prime member, but it's just before midnight Wednesday 28 December. If I order by 2am then Amazon UK says I can have Greg Egan's "Diaspora" (paperback) on Friday. None of the local bookshops open until after New Year (rural UK).
I'm rarely that desperate but Amazon delivery beats petrol costs here and can take only a day longer (assuming goods are even on the shelf locally).
I can get it from bookshop.org on Friday too, but it is £15.50, vs Amazon's £10.50.
> I can get it from bookshop.org on Friday too, but it is £15.50, vs Amazon's £10.50
France and a few other countries have the right idea here - the same book always costs the same, regardless if it's on Amazon, local bookstore, big chain store. There's a unique price set country-wide for the edition, and that's it, they have to compete on other things.
We used to have that in the UK (the "Net Book Agreement") for most of the 20th century, but it collapsed in the 1990s, I think under pressure from big chain bookshops like Dillons that wanted to be able to attract customers with discounts on books.
In the US, I think most (all?) retail price "fixing" got thrown out many decades ago. But new books mostly sold at list price pretty much until Amazon came along. There were exceptions. Some places had discounts on current hardcover bestsellers. And there was one place in Cambridge that was unusual for having pretty much across the board 15% or so discounts.
Ordering books not in stock also wasn't possible at a lot of stores and, when you could, it often took many weeks.
But costs are different, so that seemed like it would harm the ability of small businesses to compete? Wouldn't it be better to have a 'most favoured nation' deal where the cost of the book to a supplier (from the publisher) is fixed. That seems like it would create better competition? I can pay more for better service, for example.
Books just seem like such a bad thing to counterfeit. There is a super long tail of products, they weigh a lot and are expensive to ship, and aren’t expensive or high margin to begin with.
I actually really enjoyed the Amazon Books stores when they first opened; they were full of books, and not customized recommendations to me but actually the top rated and top-selling books across US Amazon shoppers.
But I feel like they succumbed to the same problem B&N did here, for different reasons -- they became full of kitchen gadgets and devices, because people were buying more things and less books on Amazon itself, and the stores started to mirror that.
This is exactly my thought process as I read the title. It was fairly obvious that Barnes & Noble pivoted their business model (starting about a decade and a half ago). It was already happening with the Borders bankruptcy; but that solidified and accelerated the change. Now BN’s business model is more aligned with general leisure (books, board games, gadgets, coffee, etc) than a “book store”.
Bookstores never really were the place to get specific books. Yes, you could, but in essence you'd just place a remote order.
Bookstores always were places to make discoveries, to learn, to have people recommend books for you. My first bookstore experiences go back to the late 70s, and the ones that stick in my mind as memorable? Two stores that had fiercely opinionated voracious readers as employees, who both knew books and their customers. (I could literally go there, as a kid, and ask "what book do I want to get my dad for Christmas", and they'd inevitably make fabulous recommendations that I wasn't old enough yet to figure out by myself)
This extends beyond bookstores - all stores are ultimately in the business of caring about customers and being deeply knowledgable about what they sell. The rest is logistics.
And, historically, those remote orders were sort of an exception process whereby your order would often not get sent to the bookstore until whenever they next got a delivery from whoever the publisher was.
Huh. Now I wonder if that system is regionally different. My experience was back in Germany, and delivery times were (unless it was a rare book) pretty predictably about a week.
I'm talking about the 1980s or so--so a long time ago. There were some big city bookstores that would have a special customer service desk but my recollection from rarely using was that it would take a while. In general, I remember special orders for books not in the store as not really being a customary thing generally. (And for out of print books being pretty much on you to look through individual stores.)
80s as well. But then, I was but a wee lass, and maybe my choices were easily available, just not in store.
Still, now I'm deeply interested in reading an account of how different book selling systems in the 80s worked. (Yes, I'm avoiding other tasks, why do you ask? ;)
In my experience, more often than not, Amazon ships books with very poor protection, and they arrive a little bent or creased in places. They never used to do this, but now it’s terrible. For that reason, alone, I like to buy books at actual stores.
> It seems like the key insight is that bookstores are no longer places to get books.
FWIW, this was considered common sense when I was in library school 20 years ago: that is to say, it was presented to us as a fact rather than a question. I don't think this was a unique or novel insight by B&N, rather a question of execution in the transformation of an already large company and, I suppose, the financial discipline to survive the competition.
Agreed: it's not the concept alone, but the execution. BN, Borders, BAM!, and others all tried the same strategy.
Borders is already out of business, and BAM! looks like it's on its way (it's no longer public so financials are difficult to know, but part time employees report that they get more or fewer hours based on how many gift cards they sell, which indicates cash flow problems).
BN is the only one doing well, and it's my opinion that this is due to being a comfortable place to buy and read books. By contrast, book selection at BAM! is atrocious, and the cafes all seem cold, uninviting, and surrounded by gimmicks and toys.
They can do the old-fashioned thing: order them for you. It may cost a bit more, but it's like in-store delivery (which is fine, if you're not too remote). It's too little, too late for B&N for this, but it can help smaller bookshops. And you'll get to know the personnel or the owner a bit better when you do.
If I want a specific book, I already know where to go: the internet. No physical store is ever going to compete on inventory ever again. Amazon will eat you alive.
I go to bookstores to discover new books, and to enjoy the feeling of being around books and the people who love them. The CEO realized this, and leaned in hard.
It's a really, really smart recognition of when passion for the product is actually a business advantage, and not just a warm fuzzy.
It's very hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending. Those recommendations are now a bookstore's real product.