Seattle Mystery Bookshop

How to commit the perfect murder!

It's always fun to visit Seattle Mystery Bookshop, where I signed copies of my latest Blood of the Reich, a Nazi-contemporary thriller set in the North Cascades, Tibet, and Germany. Owners and staff are a fount of information about all kinds of things novelistic and lurid, including today's discussion, which was, 'Could you commit the perfect murder?' Obviously JB, Fran and company have read deeply and well (warning: detectives and patrol cops use the store too) and know the ins and outs of the murder game. We also talked about Area 51, the Nazi pursuit of secret power sources and futuristic aircraft, and art theft...much more enjoyable than the debate over replacing the Alaska viaduct.

So how to murder? Ideally a stranger, or have a stranger do it. No body. No murder, ideally; make it look like an accident. But be careful about being too clever in your methods, lest your research or tools leave a trail. Oh, and dump the victim in New Mexico, they advised; decomposition is swift. But don't leave weapon wounds on skull and bones!

So, come on down to Seattle Mystery Bookshop and hone your homicide skills. Or, just buy a book - like mine!

Bill Dietrich

Spawn of Point/CounterPoint

Emme B wrote:

I’ve been following this thread since it started. I keep going back and forth on adding my two cents to the conversation (really there is no monetary value if someone is counting). This post keeps eating at me though. It's an invaluable commodity to have someone in your community available to help recommend books based on their knowledge of what books and authors exist as well as what a persons' specific likes and dislikes might be. I agree. We need to support those stores. My concern, and what's eating at me -- if you aren't going to recommend books to me -- no matter how much I'd like reading them -- based on who published the book -- or any other reason based on factors external to the quality of the book -- I'm not sure I'd trust that I was getting the best possible recommendation. I’m sure it’s a better experience visiting your bookstore than it is to utilize an online seller or a giant box store that employs people better at making coffee than they are at recommending books -- but I think integrity is an important quality for those precious few bookstores that can offer quality recommendations. For my experience, you've lost some of that integrity by refusing to work with one publisher -- no matter how valid the reason.

JB counters:

It is odd to me that so many people are having a hard time accepting that any given bookseller will make decisions to not stock this book or that book for any number of reasons. That we’re a specialty shop right away tells anyone that we’re going to be stocking, recommending and selling a narrow selection of books. That specialty shops can and do exist does not seem to be problematic. That we don’t carry military history, animal husbandry, atlases, photo books on the Royal Wedding or political tracts on the viability of communes doesn’t seem to rile people.

Similarly, there are authors we do not stock because they do not sell well –or at all – for us. That’s a financial judgment. To stock them all would tie up cash flow and shelf space, so we don’t. Some of these authors sell well in general shops or corporate shops, but not for us. No one seems to question this. Similarly, we’ve decided to not stock Harper’s new, expensive trade paperback editions of Agatha Christie. We have plenty of her books in used mass market for 1/3 the price. The $12.99 copies won’t sell well. Why tie up money in them? If someone else was publishing the McBain backlist, we probably wouldn’t stock them either. But, yes, we won’t stock the Amazon copies. It is ok to not stock particular books from Harper but not ok to stock books from Amazon? That makes no sense.

But if we publicly announce that we’re not going to stock an author due to the publisher, that seems to be a problem. If you’ve been following the thread, you’ve read comments from publishers who have written about Amazon’s unreasonable demands for terms. You’ve read other booksellers write about how Amazon has damaged their businesses. You’ve read our points that we’re not refusing to carry these books due to the author or the quality of the writing – only because of the predatory corporate practices of his publisher. This is not censorship. We’re not prohibiting the publication of the book. We’re just saying it would not be in our financial interests – short term and long term – to carry the books.

As for integrity, that’s a value judgment in the eye of the viewer. Most of the response we’ve gotten has been congratulatory for showing the integrity to not stock Amazon books. Is there no integrity in standing up for your views in the face of ridicule? - and that takes us to Jacob

Jacob wrote:

After reading all these comments, I've decided to never buy from independent stores again. You don't like Amazon, fine, but taking it out on the authors who are the most important part of the entire chain, is unforgivable. I don't care where a writer publishes as long as I can get the book. Readers, Books Store owners, and publishers should be kissing the ass of every author who graces you with a book. Learn your place people.

JB counters:

And where just is our ‘place’? Because we're booksellers, we're now second-class citizens, mere servants to you who know better? Perhaps we should no longer be allowed to vote? 

And as for not caring who the publisher is, if this particular author was being published by the National Socialistic Party Press and I refused to do business with them, would you feel the same? You’d really pay money to ANY publisher to get a book no matter if they underwrote child prostitution or the abolition of integrated marriage? If so, more power to you.

Joan wrote:

You are effectively banning books as well as depriving your customers of the works of those writers. That's sad.

JB counters:

No – we’re banning nothing. We’re saying it is financial dangerous for us to stock them. If you want to buy one, go ahead.

However, if you wanted to buy an e-version of this book, we couldn’t sell it to you. Amazon has that as proprietory. If you want to buy a copy for your Kindle, you have to buy from Amazon. Are they banning books if they do not allow other booksellers to sell their authors’ e-books? They have a monopoly and we're not supporting it. And we're the bad guys?

Beth D wrote:

You are absolutely attacking authors. You boasted about pulling ALL the books off your shelves by any author who dared publish with Amazon. God forbid these people (you know, the ones with the talent) refuse to be used and discarded by the NY publishers, and instead team up with a publisher who knows how to sell books. You need to support authors and not publishers. They are the ones who matter.

JB counters:

There is nothing I can say to change your mind. But you’re dead-on that we need to support authors. We do. We stock books by authors from small presses, authors who have printed the books themselves, authors whose books are out of print but who have copies and sell them to us so that we can introduce them to new readers, as well as authors whose books are published by specialty presses and the major publishers. We also order copies from overseas when US versions are no longer in print. We have signings with first-time authors and international bestsellers and we treat them all the same. (With a quick count I came up with 34 formal signings between Jan 1st and June 30th. In there were a number of stock signings as well as signed copies bought from self-published authors.)

But, in this one case, Beth, we agree – we’re not supporting this particular publisher.

D.N wrote:

…That said, JB, how can bookstores make getting books something more than just cruising in and grabbing said title off the shelf and swiping the debit card? I've asked myself this question every time I see these discussions. I love bookstores. I find them both peaceful and stimulating. They are generally just great spaces to hang out in. How can bookstores make the extra investment more appealing? Of course, being a specialty bookshop, you have a clientele of dedicated readers, who will always shop there, because you cater to their dedication, which is something an online presence like Amazon can't really duplicate no matter what their algorithms are. But how do bookstores do this for the more general reader?...

JB answers:

To be honest, I cannot fathom how a small, general independent bookseller can do it. I look through the publishers’ catalogs and see the mind-numbing selection of books and I do not know how they decide to order and stock this book but not that book. They have to know their customers and what their customers go for. They have to know that a yet another new diet book is probably a waste of time and money or not, and, really, now many memoirs by politicians who are planning a run at the presidency do they need?  How many copies of a new book about Princess Diana are realistically worth carrying?

And, if they’re worth their salt, they’ll be quick to special order what their customers want that they don’t have – just like us. We order non-mysteries for our regulars all the time. You cannot have it all in the shop at the exact moment it is needed. You have to have understanding customers.

And, to be sure, there are people who open bookshops who are not booksellers. It takes passion and care and to some un-teachable degree, an innate ability to hand-sell books. Not everyone can do it. (Similarly, some authors are spectacularly good at selling themselves and their books – some are terrible.) It takes effort and time. Opening a bookshop is not a quiet, calm relaxing way to make a living. You have to work hard to make it look easy.

But the other part of the equation is that you, the customer, have to patronize the small independent. I would say that the vast majority of small independents who have closed in the last decade were forced to because their customers abandoned them. It takes effort on your part to – to get dressed, to make the trip, to talk to the booksellers, to spend more money there than if you stayed home, in your pajamas, to order on-line. Yes, you can save a lot of money ordering on-line. But if you do that you can’t shake your head and say what a pity the corner bookseller is gone. You, the reader and buyer, have to sacrifice convenience and price if having small businesses matter to you. If you don’t help them, you’re part of the reason they’re no longer around.

A successful independent bookshop should be a partnership between their loyal customers and the booksellers. But it takes both sides for it to work. If the customers stop coming in, it doesn’t matter how good the booksellers are, the shop will close.

If you don’t care that independents are vanishing, do nothing. Keep ordering from the corporate sites. If you want your independents to survive, the best thing you can do is spend your money with them.

Sex, Blood, Twilight, The Girl Who, and Weiners

That get your attention?

I'm here at Seattle Mystery Bookshop, eating chocolate chip cookies kindly baked by Gina, when I'm asked to write a guest blog.  I know to do whatever the good people at SMB ask of me, so I quickly agree.  But what to write about?  We chat as I chew.  Yasmine Galenorn once wrote a blog piece for them called Sex, Dragons, Magic, they tell me, and the title alone sent hits off the chart.

Because there's something about titles, right?

I struggle with titles.  My first novel is called Judgment Calls, but it started out as Final Verdict and was briefly known as Unreasonable Doubt.  Too "courtroom thriller," those other two titles were discarded.  Angel's Tip was originally titled Last Call, but James Grippando beat me to the shelves.  Dead Connection was called Dead Connection, a title that my pop culture bible Entertainment Weekly deemed corny, proving that EW is always right.

My new book is called LONG GONE.  I had been hoping that another title might come to me.  My husband ruined the title for me when he recalled the name of that foreign exchange student in Sixteen Candles.  Yep, in the Burke-Simpson household, my new book is known as Long Duck Dong.  

One alternative was TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.  I ran it past my "kitchen cabinet" on Facebook. No bueno.  Sounded like a YA Romance.  LONG GONE generally got the thumbs up.  Some noted that it sounded like a Harlan Coben book.  Nothing wrong with that, I say.

Titles matter.  In ways we don't process, a title signals to us the "kind" of book we are about to read.  Get the wrong title, and a reader who might love the book may never even pick it up.  But that's why I love stores like Seattle Mystery Bookshop.  The people here are readers.  They care about their customers.  And they'll look past an author's name, a jacket image, or a title to get the right book into the right readers' hands.

Thanks SMB!

Alafair 

Quantifying the Hoo-Hah

People who track this stuff and watch such things tell us that the response to our Amazon conversation has been extrordinary.  We'd been getting 25-35 hits on our blog a day - which they tell me is not bad.

The first day, with the first post, we had 2,332 hits.

The second day we had 2,766.

Over the weekend, it quieted down some, with 805 hits on Saturday and 918 on Sunday.

Today, so far, we've had 925.

Who knew? We have been watching what links people have used to get to our blog. While there have been referals from authors' sites and book-industry sites, some have been more obscure. And not all have been from North America. We've seen links from New Zealand, Japan and France.

Who knew!

At The SMB on Support Your Local Independent Bookstore Day

How appropriate is it for a local (regional) author to make an appearance at SMB on this particular day, huh?

I'm here in support of my most recent Gray Dog Press title from the River City series, AND EVERY MAN HAS TO DIE. As always, there are stacks of books for me to sign, smiling faces and great conversation (today from Adele and Bill). The independent bookstore (and especially the independent MYSTERY bookstores) is such a powerful way for the writer to connect with the reader. We get to share things about our own books, but we also get to share thoughts about all sorts of other books with fellow readers, as a reader.

All of this really comes back to community, and a shared experience, concerning something we all love -- great stories (in the form of great books in this case).

So if you went out to support your independent bookstore today, I salute you. It is a great place to commune with the gods of great storytelling and to keep that wonderful vibe going. I know I look forward to this trip across the Cascades to SMB more than other for exactly that reason.

 Frank Zafiro

The Return of Count/Counterpoint

Beth D. writes:

Wolfgang, this has nothing to do with self published "indie" writers. JB is attacking published authors (and thinking he's hurting Amazon) whose books are released by Amazon Publishing, not people who upload their unpublished manuscripts onto the internet. Big difference.

JB counters:

I don't believe anything I've written has been an attack on an author. I could've ignored Author X's request for a signing and tossed the ARC as another bookseller says he has done. I thought the guy was owed an explanation. I'm not rejecting him - I'm rejecting enriching a corporation that is destroying my industry. (And, please note that I took pains to not include his identity. This isn't about him or his writing but it is about his publisher.)

And for the record, we're peppered with requests from authors daily who say they have a book published and expect a signing. If the book doesn't meet certain financial requirements (available from a major wholesaler at a reasonable discount and is returnable), we turn them down because the economics do not work for us. Many people seem to feel that running a bookshop is all fun and games - it isn't. It is a brutal world of dollars and cents/sense.

There is also a feeling afoot these days that just because someone can become a published author that they should become a published author. That's not true. And it isn't true that everyone who has a printed book is automatically owed a signing. There are all kinds of factors that go into us agreeing to holding a signing but the major one is does it make economic sense for us to do so. If it doesn't, we can't.

Wolfgang writes:

What is this total denial I am seeing with indie bookstores? The technology is here. It isn't just Amazon. It is Smashwords, B&N, etc. Ereaders are selling like hotcakes. Editors and agents are no longer the gatekeepers. Readers are the gatekeepers. And when they can spend less money for more books..duh! That's a no brainer. This is all about economics. I understand your argument and yes, it sucks for you. You live in a a bad time for indie bookstores. A very bad time. The publishing world has turned upside down but the only way for you to survive is to embrace and support novelists and invite them into your store for signings. Otherwise, you're dead. Harsh but true. You can thrive if you invite indie authors to your store and carry their books but you won't. You think you're fighting a war but you aren't. This is just the future, man. That's all. Go with it or die. And that stupid reference to Its a Wonderful Life was just that. Stupid.

JB counters:

As founding member and president of the "JB is Stupid" club, I say welcome. It is a large and healthy membership. No dues, secret handshakes or meetings. We're vocal but casual.

As for the economics of selling e-books, let me note that we've investigated the Google/Indiecommerce e-book system and will be rolling out a new website on July 1st to enable our loyal customers to buy their e-books from us. We won't be selling Kindle versions as that is proprietary and I personally do not understand how flexible the files are for Nook vs. Kindle and if one can be read by the other (I don't care either, as I personally have no interest in reading from one.)

We've been investigating it all for months and have talked to a number of other independents and the concensus is that if they sell 10 e-books a month it was a good month. The vast majority of sales of e-books are going to the huge corporations. While it is grand that Google and the American Booksellers Association have worked out this way for us independents to sell e-books, a dirty little secret of it is that anyone wishing to do so has to set up a Google account to buy from us. Once they do, they do not have to go back through us to buy more e-books. So, conceivably, this is a way for Google to build up a client base to compete head-to-head with Amazon in a way that does not need our inclusion. We'll all just have to see how that turns out.

But if you would like to know more about the raw economics of selling e-books, our bookkeeper and bookkseller Fran crunched the numbers in a blog post on Feb 3rd, and the math is education. I urge you to take the time to go through it.  Having the capacity to sell e-books will not be the saviour many expect it to be.

And the reference to It's a Wonderful Life was meant to be a way to give people who are not working in bookselling a frame of reference. It is also an apt comparrison, but I understand that you did not appreciate it. In this debate, it is important to keep all of the factors in play - the economics, the scales and the emotions.

Shelfaware had an interesting thing today about the who and how and why of Amazon's recommendations:

 How do you become a top 1,000 Amazon reviewer? A new study by Cornell professor Trevor Pinch suggests that the website's elite reviewers "do not always make independent decisions about which books and other products they write about.... the reviewers in many cases acknowledge that in order to maintain their high rankings and continue to receive free products (one of the perks of being a top reviewer), they have to make surprisingly calculated decisions about what to review and what to say about those products," paidContent.org reported.

Pinch noted that a fundamental problem is the expectation on the part of Amazon's customers that reviewers are just ordinary shoppers. "The issue of the 'customers' not really being customers needs to be addressed," said Pinch, who found that 85% percent of respondents had received free products from publishers, agents, authors and others. The "way to keep those freebies flowing is to pump out glowing book reviews," paidContent.org wrote, adding that 88% of respondents reported that most or all of the reviews they wrote were positive.

If the independents go away, then so do their recommendations, websites, blogs, newsletters and insights. That, the 'customer reviews' on Amazon may be your main source of imformation. Is that what you want?

One of our local sales reps (thanks, Cindy!) sent us this link to a essay in the Seattlepi.com by Trevor Griffey explaining in depth the Top 10 Reasons to Avoid Amazon.com due to their actions as a corporate citizen.

I understand that I may not be changing any minds with these posts. But I do hope that they're causing people to think about the issues involved. If you understand the elements involved, the threats and dangers and benefits and outcomes and you consciously chose to spend your money with a massive conglomerate or a small independent, fine. But if you haven't been aware of the issues that we're trying to raise, you need to be.

~JB

Make Mine an Indie

I admit it: I'm old. I've begun talking in "remember when's." Remember when you could only watch cartoons on Saturday morning? When the jobs section of the classified ads was segregated into Male and Female? When the Rolling Stones were still a going concern? Remember when every town had a real brick-and-mortar bookstore? Browsing the shelves, reading the blurbs, ignoring that old saw about not judging a book by its cover. Best of all was the opportunity to build a relationship with intelligent, literate bookstore staff who could recommend books based not only on past purchases but on intuition. Maybe you thought you didn't like specfic, but some knowing indie bookstore employee insisted that, damn it, you would like Terry Pratchett because you like to laugh.

Amazon can gather data about you. They can tot up your past purchases, look at your reviews, troll your bank accounts and sweep through your Facebook likes, but they can't intuit. They can't give you that brick-and-mortar service. And they can't give you a booksigning.  

Joan Opyr

Point/CounterPoint

Rick writes:

Sadly, in this sort of silly spat, I will bet on Amazon. Choosing not to sell a book, or in this case a lot of books, because you don't like the publisher only hurts the readers and ultimately the store, because readers will go elsewhere.

JB counters:

Your condesension aside, all booksellers chose what to sell or not to sell. I would bet that Amazon doesn't carry or sell every single book that is published. And, if I'm correct and they don't, they must have some sort of critea that dictates what to not offer. Even the largest brink-n-mortar bookseller cannot have it all. Sometimes it is based on politics (too far left or too far right), or economics (too expensive to stock and sales will be too slow to justify the jam in the cash flow) or too regional (Northwest authors may not be stocked in Vermont and authors from Ohio may not sell well here) - whatever. There are infinate reasons and they all may have their validity. For us to not stock books by Amazon is just one. We used to stock all of the new mass market copies of Agatha Christie that were in print from two different publishers at $7.99. But Harper has gotten the rights to all and is putting them into trade paperback at $12.99. Any current publisher releasing trade paperback editions of authors whose books are readily available in a gazillion used paperbacks... What's the point in stocking them?  Isn't Amazon going to compete against itself by selling old, used copies of McBain alongside the newer, expensive copies? Or maybe they're no longer going to sell used copies of the books they are printing...

Anyway, not stocking their McBains is about the price of the new copies and how slowly they'd sell. We currently have a good supply of used McBains and have no demand for new.

 Heather writes:

That is all well and good that you are sticking to your guns. I love independent bookstores, but I buy all my books of Amazon. I read around 150 books a year. Their prices just cannot be beat. I can't afford to pay full cover price for a book at an independent (I've yet to see one that charges anything below cover price unless they are remainders). I just received a preorder of 5 best selling author's books. Each one of them was around $13. That's AT LEAST $10 cheaper per book than any independents I know. If I were rich it would be a different story, but I have to watch my pennies and Amazon is where it's at. If I can find a good price from independents then the shipping costs eat up anything I've saved. I'd love to buy, but I can't afford $27.99 each for all my books.

JB counters:

I agree that books are priced too high. For at least a decade, the major publisher have seemed to price their books so that they can be discounted. Discounting is something that corporate outfits can afford to do. They're called 'loss leaders'. They're the old way of getting customers into the shop so that they buy other things as long as they're saving money on the thing they came in to buy.

Puzzle this: I have, in a pinch when I needed them for a signing, bought copies of an author's books at a price club. The price I paid there was less than what I would have had to pay the publisher. What are the economics of that? Are they getting a better, deeper discount than I get from the publisher? If so, that's illegal ( - back in the early '90s, Penguin lost a huge court case over giving different discounts to different accounts). They're probably not. But they're willing to lose money on a couple of hardcover so that you're there to buy a skid of tuna fish.

Small independents cannot compete with the discounts of Amazon or Costco. That's why there are so few left. And your taking advantage of those discounts is also why there are so few independents left.

Keep in mind that the standard, base discount in the bookworld is 40%. That means that if I were to buy a $20 book from a publisher, I pay them $12 for it. With that $8 'profit', I pay the payroll, supplies, rent and so on. THERE IS NO WAY FOR A SMALL INDEPENDENT TO STAY AFLOAT IF THEY TRY TO MATCH THE DEEP DISCOUNTS OF THE CORPORATIONS. Our pockets are not that deep.

Here's a clear case: The new Michael Connelly, The Fifth Witness, has a list price of $27.99. That is the price we charge. We got a 46% discount, meaning that we paid $15.12 for each copy. Amazon is selling the new hardcover for $16.24. They're selling the Kindle version for $9.99. Not only can we not match those prices, the publisher is undoubtedly losing sales of the hardcover to the e-book. And then they've also lost the sale of the eventual paperback, which is coming out in October (just six months after the hardcover) at $14.99. The Kindle undercuts them all - they are even undercutting their own price of the hardcover. How can the publication of books survive at that rate?

So, Heather, if you insist on paying so little for a book, it is a good thing you are so content to deal only with Amazon because  soon they'll be the only ones left to buy from.

Cara wrote:

JB, I empathize, but people don't worry about Goldman Sachs being "too big." And Amazon is not a global bank with its fingers in everyone's business. I'm a writer, and I still think the Big Six is the way to go for authors.

JB counters:

I would disagree with you about Amazon not being global. We had a number of people cancel their orders for the US hardcover of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest because they could order UK paperbacks months in advance from Amazon UK. I'm sure this is happening with Jo Nesbo's books. I know it damaged the US sales of John Connolly and Minette Walters years ago, both of whose books were available in England long before their US publishers released them here. In fact, Connolly's US publisher corrected this by moving up his US release date to match the UK specifically so that they wouldn't lose sales to the ease of ordering UK copies on-line. And, to be clear, we cannot order them. They're embargoed in cases like this so that we can't undercut the US sales, but individuals can order them and Amazon can profit by the this. US booksellers lose, the authors lose, the US publishers lose - Amazon gains.

Cara, if you don't view Amazon for the global entity it is you're kidding yourself. And as for it not being a bank - patience, I'm sure they'll get there.  

And I, for one, do worry about any business that is 'too big to fail'. 'Bigger is Better' never benefits the taxpayer or the consumer - or the workers, who make up both sets.

Anna writes:

Forgive me, but I was not born with a capitalist mindset. I think it's probable that someday, bookstores will be a thing of the past. But the bookstores that last are going to be the ones that adapt. There are still plenty of book selling opportunities that can't be replicated online. Children's books come to mind as do collectors' editions, graphic novels, coffee table and gift books. In-store events could include book clubs, author signings, and writing workshops. You don't have to sell books and only books. What about notebooks and pens? Coffee cups? Greeting cards? Things that writers and readers love. That's what the indie bookstore in my town has done and in the last few years, they have actually expanded while other stores in other towns are closing down. I have a Kindle but I still shop at that bookstore (and love it with all my heart).

JB counters:

Anna, you say you're a writer but bookstores will be a thing of the past. You must then be comfortable with people no longer being able to have your books on their shelves, to be able to easily loan your works to friends, to having people stumble upon your works in a dusty, old used bookstore a century after you're dead. I find that sad.

You also say that you have a small independent bookshop in your community that you love. I suggest that you go in there and have a conversation with them about all of this. Ask them if they're content to stock and sell Amazon books. I'd be really curious to know what they say.

As for you not having a capitalist mindset. I didn't either. I never aimed to be a bookshop owner, didn't tell my high school guidance counselor that this is what I wanted to be doing when I was 53, but here I am. And as we live in a capitalistic system, that's where the game is played. That you or I don't like it does not matter one bit. No one who works in a bookshop does it to get rich. We do it because it is honorable, rewarding and we get a lot of free books.

Matt writes:

I don't like the idea of a bookstore blacklisting authors or even publishers. The logic seems, well, illogical as well.

JB counters:

Besides what I wrote in reply to Rick, if Amazon's books were priced at $25 a trade paperback and I knew they were not going to sell at that price and I choose to not order them purely from a financial reason, would that still be view as 'blacklisting'? If Amazon was known to be underpaying female authors for their works and I chose to not stock their books due to that, is that 'blacklisting'? If I disagree with the politics of the publisher - let's say they're supporters of Apartied or funded by narco-terrorists - and do not wish to support them with my money, is that 'blacklisting'? If a publisher's business model aims to make my bookselling business obsolete, why am I obligated to participate?

J.R. writes:

But a vendetta against Amazon is truly cutting off your nose to spite your face. You can't offer your customers the books they want you hurt YOURSELF, not your customer who goes to Amazon or Amazon who probably profits from your ire.

JB counters:

If my customers are going to Amazon anyway to buy these books, why am I hurting myself by not stocking them? Let's keep in mind that the way readers are most likely going to find out about these books is by being ON AMAZON. And if they're already on Amazon and they regularly buy from Amazon and not small independents, I fail to see why it hurts us to not stock the books that they're not going to buy from us anyway. What it means is that we can devote money and shelf space to other authors, authors from small independent publishers perhaps ignored by the corporate bigwigs: Rue Morgue, Busted Flush, Bitter Lemon, Poisoned Pen, Felony & Mayhem.

If, as many of the posts have pointed out, that the business model of the independent bookseller is doomed and we are destined to close, then, soon and in the future, there will be no place for these Amazon-published authors to sign anyway. What's going to happen, inevitably, is that Amazon will have the authors go to the warehouse (remember that Amazon's original business model was to be that they would have no physical presense at all, no warehouse at all - you would order a book from them and they'd order it from the publisher and have it shipped to you. That didn't last long, did it?) to sign the books that they're going to ship to their customers. If they aren't already planning this they're slipping a cog.

Because where this must go, inexorably, will be to readers downloading books and having a chance to meet the authors only at talks. If everything goes to e-readers, there's no point in a signing tour. Maybe a lecture tour but you can do those on-line as well. Authors never need to leave their homes. You can do a world-wide skype tour. Readers will never again meet or see their favorite authors. Why should anyone underwrite that expense?  It can all be done on-line. No more signings; there is nothing to sign.

Lastly, no customer has asked if we have any of these Amazons books. No customer has asked us to order one for them. I take that to mean that they're buying them directly from the publisher.

So, you may ask, is this tilting at windmills? Am I baying at the moon, trying to hold back the tide, demanding to be thrown into the water to sink and therefore prove my innocence by drowning?

No.

At some point, we each have to stop accepting what we see as wrong.  If a publisher's business model aims to make my bookselling business obsolete, why am I obligated to participate?

That's wrong, I won't do it and I won't stay silent in the face of what is wrong.

~JB

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

Network, released on November 14th, 1976... a quarter century ago.

Live from the Frontlines

by Ken Mercer

I'm sitting here behind the front counter at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop as I write these words. I'm typing as fast as I can because JB wants his chair back. Please excuse any typos.

I traveled here this morning from the San Francisco Bay Area for a signing. When I showed up, I heard about the small firestorm that had erupted on this blog about the role of independent bookstores in the age of online bookselling and publishing.

I think the events of this afternoon make the case for why the independent bookstore needs to not only survive but to prevail (apologies, Mr. Faulkner).

In the 90 minutes I've been here I've had the chance to hang out with some people who are so passionate about books that they've chosen to dedicate their lives to them (the staff). I've gotten to hear from people who have read my books (the customers). I even had the chance to recommend and sell another author's book (Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact) to a customer based on what he said he liked to read. I hope that my commission will be forthcoming.

I'm on a tour to support my second book, East on Sunset. What I've learned in the two years since becoming a published author are that the rewards are different than what I imagined them to be when I set out down this path.

Some of the things I've come to value most are hearing from people who have gotten some measure of enjoyment from my books, and to spend time with the people who are enthusiastic enough about my work to handsell it.

These things take place in bookstores. Physical bookstores. If they go away, something important will have been lost--for both readers and writers.

You don't miss your water until your well runs dry.

 

On Dave's Thoughts

This is not surprising. I suppose the telegraph companies wailed and gnashed their teeth at the phone companies, too. Amazon isn't beating you because they're an evil empire out to destroy the little guy. They're winning because they have a better business model, that works better for how customers actually live today. I spend a not-insignificant portion of my income on books. I have an entire room in my house dedicated to them. And I haven't set foot in a bookshop in five years. Why would I? You might have what I want, or you might not. I might be able to find it on your shelves or somebody else might have left it in with the romances. You might be able to order it, or you might not. I gladly shell out my $70 a year for Amazon Prime. I make it back in shipping costs by early March at the latest. I don't have to leave my house. I can order pretty much anything that's ever been printed–if Amazon doesn't have it, their marketplace sellers probably do. I don't have to search for it, wait on special orders, or wait in line. And it all happens at prices with which you can't compete–not because Amazon is some kind of anti-competitive monopoly, but because their business model is just plain cheaper. And that's not even mentioning ebooks. Despite my life-long addiction to books, both as a medium and as objects, I haven't bought a physical book in two years, and I don't miss them at all. It's a better experience, all around. At first, when something came out that I couldn't get electronically, I bought a physical copy and grumbled through reading it. Now I just don't read it. Eventually, publishers will adapt or die, and I won't have to worry about a lack of electronic versions. (And as a side note, even without books and music and movies and all the other entertainment detritus that did little but take up space and time, the Prime account is still a hell of a deal). Look, I sympathize. The position you're in can't be very much fun. But I'm growing sick of people making out Amazon to be some kind of Wal-Mart. They're not. They're not just bigger or meaner or cheaper–they're flat-out better. You've looked at the author's perspective, and the bookseller's perspective, and Amazon's perspective, and the publisher's perspective–great. Well, here's this consumer's perspective: I don't shop with them because they're brainwashing me and destroying the little guys; I shop with them because they have what I want, when I want, at a price I want. That's just not a service you–or any physical bookshop–can provide to me any more. From where I sit, they're not really your competitor–they're your successor. - Dave

My question for Dave is why is he bothering to read a blog - much less take the time to reply to it - from a small independent bookshop? Clearly he doesn't give a damn about independent businesses and, if he's correct and we don't survive, blogs like ours will cease. So why does he bother?

If we don't survive, there will be no more blogs, no website, no recommendations, no weekly newzines and no quarterly newsletters. Those only exist if people buy physical books. Selling e-books will not support them. I have no idea if Dave pays any attention to those things we produce, if he uses them to decide what to buy from Amazon. But it is possible he won't have them to use much longer.

The other issue in all of this is that if the independent booksellers to vanish, as Dave seems to gleefully believe they will, can publisher continue to publish? If we crash and B&N were to crash like Borders has, will there be an outlet for physical books? Can publishers continue to produce physical books with only university bookshops, libraries, price clubs and Amazon to sell them? And if they can't, how can publisher continue to publish? Can selling e-books support the marketing and editing and sales force that exists? If not, if publishing as it currently exists goes away, Dave may be left with only what Amazon decides to 'publish' itself.

If the market for books continues to narrow, inevitably the choices readers have will, too. 

Finally, some posts have decried my stance since Amazon is going to contiue publishing more and more authors and even reissuing many. As a country, as a planet, we've been dealing with the impacts of the idiotic, short-sighted, if not mendatious, actions of the huge corporate banks. The question has been about Too Big To Fail. If that is a bad idea for banks, shouldn't it be applied to any corporation? If we're to worry about Goldman Sachs as being too big, when do we apply that to Amazon? Because we should.

Others have posted/commented that we need to adapt or we will die. In our 21 years, we've continually adapted. We're not hesitant to do that and we'll continue to adapt to the changing paradigm.  We will be unveiling our new website that offers online sales and e-books.  We're not sticking solely with printed books, but they are and always will be our primary focus.  How could they not be? How can you call yourself a bookseller and not sell books? Otherwise, you're just a 'filesharer'.

 ~ JB