Seattle Mystery Bookshop

Why the Seattle Mystery Bookshop Must Close

 

 

I’ve worked here almost since the day it was open for business. At first, I was here just one day a week, so that Bill could have a day off – which he used to do bookkeeping at home. I remember their long dinning room table which was covered with pile after pile of paperwork. I don’t know where they ate dinner. Slowly, this place absorbed my life until my brain looked like Bill’s dining room table. In ’98, when he felt like stepping back from ownership, Bill offered to sell it to me but, happily, he kept working with us all. It has been a great honor to own the Seattle Mystery Bookshop since 1999. Sadly, that is now going to come to an end.

The Seattle Mystery Bookshop will close on Saturday, September 30th at the end of the day.

Why? There are so many reasons. Blame Amazon? Sure, that’s the easy thing to say but the massive changes in the world of bookselling are far larger than that. In fact, the changes in the over-all economy make it a much, much bigger story.

To be fair, you have to look back to the rise of mega-stores like Barnes & Noble. They were exciting but they began the phenomena of deeply discounting books. They wanted bodies in the stores, they wanted customers to buy books and CDs and calendars and to drink coffee and browse magazines and they were willing to use books as a loss leader to get you in there. And people went. There was no way for small independents to compete with what a large corporation could do, or what they demanded from the publishers. Publishers paid more attention to them because they had to. Publishers let them do things (claiming a certain percentage of damage from each shipment without detailing which and what; getting placement fees for putting books in prominent places; author events denied to small shops) not allowed to the small independents. That would come back to bite them when Borders collapsed and left a significant hole in the publishers’ business model.

The next blow to independent booksellers came from the rise of e-books and here, too, publishers made a terrible mistake. For decades, publishers released some books in hardcover and some as paperback originals – mass market paperbacks to be precise. In a year, the books in hardcover would usually be released in paperback. That way, those who could afford to buy hardcovers and who didn’t want or need to wait could get it when it was new. Those who couldn’t afford the hardcover price knew they could get it at the library or get it in paperback in a year. This was a model that allowed all budgets to get books - a true mass market for books.

Think of Hollywood. Movies would come out and play for weeks or months. You could go to it and pay full price at night, or go see a matinee for a bit less. If your city had them, you could wait to catch a movie you wanted at a second run theater, weeks after it premiered but months before it might, might, show up on cable. Again, it was a model that allowed for a mass audience. When movies on cassette became practical, think of what it would have done to the Hollywood model if movies could be rented at the same time they hit theaters allowing people to see a movie for far cheaper than going to a theater?

That’s what publishers did. They allowed a far less expensive version of their books to be available right away, undercutting the sale of hardcovers with the cheaper e-version. What they should’ve done was to give the hardcovers time to sell before releasing the e-book along with the mass market. But they didn’t. They way they did it took the legs out of the publishing of hardcovers. In reaction, in order to make up for dropping sales, they upped the price of all books, driving more of the market to the cheaper alternative of e-books. And they blew it with paperbacks, too. They said the marketplace was moving away from mass markets, that readers, and bookclubs, and booksellers wanted trade paperbacks at twice the price of the mass market. The mass market paperback was dead. If it was, they murdered it.  The fallacy here is that trade paperbacks limit the number of books that someone with limited disposable income can buy AND those higher priced trade paperbacks were undercut by the e-book prices as well. (Now, it should be noted, that publishers are beginning to release titles that have been trade paperbacks as mass markets. We’d assume sales of the more expensive trade paperbacks have slowed and publishers are trying to lure readers back with the traditionally less expensive softcover. Yet now there are far fewer places to sell those cheaper editions. And now Hollywood allows you to rent movies at home so who needs to go to movie theaters any more!)

The American Booksellers Association moved to stem the tide of readers going to e-books by making it possible for independents to sell them too. But it was pointless. You can’t pay the rent and your employees with the sale of dirt cheap e-books. That’s a business model that cannot work unless you’re a huge outfit that also sells tires and tubesocks.

So, anyway, Big Box stores and on-line and e-book sales are a huge part of it but there are at least two other equal parts.

The second is the over-all economy. The Great Recession took away a lot of jobs and dislocated a ton of folks – especially in downtown Seattle, where we are. Suddenly, the disposable income that they’d used to buy books was greatly lowered, if there at all. And as the prices for everything increased so that sales and sales taxes could bring in something like what was needed to pay the city’s bills, there was much more competition for our fun money; gas was higher and parking cost more as the city tried to find new sources of funds since fewer people were employed… and the merry-go-round stopped spinning as it had. Those people who suddenly had less money to spend were heavily drawn to those inexpensive e-books, or to the library. All those new millionaires and billionaires might be good for investment bankers and real estate developers, but they can only buy and read so many books. The mass audience for books was sidelined after that crash. You still hear news stories about how “middle class” wages are stagnant, and that has a direct effect on sales for everyone.

Except at Amazon. Yes, they’re cooking along well, aren’t they? When people have less money to spend on fun stuff they go where they can get the most for their money – to places who discount heavily. And since people are stressed and lack the time to go out shopping, a place that is convenient and that discounts is a godsend, right? Amazon is poised to be the largest apparel seller in the country and Macy’s and Penny’s close stores. No mystery there. 

The third part is generational. For the last decades, the entire publishing world – bookshops, publishers, authors – had been supported by huge post-WWII generations who moved up through their jobs and had the extra money to spoil themselves and their children, and to begin collecting books, collecting hardcovers. After all, there was no alternative to the printed book until books on tape in the late 80s.  As their collections grew, they became more sophisticated in their collecting. They demanded first editions, preferably signed. They’d wait for them, not needing to read them when the book first came out, as long as they’d be able to add another signed copy to the shelves. They’d backfill too, searching for titles they’d missed from an author they’d only recently began to collect. Author tours became the thing and bestselling authors were created from huge lines of collectors and fans. Piles of books would evaporate during a signing and unknown writers quickly became bestsellers authors.

But now that generation of collectors has begun to retire from it. They’re downsizing from the homes in which they reared their children and are moving to smaller apartments or condos or retirement centers. They don’t have room for the collections they so lovingly built. They want them to go to others who will cherish them because their kids or grandkids don’t care. The problem is that every collection is made up of the same authors and the same titles because these authors were vastly popular to a mass audience and were printed in large numbers and now there’s not a generation of collectors coming up to soak up these books. They were reared on TV, they had the pleasure of reading beaten out of them in school, or they, too, have some of these books but don’t feel the need to fill in their collections – it just isn’t their thing. The great collector generation’s grandchildren don’t yet have the disposable income to buy books. They’re saddled with massive college debts, rents and mortgages are sky high, they’re starting their families and babies are expensive, everything’s expensive, they don’t have the disposable income their parents and grandparents had and, what the hell – it is just so easy and cheap to order on-line on their phones where the do most of their reading.

And here we are.

Those are the big reasons. There are many smaller ones, some unique to Seattle and Pioneer Square (unendingly difficult and expensive parking, street construction, the end of the Ride Free zone, viaduct removal, ball games, protests and marches), and some national (the increased use of credit cards and their transaction fees, higher international mail costs, vendors screwing down on payments).

Then, too, there was me. I don’t have the easiest personality and I rub some/many people the wrong way. I can be too impatient and prickly and more than a few people have referred to me as a curmudgeon. I am all of that. I have always known that I have been the shop’s greatest drawback and I know it contributed, in some way, to the fall in sales. If I caused you to shop here less, I apologize.

Just after the LA mystery bookshop closed in 2011, we had a major LA author in to sign. He was still furious that those owners had closed without saying anything – that they were in trouble and needed help. He asked “Why didn’t they ask for help?”  That stuck with me. A few weeks later I composed a letter to that author as well as to two other international bestselling authors who had also been here to sign multiple times and laid out for them their sales with us over the years. I pointed out that sales with in-shop signings were far higher than with signed copies from another source. I asked them to use their influence with their publishers to ensure that small independent mystery shops were made a priority and were put on their tour schedules. I asked what they were prepared to do to help the small mystery bookshops who helped to launch their careers. I heard back from none of them.

We’ve fought with publicity departments for over two decades to be seen as a viable location for their Big Name authors. I’ve made the point that if they don’t send their Big Name authors to us we won’t be here to help their beginning authors get to be Big Names.  I’ve beseeched authors we used to normally get for formal signings but who are now brought by only for stock signings that we need their help, that we need them to talk to their publicity departments. Most shrug it off, declining to get involved with tour schedules. Those who have benefited from the exposure and attention of little shops, who are so grateful for our help launching them into bestsellerdom suddenly do not wish to use their power and leverage to help those who gave them attention and benefits.  “I contacted sales and all the tip-ins went to Barnes and Noble. I have no control over that…” Well who the hell has more control that a major bestselling author?  We’ve done what that author said, we’ve repeatedly asked authors for help… and here we are.

I’m sure some will say we should’ve done more to ask for help, to make our situation clear. We have. We’re written many blog posts about the dangers of not supporting small businesses that will go away if you don’t. A few years ago we had to downsize to survive.  That was a very clear indication that sales were not supporting what we were doing. Clue #1. That move was not enough so we held the Go Fund Me drive to pay off bills that were holding us back. Clue #2. That worked and bought us a year. We let the staff shrink because we couldn’t afford to have the staff we need. Clue #3. Lastly, we tried to sell the place. Clue #4.  The clues were there. We’ve been playing fair all along.

At one time, when this shop was young, there were at least three dozen independent mystery bookshops around the globe. NYC had four. DC had three. Now there are but a handful. It isn’t just us. I am dead certain that none of those that closed wanted to, but, in the end, there was no choice.

We’re all heartbroken to close the shop. I personally feel as if I have failed Bill. But we all fought hard to keep it going for years but the sharp bottom line is people have not been buying enough books from us to keep it working for a long time. Time to say goodbye.

I want to thank all of those loyal customers who have been regulars over the years. It’s been a gas.

What happens next? It’s a mystery.

~ JB

SPECTRE'S MONOPOLY

Amazon Bites Off Even More Monopoly Power

"The company has established its level of dominance because of the failings of our current antitrust laws. To understand why, you first need to understand the scope of Amazon’s power. It has captured 43 percent of all internet retail sales in the United States, with half of all online shopping searches starting on Amazon. In 2016, it had over $63 billion in revenue from online sales in the United States — or more than the next 10 top online retailers combined. It controls 74 percent of e-book sales, is the largest seller of clothes online and is set to soon become the biggest apparel retailer in the country."

"In building this vast empire, Amazon chased growth over paying dividends, pricing key goods and services below cost to chase out competitors. It invested heavily to buy out innovators like Diapers.com after waging price wars. (Amazon followed its acquisition by raising prices.)"

"Think of Amazon as a 21st-century version of the 19th-century railroads that connected consumers and producers. Because of their gatekeeper role, railroads had power to discriminate, both among users and in favor of their own wares. These middlemen could tax the farmers and oil producers who depended on their rails — or deny them a ride and sink their livelihoods.

 

In several key ways, Amazon uses its power as the railroads did. By integrating across business lines, Amazon now competes with the companies that rely on its platform. This decision to not only host and transport goods but to also directly make and sell them gives rise to a conflict of interest, positioning Amazon to give preferential treatment to itself.

The vast troves of information it collects enable it to self-deal with great finesse. News accounts tell how Amazon exploits data collected on the businesses using its platform to go head-to-head with them.

And like the railroads of yore, Amazon dictates terms and prices to those dependent on its rails. During negotiations with the publisher Hachette over e-book pricing, Amazon showed its might by effectively disabling sales of thousands of Hachette’s books overnight."

SPECTRE CONTINUES TO CONQUER THE WORLD

There were many stories about how much of the holiday's on-line sales were placed through Ama - er um - SPECTRE in 2016.

From US News: Macy's Had a Bad Holiday Season "

"The retailer said Wednesday that sales at its established stores fell 2.1 percent in November and December compared to the same period last year. Macy's Inc. pointed to changing consumer behavior and said its performance reflects the challenges that are facing much of the retail industry."

From Fortune:Amazon Alone Was Responsible for 30% of Cyber Weekend Revenue

From SeekingAlpha.com: "To give an idea of how much Amazon dominated sales from November 1 to December 16, its closest competitor Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) wasn't even able to grab 4 percent of online e-commerce sales. The rest, including Target (NYSE:TGT) and Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), weren't able to even produce a market share of 3 percent, with Target having a 2.9 percent share, and Wal-Mart only able to generate a 2.7 percent share of online sales."

From intelligence.slice.com: "Amazon’s share of U.S. e-commerce sales grew significantly as we got closer to Christmas and Hanukkah.  From November 1 through Cyber Monday, Amazon’s share of e-commerce was 33 percent, compared with 44 percent during the final stretch (December 15 through December 25).  However, this was consistent with Amazon’s share during the 2015 Holiday season.  Amazon netted out with a consistent share of 38 percent in both 2015 and 2016." They posted the following graph of where consumer's money went:

From USA Today: Amazon grabbed half of last-minute, online Christmas shoppers

There were also many stories about how sales did not meet expectations at the big department stores during the same period. From Reuters:

"Disappointing holiday-season sales at Macy's Inc (M.N) and Kohl's Corp (KSS.N) underscored the uphill task facing department stores to win back shoppers, who are increasingly turning to online retailers and spending less on apparel.

Macy's shares fell as much as 14 percent on Thursday, their biggest percentage drop in seven months. Kohl's stock dropped as much as 20.5 percent, its biggest decline in more than 14 years.

Both reported lower-than-expected sales for November and December and cut their full-year profit forecasts on Wednesday.

 

Macy's, known the world over for its flagship Herald Square store in Manhattan and its annual Thanksgiving Day parade, is considered a bellwether for department stores."

There was news that Macy's will be closing 100 stores due to poor sales and what that would mean to their soon-so-be-unemployed workers. Washington State will lose stores in Everett and Kelso, Oregon is losing stores in Salem and downtown Portland.

From CNN on Jan. 4, 2014: Macy's is closing 68 stores, cutting 10,000 jobs

If you read the stories you see that this isn't all about Macy's. Sear's and KMart and Kohl's are going through this, too.

Then there was news about SPECTRE's plans to hire 100,000 over the coming months.

Finally, there was news that SPECTRE's leader, Jeff Bezos, from the Seattle Times:

"Jeff Bezos, one of the Seattle area’s wealthiest and best-known residents, has reportedly purchased a mega-mansion in Washington, D.C. But don’t expect him to abandon us.

The Washington Post on Thursday cited unnamed sources in reporting that the Amazon.com CEO had dropped $23 million on the former Textile Museum, a 27,000-square-foot property in D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood. The 10-bed, 14-bath home, which spans two historic mansions, was bought under a trust in October but the paper outed Bezos as the man behind the purchase."

When you own the world, why not spend millions on a mansion you'll not occupy?

Sorry to sound like a broken record but we've been writing and warning about this for years.

From our post of July 11, 2014, we included a link to a story in The Guardian: Amazon's Jeff Bezos: the man who wants you to buy everything from his company Seems as if consumers are eager to help him.

Back on February 3, 2012 we wrote  Welcome to the Company Town and the Company's Rules

"You’re going to be living in a company town, where the company owns the store, sets the prices and rakes it in.

Don’t want to live like that? Fight it now. Talk about it with the people you know.

Friends don’t let friends support the Borg.

Resistance is not futile."

Maybe it is.

Last year, we had our GoFundMe campaign to help us stay afloat, and you came through like champions! However, that - in and of itself - will not be enough to continue to sustain us through this next year. We still need you to help out as a customer. Come into the shop, buy online, but choose us over Amazon, please. Choose all your mom-and-pop shops first.

Otherwise we're afraid that we'll go the way of those bigger stores, squashed under SPECTRE's big boots.

 

A Great Loss: Roger Hobbs, dead at 28

          We’re heartbroken to report the death of Roger Hobbs. Details are sketchy. He is reported to have died on Monday the 14^th of an overdose. He was 28.

          Roger’s debut, Ghostman, was published soon after he graduated from Reed College in Portland. A staff favorite, Ghostman was nominated for many awards and he was the youngest author to receive the British Ian Fleming Silver Dagger in 2013. His sequal, Vanishing Games, was published in 2015.

          Roger once asked us for books that dealt with someone being buried alive. He had the idea to use that device in a book he was working on. He went on to say he was looking around for someone who would bury him alive so he could know what it felt like. He was proud of his connections and associations in the more shadowy world. He was eager to see that his books had more than just the ring of verisimilitude. Whether his death was due to an experiment for his fiction or because of addiction, it is a true tragedy.

          This is a great loss to Pacific Northwest crime writing, to international crime writing, to readers who enjoy a great story well written, and to those who knew him.

          More details of his life and career can be found at Mystery Readers and The Rap Sheet.

          Too many losses, lately. Too damn many.

          Bon voyage, Hobbs.

 

Death of a Book Distributor

          Yesterday we got the terrible news that our local book wholesaler, Partners/West, was closing as of tomorrow. In fact, it and the original location, Partners Book Distributing in Michigan, are both shutting down. This is very bad news on many fronts. Why should you care? Here's why:

          First of all, there are going to be a large number of unemployed people in the Puget Sound area very soon. Many of them have become friends through the years and what hurts our friends hurts us.

          Second, the money that went to this local company through our orders and the payroll of the staff that went into local businesses will now be going out of state. [apply First and Second to Michigan, too]

          Third, this will deprive independent booksellers across the western US of an alternative to the two national wholesalers, Ingram and Baker & Taylor. Less competition, fewer choices and alternatives.

          Fourth, local and regional publishers may find it harder to find an outlet for their books. The two big national wholesalers may pick them up but they're under pressures, too, and may not. If the publishers do, so will their authors.

          Fifth, as when Borders closed, publishers suddenly had a huge flood of returns of unsold books and merchandise. On a smaller scale, this will happen again, potentially damaging publishers of all sizes. At a time when all of publishing is fragile, this will ripple out in numerous and insidious ways. It also means one less company making their books available - one less outlet for publishers and authors.

          Sixth, for those of us here in the Seattle area, it means that we will no longer be able to get our shipments the same day we place our orders. That translates into you, our customers, having to wait longer to get what you want and Americans are an impatient lot.

          Lastly, for us as a specialty shop that does a great deal of business with collectors and in signed books, we always knew that the condition of the books we'd receive from Partners would be exceptionally good. Less travel, less handling, better packing. That's a great loss for us and for you collectors.

          I opened my Seattle Times this morning looking to see how you would cover this important story and there's nothing about it. Once again, they prominently give coverage to SPECTRE when they do not need the coverage. In fact, I'd argue that it is coverage like this - "Amazon Piles on New Dash Buttons" - is nothing more than free advertising for the behemoth. Certainly it isn't hard news.

          I'd also argue that this kind of free publicity for SPECTRE contributes to the decline in sales in independent booksellers and cascades into lower orders to the wholesalers and end result is a valuable book distribution system withers and dies. Over the last decade, as people have moved their purchasing to the ease of the on-line world, independent bookstores have closed. As the bookstores close there are lower orders at places like Partners. And the system crumbles a bit more.

          I really don't expect The Seattle Times to cover this story with the seriousness it deserves.

          But I would like to ask a serious question: in light of this being a city and region that survived the Boeing Bust, that this is a progressive/leftist culture that talks about supporting small businesses and decries Huge Corporations for their sway and heavy hand, and one that is still stung and is still recovering from the collapse of Washington Mutual --- when will anyone begin to apply the issue of "Too Big to Fail" to Amazon?

A New Year's Resolution

 "I claim to love books; and, more than that, to love bookshops. Yet for eight years I have poured money into a company that many booksellers regard as the greatest threat to their survival.... It is the time of year to make resolutions. You could resolve to eat less, or jog more. Or you could join me in making a simple pledge: to buy every book you read next year from a bookshop. I don't know about you, but Amazon has had quite enough of my money already."

--Laura Freeman in a piece for the Daily Mail headlined "Why I'm boycotting Amazon"

Ursula Le Guin: "I Think Hard Times are Coming"

 

The 65th National Book Awards were held last night in NYC.

The New Yorker's website noted: "But it was Ursula K. Le Guin, accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters early in the evening, who gave the definitive remarks of the ceremony, gliding through the genre debate and the Amazon-Hachette debacle on her way to explaining the crucial role that literature must play in our society. Petite, her silver hair shining, Le Guin shrugged and grinned when Neil Gaiman placed the medal around her neck. She said that she wanted to share the honor with her fellow-fantasy and sci-fi writers, who have for so long watched “the beautiful awards,” like the one she’d just received, go to the “so-called realists.” Then she continued:

Thank you Neil, and to the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks from the heart. My family, my agent, editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as mine, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice at accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who were excluded from literature for so long, my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction—writers of the imagination, who for the last 50 years watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.

I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality.

Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between the production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximize corporate profit and advertising revenue is not quite the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. (Thank you, brave applauders.)

Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial; I see my own publishers in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an ebook six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write. (Well, I love you too, darling.)

Books, you know, they’re not just commodities. The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words.

I have had a long career and a good one. In good company. Now here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want—and should demand—our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. It’s name is freedom.

Thank you.

[thanks to parkerhiggins.net for the transcription of her speech.]

Amazon's Monopoly Is Not OK

Oct 19, 2014

From Nobel-prize wining economist Paul Krugman:

"Amazon.com, the giant online retailer, has too much power, and it uses that power in ways that hurt America....

....Which brings us back to the key question. Don’t tell me that Amazon is giving consumers what they want, or that it has earned its position. What matters is whether it has too much power, and is abusing that power. Well, it does, and it is."

Sherman Alexie on his Banned Books

 

Local author Sherman Alexie has written a number of YA book (which are great), but he has also penned an adult mystery called Indian Killer!

(click here to see the eBook)

We would be more than happy to order/sell you a copy!

Big Serious News to start August

We’re moving back to our original space. 

No kidding. No April Fool.  

As anyone who has been paying attention to the economic news and bookselling news over the last few years knows, it has been tough for small independents for some time now. While it is easy to blame it on one thing or another, the fact is that not enough people are buying books from us to afford to stay in this larger space. We’ve been warning of changes coming in how we do things. This is one of those.

We’ve been shrinking our stock for the last few months. We’ve been suggesting that you let us know what books you want and that we’ll order them for you. That will have to continue and expand. We’re happy to get you want you want – mystery or not – but it is inevitable that you may often not find what you want in stock when you walk through the door. It simply isn’t possible to order books in the variety and quantity of “the good old days”.

We’ll move over Labor Day weekend (kind of symmetrical, isn’t it, as we moved down here over Memorial Day ‘05). We’ll be closed Friday Aug 29th – Monday, Sept 1st. We’ll be looking for volunteers who’d like to schlep boxes and for those who can lend us library carts. We’ll provide pizzas and pop.

Once we’re back in the original space, we’ll try to keep the shop set up as it always has been – a large section of PNW authors and books, a table for new paperback releases, a table for signings, the new hardcovers, and some special sections. We won’t know how exactly it will all work until we begin putting in shelves. We imagine it’ll still feel familiar and you won’t feel too lost or puzzled. And it’ll be carpeted!

We really have no option but to move if we want to continue. Current sales make the rent on this space prohibitive. Rent in our old space will be a third of what is now. That means we should be able to make it to the end of our current lease. Beyond that?

Well now, that’ll depend a lot on you. For years now we’ve been saying that if you like what any small business does you must support them with sales. The time for warnings is past. With your help, we’ll do our best to make it through to next June and, maybe, to our 25th birthday… and then maybe our 30th!

If you want the Seattle Mystery Bookshop to continue – the quarterly newsletter, the weekly newzines, the signings and signed books, the selection of used books, as well as our charming company - buy from us. If you don’t, all of this will go away. Simple as that.

~ the Crew

 

[The posters will be updated...]

 

PS - and Update:

Since we announed the move what has been made obvious to us is that a lot of people don't know where our original space was.

Thirty yards directly to the East. Same building, same level, same street, just the other end of the front walkway. You'll still come through the gate, hop down two steps but then you'll turn left and walk 30 yards to our old/new front door.

Our apologies for any confusion!

Address, phone, e-mail, and website - all of it stays the same.

SPECTRE: relentless.com

On The Slog, (6/9) The Stranger's Paul Constant reported yesterday that due to contentious negotiations with another supplier, Ama - er, um SPECTRE has suspended the pre-ordering fuction for Warner Brothers/Paramount movie releases.

He quotes from Bill Hunt on The Digital Bits: "Not done yet... some of you have been asking why your Amazon.com pre-orders for select Warner Bros, Paramount catalog, Viz Media (and other Warner-distributed) titles have been suspended. We’ve learned through industry sources that Warner Home Video and Amazon.com are in the middle of negotiations on a new contract, so pre-orders on Warner titles have been suspended until a deal is reached. Hopefully, the situation will be resolved soon."

Sounds like SPECTRE is spreading it's 'negotiating tactic' beyond just Hachette. Keep an eye on this to see if they up the ante.

Jeremy Greenfield, writing in The Atlantic on May 28th, notes: "Hachette is the first among the world's five largest publishers (Penguin merged with Random House last year) to sign another contract with Amazon since its court-mandated contract in 2012—and likely the most important. In the coming two years, Amazon and its competitors will renegotiate contracts with all of the world's largest publishers and in 2015 they will be again allowed by law to negotiate contracts where they determine the prices of e-books. Amazon likely doesn't want this and, by the looks of it, is even willing to inconvenience its own customers in the short term to ensure this long-term outcome."

Here's the view of it from The Guardian in the UK (June 11): Amazon Pulls Warner Bros movies as Trade Dispute Expands

One can infer that if the scorched earth practices used against Hachette continue and prove beneficial to SPECTRE they will use them against other suppliers - as they currently are against Warner.

SPECTRE has battled the NYC publishers. Are they now going to take on the LA studios?

Maybe the music industry at the same time?

Janet I. Tu, writing in the Seattle Times (6/11, Amazon launches streaming music for Prime subscribers), "Artists from Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and a number of independent labels are included. But artists from Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music label, aren’t." So they'll sell Warner Music but not Warner movies? The issue with Hachette for their books and Warner Brothers for their movies has been discount amounts - that is, how much SPECTRE makes from each sale. Tu notes "Negotiations with the music companies began about six months ago but slowed when those companies considered Amazon’s offers too low, according to a New York Times report."Those who do begin using the system should bear in mind SPECTRE's history of removing e-books from customer's devices. This music system will be cloud-based, which would seem to make it even easier for a supplier to monkey with someone's purchases. And, of course, their customers have to pay to be prime members even before they pay for the music they want. They'll pay twice.

And if all of that isn't enough, SPECTRE "...plans local services marketplace this year". Writing for Reuters (6/11), Deepa Seetharaman reports that it "later this year plans to launch a marketplace for local services, a broad term that encompasses anything from babysitters to handymen to birthday clowns, beginning with a single market, several people familiar with the matter said."  What market are they going after now? "The move takes direct aim at consumer review sites Yelp Inc and Angie's List Inc as well as U.S. home improvement chains Home Depot Inc and Lowe's Companies Inc, which have both invested in ways to link customers with local plumbers, painters and other service providers." (thanks to Paul Constant for pointing toward this article.)

Americans usually have a distrust of huge institutions. A huge segment of the population distrusts, and indeed fights, Big Government. At the start of the Great Recession, there was understandable fury at the big banks and the idea of Too Big To Fail. Supposedly, some of the most hated instutions on the planet are the cable companies and the monopolies they have our TV and internet connections.

Then, too, people have been outraged over the intrusiveness of the NSA and them sticking their noses and fingers into the lives of private citizens by hoovering up all sorts of private information. It's Big Goverment, Big Military-Industrial Complex, Conspiracy Theory stuff and all of it feels counter to the Open Range of American Myths.

So why aren't more alarm bells being sounded over SPECTRE's incursions into EVERYTHING? Cloud computing for the CIA and finding you a baby sitter? Your music, your movies and your reading material? When does SPECTRE become 'too big'?

As George Packer wrote in The New Yorker, "Bezos originally thought of calling his company Relentless.com - that URL still takes to to Amazon's site...". Later in the same article, Packer writes "Before Google, and long before Facebook, Bezos had realized that the greatest value of an online company lay in the consumer data it collected."

The relentless acquisition of power, influence, and information.

 SPECTRE

With Endless Thanks

        Author James Patterson announced some time ago that he was going to give away $1million to independent bookshops. It was his intention to help bolster the health of the shops and to ensure they continue to help readers find new authors and to help new readers find books. Mr. Patterson is most concerned about getting children reading and into a life of books, and we applaud him for his efforts and for putting his money where his mouth is.

        We applied for one of his grants, and were delighted to be included in his second round of recipients. Stores were  invited to submit a proposal of no more than 500 words explaining how a grant would be used. Shop owner JB Dickey sent a plan to use half of whatever money was granted for targeted advertising in social media, and the other half to reward his staff who have voluntarily curtailed their work hours to save the shop payroll expenses.

        We’d like to formally thank Mr. Patterson for all that he is doing for independent booksellers across the country and, by extension, for readers. We hope other bestselling authors pay attention and follow his lead.

        Endless thanks, too, to all of our loyal fans who wrote to him on our behalf.

Authors Talk about SPECTRE

Sherman Alexie on The Colbert Report talking about SPECTRE vs. Hachette

Charlie Stross : Amazon - Malignant Monopoly, or Just Plain Evil?

Here's Barry Eisler writing in favor of Amazon

Douglas Preston says he feels betrayed: "...after having supported the online retailer even as its growing power raised alarm bells. Some of his books now face shipment delays and higher prices because they are published by Hachette. 'I’ve supported Amazon from the time it was a struggling startup,' Preston said in an interview. 'I feel betrayed personally by this company now that it’s become one of the largest corporations in the world that it would do this to me.'”

Derek Beres wrote from a different perspective: Why the Amazon-Hachette Debate Means Nothing to Writers. Beres dismissed concerns about one company's control of communication and the exchange of ideas: "That’s exactly what you’d expect when people think they’re more important than they are."

We thought it might be instructive to detail some of the authors are affected by this.

Authors published by Hachette (with either new books or backlist titles) - not an exhaustive list of ALL of their writers but authors we have had on our shelves:

Jeff Abbott, Megan Abbott, Kate Atkinson, David Baldacci, Josh Bazell, M.C. Beaton, Lauren Beukes, Mark Billingham, Holly Black, Sara Blaedel, Lawrence Block, Sandra Brown, Stella Cameron, Gail Carriger, Donato, Carrisi, Lincoln Child, Marica Clark, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Ted Dekker, Nelson DeMille, Robert Dugoni, Warren Ellis, Zoe Ferraris, Colleen Gleason, George Dawes Green, Derek Haas, Brian Haig, Carl Hiaasen, Anne Holt, Anthony Horowitz, David Hosp, Elizabeth Singer Hunt, Charlie Huston, Joshilyn Jackson, Hannah Kent, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Dorothy Koomson, Michael Koryta, Richard Lange, Joe R. Lansdale, Margaret Maron, Archer Mayor, Brad Meltzer, Deon Meyer, Denise Mina, David Morrell, Walter Mosley, Thomas Mullen, Marcia Muller, James Patterson, George Pelecanos, Benjamin Percy, Elizabeth Peters, Douglas Preston, Ian Rankin, Cornelia Read, Michael Robotham, Karen Rose, David Rosenfelt, Sebastian Rotella, JK Rowling (as Robert Galbraith), Greg Rucka, James Sallis, CJ Sansom, Nick Santora, Maria Semple, Darren Shan, Duane Swiercynski, Alic Sebold, Dan Simmons, Tom Rob Smith, Trenton Lee Stewart,  Donna Tartt, Laini Taylor, Jim Thompson, Scot Turrow, Carrie Vaughn, Urban Waite, Joseph Wambaugh, Donald E. Westlake, Kate White, Don Winslow, Tom Wolfe, Daniel Woodrell, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Anne Zouroudi

The Declaration of Independents

Poster from the American Booksellers Association

SPECTRE, the gatekeeper

The SPECTRE/Hachette controversy continues to burble. With the annual national book trade show last weekend in NYC, it's stayed a raging conversation. Here's more:

May 28 - David Streitfeld wrote another detailed account of where the battle stands. Hachette and Amazon Dig In for a Long Fight Over Contract Terms. He notes "Amazon wants to do away with gatekeepers. It promises a world where books are cheap, where anyone can publish anything, where there are no editors or distributors saying this is not what is selling now, go away." The nauseating irony is, of course, that SPECTRE is now the bullying gatekeeper it has always denounced.

June 1 - David Carr's column in the NYTimes reads as if he can't quite decide which side of the battle to cheer on. In Amazon Absorbing Price Fight Punches, he opens by mentioning how lively the book convention was over the weekend. He goes on to say selling books is vastly different than selling tires or tube socks. "By blocking inventory, Amazon has become the less-than-everything store. Books may be a small fraction of what it sells, but books are precious, troves of speech, not just products for commerce. They were also the linchpin of the company’s early march to retail dominance. The symbolism is profound." Here he highlights that books are nothing like any other item that anyone sells. Yet, later in the column, he trumpets the ease of ordering from, and saving money with, SPECTRE. He doesn't seem to understand that buying anything from SPECTRE says you support what they do and how they do it.

May 29 - writing in The Guardian, Suzanne McGee's subtitle would lead you to believe she's grasped the larger picture ("Is Amazon Wrecking Your Beach Reads? The retail giant has been good to customers so far, but its petty fight with a publisher should make fans nervous about the future") but fails to make it clear if she does. "Amazon is collecting millions of dollars revenues – which it has poured into marketing and infrastructure development, growing the company to making us more reliant on it to meet our needs." Yes - reliant is a synonym for dependent. Dependent people don't think to shop anywhere else, can't imagine shopping anywhere else, and if SPECTRE continues to rule the roost and drive out competition, those that are reliant on SPECTRE will have no alternative but to shop there. You only have choice when choices are available. 

But McGee goes off the rails with her last sentances: " It’s worth taking minute to remember that while the publishing industry may indeed be inefficient, as its critics have claimed, Amazon isn’t a crusader for consumer rights. It’s in business to make money for its shareholders. If it can help us save money along the way, well, that’s great. But we’d do well to remember that Amazon, like any other business, has no higher moral purpose at stake here." While it is true that any business must make profits to pay the bills and continue in business, as others are noting, selling books is not at all the same thing as selling tomatos or tricycles. Books are many things - forms of entertainment, works of art, messengers of ideas, tomes of warnings, methods of education, and forms of shared thoughts. It is worth repeating what David Carr wrote:  "...books are precious, troves of speech, not just products for commenrce."

But back to her point about shareholders: see James B. Stewart's April 25 column, "Amazon's Shrinking Profit Sets Off a Seismic Shock to its Shares"

May 30 - in Slate, Evan Hughes' column ("Bringing Down The Hachette: Publishers could have thwarted the latest Amazon power grab. They didn't and books will suffer for it.") clearly deliniates the core of the threat: "If Amazon prevails and gains revenue that could have—and should have—gone to writers, that would be a lamentable outcome for literature. The available pot of money in the publishing business is essentially divided up among three key players: the retailer, the publisher, and the author. To the extent that the retailer—in this case, Amazon—wins a bigger share, the other two parties collectively lose. Amazon disputes this point by arguing that its low prices and convenient Kindle platform make people buy more books, thus “growing the pie.” But it’s hard to imagine that people are going to spend more and more of their finite income on books just because Amazon is getting its way and thriving. Among the three key players, the author and publisher are the ones devoted to producing interesting books, or at least trying. Amazon just sells the end product. (Its beleaguered publishing division remains a sideshow.) At heart, Amazon is basically a Walmart with some tech-company trappings. It is not truly a part of the book world. Amazon’s executives have never seemed sensitive to the fact that constantly squeezing the people who write and edit and publish the books could easily damage the quality of the books. Don’t you get what you pay for?"

June 1 - David Streitfeld published an interview he conducted with one of the Hachette authors affected by the fight. In "Amazon vs. Hachette fight 'heartbreaking to Malcolm Gladwell'". As a bookseller, I have to say Gladwell's egocentric view is stunningly narrow. He never once voices any concerns about questions of free speech, the dangers of monopolistic influence, or the impact all of this is having on other authors or his publisher as a whole. "It’s sort of heartbreaking when your partner turns on you. Over the last 15 years, I have sold millions of dollars’ worth of books on Amazon, which means I have made millions of dollars for Amazon. I would have thought I was one of their best assets. I thought we were partners in a business that has done well". Nowhere does he speak about any other type of bookseller than Amazon - as if it is the only game in town, certainly the only one of importance:

Q: Amazon’s critics would say you were naive about this being a true partnership.

A: I don’t think it was destined to blow up. And I don’t think it’s entirely impossible that it can’t be fixed. We need Amazon and Amazon needs us. That’s a classic partnership.

Mr. Gladwell talks about it like it is an romantic relationship that allows no others. If that is the case, perhaps other booksellers should respect the relationship and stop stocking and selling his books. As a specialty shop that doesn't do either, I'm glad I can stand out of that spat. He does not appear to need independent booksellers at all. He comes off as tone-deaf to the larger issues of the fight and sounds concerned only with his own centrality.

All of this uproar about books may be eclipsed by other battles. June 3 - "Why Amazon Can Toy With Booksellers" by Timothy Stenovec points out 'Twice as many [Amazon] customers buy electronics as buy books these days,' said Mike Levin, a partner and co-founder of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), a Chicago-based research firm. What's more, Levin said, it may not be long before books, which are the retailer's second-biggest category, get eclipsed by groceries, a category that includes diapers, cereal and toilet paper. CIRP's findings about the shopping habits of Amazon customers come from a survey of more than 1,000 people in the U.S. who purchased an item at Amazon between August 2013 and March 2014. 'People are as likely to buy groceries as buy books at Amazon,' Levin said. 'That should scare the s*** out of Kroger and Safeway.'" 

To end, I include Paul Constant's column from The Stranger's website, "It's Time To Turn Your Back on Amazon: Why the Online Giant's Fight with a Publisher Signals the End of Guilt-Free Amazon Purchases."  He rightly compares SPECTRE to Walmart (they treat their employees similarly and are both contributing to the 'Aspenization' of America) and how folks will give money to one company but not another even though there's not a nickle's worth of difference between them. "Seattleites who would never set foot in a Walmart are passionate about their love of Amazon. Ideals become easy prey when convenience is at stake. And it’s a matter of perception, too: Walmart puts its low-paid employees up front, parades their lack of dignity around for customers to see. Amazon gets to hide its poorly treated employees in warehouses, far from public view. Walmart’s cheaply made goods, all lined up and hanging on a rack, evoke the assembly lines of China. Amazon’s cheaply made goods, delivered individually in an attractive cardboard box to your door, seem like something magical; they don’t bear the fingerprints of people working for pennies a day in slave-labor conditions. All the ugliness of Amazon is behind the scenes, hidden behind a thick wall of corporate silence, and for that concealment, any number of people who consider themselves good citizens are willing to trade their loathing of Walmart for a deep and abiding love of the Great Walmart in the Sky. Turns out, that love might not be unconditional, after all."

As we've been saying for years - you can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

~ JB

 

 

JB on the Radio!

Popular Books Internet Radio with rarebirdradio on BlogTalkRadio 

2014's Film Noir Cycle

Here is the schedule for this year's Noir City Film Festival. This year's festival is focusing on foreign films, plus the newly restored film "Too Late for Tears".

Festival passes and single tickets can be purchased online at: http://www.siff.net/cinema/noir-city-2014

 Hope to see you there. - Benjamin

 

Thursday, February 13

7:00 PM                Noir City Opening Night
A double shot of WWII intrigue as Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles star in Journey Into Fear and The Third Man. Introduced by the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. 

Friday, February 14

7:00 PM,              Death is a Caress  | Norway | 1949 | 92 Minutes
A young mechanic, recently engaged, falls under the spell of a sophisticated married socialite who's brought in her car for repairs. The sexual bliss is ecstatic-but short-lived. 

9:00 PM                Death of a Cyclist  | Spain | 1955 | 88 Minutes
Juan Antonio Bardem was a true hero, bringing a new frankness (initially influenced by neorealism) and an oppositional political consciousness to Spanish cinema during the Franco era

Saturday, February 15

2:00 PM                Wages of Fear  | France | 1953 | 131 minutes
Four men, trapped in a pestilent South American village, agree to transport a dangerous shipment of nitroglycerine through treacherous terrain.

4:30 PM                Hardly a Criminal  | Argentina | 1949 | 88 Minutes
A bank employee (Jorge Salcedo) uses a loophole in Argentine law to concoct the perfect crime, planning to reap the rewards of his embezzlement after serving six years in prison.

7:00 PM                Too Late For Tears  | USA | 1949 | 99 Minutes
For many years, all 35mm prints of Too Late for Tears were believed lost, but through the determined efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, sufficient original material has been discovered to enable a restoration, performed under the auspices of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

9:00 PM                Hitch-Hiker  | USA | 1953 | 71 Minutes
Two buddies on a fishing trip are hijacked by a nomadic killer who plans to murder them after they deliver him to safety.

Sunday, February 16

2:00 PM                Murderers Are Among Us  | Germany | 1946 | 85 Minutes
A doctor, haunted by his service as a Nazi, falls in love with a camp survivor, but is compelled to seek vengeance on his commanding officer.

4:00 PM                It Always Rains on Sunday  | United Kingdom | 1947 | 92 Minutes
An escaped convict tries to hide out at his former lover's house but she has since married and is far from keen on the idea.

7:00 PM                Drunken Angel  | Japan | 1948 | 102 Minutes
An alcoholic doctor and a tubercular gangster forge an unexpected friendship after the doctor saves the callow crook's life, but the return of a criminal comrade sparks a tragic turn.

9:00 PM                Brighton Rock  | United Kingdom | 1947 | 92 Minutes
Adapted from the Graham Greene novel, John Boulting's Brighton Rock opens on a sunny Whitsun bank holiday at the slightly tacky seaside resort of Brighton (the title refers to a local hard candy), people are dancing to the bands on the pier, and the shooting galleries, souvenir stands, and tea rooms are packed with day-trippers. 

Monday, February 17

2:00 PM                Pepe le Moko  | France | 1937 | 93 Minutes
Jean Gabin is suave Parisian gangster Pepe Le Moko, who's been hiding out in the Casbah, the Arab quarter of Algiers, while the heat is on. But he misses Paris and when he falls for a sexy French tourist, he seals his fate.

4:00 PM                Rififi  | France | 1955 | 135 Minutes
This French equivalent of The Asphalt Jungle focuses on four professional crooks determined to execute the perfect heist.

7:00 PM                Riptide  | France | 1949 | 91 Minutes
A mysterious young man (Gerard Philipe) visits a desolate coastal town during a bleak winter, soon followed by another watchful, curious stranger.

9:00 PM                Quai des Orfèvres  | France | 1947 | 106 Minutes
Before he made The Wages of Fear and Diaolique, Henri-Georges Clouzot came up with this gritty thriller about a conniving chanteuse and her jealous husband who are involved in a murder and tracked by a clever police inspector. Restored with new, unexpurgated subtitles.

[Thanks to Benjamin!]

Team SPECTRE

As you may've heard, Ama - er, um - SPECTRE recently put forth an offer to independent booksellers to become part of their 'team'. The gist of it is that we can sell their gizmos and their e-files and get a slice of their action for a period of two years. Here's their press release on the deal.

From The Verge you get the math on this 'offer':

"Let’s clear up some numbers in this article.

            Amazon is offering a 6% discount on wholesale purchases of Kindle devices and up to a 30% discount on accessories. That means a KF HDX would cost a bookstore $216. Amazon will then give them a 10% commission on ebooks sold (and only ebooks sold, not apps, movies, music, audiobooks, or ebook rentals). Given that the upper limit selling price for a trade ebook is around $15, they’re looking at a maximum of $1.50, but with average prices in the 6 or 7 dollar range they’re looking at chump change in commissions.

            Also, because of Amazon’s proprietary DRM, the bookstores can’t sell their own ebooks directly to try and get more of the pie.

        The second option is to forgo the commissions in exchange for a 3% increase on the margin for the devices. Yeah… $7.50 isn’t going to convince anyone.

        The thing is that people running independent bookstores aren’t stupid. For them to survive in the current state of the physical book selling market means that they’re actually probably very business savvy. So they are going to be able to see right through the smokescreen here. Business Insider summed it up perfectly: “Amazon has a plan to get indie bookstores to kill themselves”.

            In every respect this is a terrible ripoff, especially when Kobo is offering a much better program through the ABA." [We here at SMB are part of the Kobo program.]

The New York Time's David Streitfeld asked JB for his thoughts on this and he's what he sent back:

I can't help but see this as a misleading attempt to counter the in-roads that Kobo has made with readers and fans of independent booksellers. Recently, we've read of Amazon shutting down part of its publishing due to a lack of success and profits (and stories about how Amazon itself is still not profitable). Something about this move has a feeling of retreat.

This release really doesn't provide much info. What's the discount that they're offering to booksellers on their gizmos? If independents can't make much money on the sale of the devices, they're at a disadvantage - selling the competitor's hardware, enriching the competitor, and not making much in return. There's also the issue of how an independent's customers get to the place to order they e-books. Are our customers just clicking on link on our website that then takes them to Amazon's? All that means is that they're selling independents the opportunity to become a new set of portals to funnel customers to Amazon. We help Amazon grow its business and, in return, we get a thin slice of the sale? That's not cooperation; that's being willingly complicit in your own execution.

Here's the final Streitfeld's article in the New York Times.

Since then, there have been any number of reactions, some bemused, some scornful, some perplexed, and some outraged.Here are just a few noted by Melville House Books on their website:

 “We are not enticed in the least by the latest ‘offer’ from Amazon. It’s a dagger disguised as an olive branch – the latest effort by Amazon to gain traction with indie customers and loyalists.”

— Lissa Muscatine, Politics and Prose, DC

“Hmmm, let’s see. We sell Kindles for essentially no profit, the new Kindle customer is in our store where they can browse and discover books, the new Kindle customer can then check the price on Amazon and order the ebook. We make a little on their ebook purchases, but then lose them as a customer completely after two years. Doesn’t sound like such a great partnership to me.”

— Carole Horne, Harvard Book Store, MA

“If past experience is any indication, Amazon is not doing this to be sweet to indies.”

— Dorothy Massey, Collected Works Bookstore, NM

and our personal favorite -

“They can go fuck themselves.” — Sarah McNally, McNally Jackson Books, NY

Shelfaware ran a story with similar quotes:

David Bolduc, owner of the Boulder Book Store, Boulder, Colo., called participation in the program "sleeping with the enemy. If anyone thinks Amazon is going to do you a favor, you better have someone walking behind you so you don't feel the stab. Their whole entire business model is predatory.... I don't see any possible way to live in the same ecosystem as Amazon. They don't want anybody else. They want to be the go-to source for everything in the world."

For me, it's a Main Street issue," said Anne Holman, co-owner of the King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah. "If I sell their Kindles after everything they've already done to indie bookstores, where would I be? It's about more than just bookstores: it's about the bike shop across the street, it's about the restaurants.... And it's not just the booksellers they've put out of business, it's the electronics store down the street, it's the other small businesses. I like our small businesses ecosystem and want it to flourish."

Nor should you think these reactions are limited to US booksellers. From The Bookseller:

Sheila O'Reilly, owner of Dulwich Books in London, told the Bookseller: "I think I would search my heart and find that morally I just couldn't stock the Kindle. I know Amazon employ lots of people in this country but they also have head offices in Luxembourg and Ireland for tax avoidance reasons and I couldn't ignore that. If it was more of a level playing field between Amazon and independents, then maybe I would think about it, but it isn't."

David Dawkins, manager at Pages of Hackney bookshop in East London, said Amazon "has made a point of aggressively diverting people's habit of using the high street. The company has made it clear that is what they want to do and I would be very surprised if this signals a change in policy towards independent retailers and the high street. I also wouldn't want our customers to think that we were doing trade with 'the bad guys.' I think we may lose quite a lot of  respect if our customers thought we were sleeping with the enemy."

Other news on the subject of SPECTRE:

~ There's been a great deal of press about Brad Stone's biography of Jeff Bezos and his creation. Then there was MacKenzie Bezos' heated criticism of the book. If you don't know what to think or who to believe, here's a story about an early employee the company and his view on Stone's book who posted a four-star review of the book on SPECTRE's own site. Shel Kaplan - the former employee - thinks Stone got it right.

~ Last month, towards the end of October, Ama - er, um - SPECTRE announced that it was raising it's minimum amount an order needed to achieve to get free shipping from $25 to $35. Whether this was to recoup some revenue due to the policy, or to drive people toward their Prime service whereby the customer pays upfront for a membership and then is enrolled to get services whether they use them or not, is anyone's guess. (Free shipping on all orders is one of the services.) Either way, they're moving to do less for free and to use their pervasive computer systems to make suggestions to people so that they'll buy just a little more to get up to the now higher free shipping total.

~ SPECTRE announced a joint plan with the United States Postal Service to provide Sunday delivery.The Postal Service plans to use flexible scheduling to do this and says it will hire no new employees, though we've seen nothing about what this will cost in payroll. Is SPECTRE going to eat these charges or are they to be passed along to their ordinary consumers (Prime members will pay no shipping charges for Sunday delivery)?

~Then there is the inexplicable phenomenom of SPECTRE being a massive, worldwide outfit that still makes little to no profit for its stockholders, an anomoly on Wall Street.

Derek Thompson wrote in The Atlantic in October "Defenders say Amazon is trading the present for the future, spending all its revenue on a global scatter plot of warehouses that will make the company indomitable. Eventually, the theory goes, investors expect Amazon to complete its construction project and, having swayed enough customers and destroyed enough rivals, to “flip the switch,” raising prices and profits greatly. In the meantime, they’re happy to keep buying stock, offering an unqualified thumbs-up for heavy spending.

But this theory assumes a practically infinite life span for Amazon. The modern history of retail innovation suggests that even the behemoths can be overtaken suddenly. Sears was still America’s largest retailer in 1982, but just nine years later, its annual revenues were barely half those of Walmart. “The economic countryside is littered with the carcasses of companies that thought they had a [durable] competitive advantage,” says Alex Field, an economic historian at Santa Clara University. “Just look at BlackBerry or AOL.”

Amazon is not as insulated from its rivals as some think it is. Walmart, eBay, and a bounty of upstarts are all in the race to dominate online retail. Amazon’s furious spending on new buildings and equipment isn’t an elective measure; it’s a survival plan. The truth is that the company benefits from a beautiful but delicate tautology: Amazon has won investors’ trust with a reputation for spending everybody to death, and it can spend everybody to death because it has won investors’ trust. For now."

Greg Satwell, writing in Forbes Why Amazon Is A Lousy Business

Benedict Evans wrote this past August, "Equally, the problem with saying 'we can't tell from outside how Amazon is really doing, but it will become profitable, just wait and see' is that you could be waiting for ever without ever knowing if you're wrong."

Eugene Wei is one who thinks SPECTRE's business model is genius, that in this model short-term profits are not the point and are unimportant. Which business model is it that he approves of? The original one where there were to be no warehouses at all, that everything would be done in the great flowing river of the internet, where it would have no physical presense, no stock, no stockers - just office workers sitting at computers and sending customers' orders to manufacturers. Is that the genius business model, the one that was ditched long ago?

Oh - in case you were wondering if we were going to become part of SPECTRE's continuing efforts at Global Domination...

Do you really need us to answer that?