Why the Apple Agency Model is Good for Pirates and Self-Publishers
Published December 16th, 2011 | 
Mainstream publishers still don’t get it: book buyers do not want to pay more than $10 for an e-book. They are deluding themselves if they believe jacking-up ebook prices is a good idea. Higher ebook prices do not translate into more ebooks sales. And higher ebook prices are not exactly helping hardcover sales.
So who does benefit from the agency model? Well . . . digital pirates for one. Why pay $16 for a an ebook version of a bestselling book when you can download it for free on a torrent site? Sure, there will always be a market for pirated material, but most readers would pay for those books if the price was friendlier to consumers.
Second, self-publishers are also benefitting from the agency model. Readers looking for new books to read on their Kindle are going to be a bit more willing to try a new author selling an e-book for $1.99 than mainstream bestseller priced equal to or above the trade book price. Over the long haul, the more mainstream publisher fight for the agency model the more it will hurt them.
Border’s Reality
Published September 7th, 2011 | Barnes and Noble’s greatest fear is now Border’s reality as the last of its megastores prepare to close forever. In its heyday, Border’s was a living example of Social Darwinism as it killed off mom and pop indie book stores one by one.
But then, it became the endangered species as online e-tailers overtook the brick and mortar behemoth with deeper discounts, higher volume and better overall customer service. And let’s face it, an online book store doesn’t have to run a real store in a shopping center. It doesn’t have to deal have to pay cashiers, or stock people or hire managers. It doesn’t have to spend as much on advertising. And it can drop ship books directly to its customers. On those terms, an online book store doesn’t have to be Amazon to compete with its offline counterpart. Hell, it can even be an unknown site in Canada.
Of course, Border’s failed for many reasons, not just because of the Internet and the rise of the e-book. Border’s was horribly mismanaged. Indeed, if the Border’s closest to my location is any example of the way the rest of the chain was run, I am surprised they lasted this long.
Barnes and Noble’s Greatest Fear
Published September 1st, 2011 | This year is really blowing by quick. Next week it will be Labor Day, the unofficial end of Summer. Pretty soon, will be whipping out the long john and getting ready to send out holiday cards. That will be good news for bookstores, as the holiday season is when they tend to do most of their business . . . or, maybe not. According to Simba Information, a media firm that studies trends in the the book trade, found that more and more, bookstore patrons are using physical bookstores as a showroom. They do their browsing in physical bookstores then buy the book or e-book online. That does not surprise me in the least. After my friend’s book store went out of business over a decade ago, I all but stopped buying from traditional book stores. I’d go to Barnes and Noble and look around, but I’d inevitably buy my books from Amazon. Although, Simba admits that this casual browsing trend only accounts for about 10% of the book market, it is a sobering fact for many bookstores.
