My 2.5 Star Trip to Amazon's Bizarre New Bookstore
November 4, 2015 8:29 PM Subscribe
"'I just thought I’d ask in case you had it in the back somewhere' the customer explained. They did not have it in the back somewhere." Former bookseller Dustin Kurtz visits Amazon's new bricks-and-mortar bookstore.
I admit to shopping a lot on Amazon, but I won't buy books from them. In part because of their practices with publishers (but then, as stated, I still spend money there) but mostly because I love book stores, so I follow Tim O'Reilly's edict to "buy where you shop". I fear the day that Amazon wipes out brick-and-mortar bookstores. Having the Amazon versions of such does not seem in any way a relief of that fear.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 8:41 PM on November 4, 2015
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 8:41 PM on November 4, 2015
Books are not always arranged in a clear manner. On the memoir wall Frederick Douglass abuts Anne Frank, herself next to Ben Carson. Amazon is disrupting the alphabet. RIP, alphabet.Sounds like a grocery store-like attempt of making you browse everything to see if the one thing you really want is in stock, in the hope that you'll buy more on the way.
Or a poorly managed bookstore.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:42 PM on November 4, 2015 [16 favorites]
I really hope that shoppers browse there and then buy online from their local independent.
posted by machaus at 8:47 PM on November 4, 2015 [58 favorites]
posted by machaus at 8:47 PM on November 4, 2015 [58 favorites]
The internet can’t stop talking about Amazon Books
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:50 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:50 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
University Book Store—begun by students in 1900—is just up the road from University Village, and while they serve superficially different markets, it’s difficult not to see Amazon’s choice of location as yet another act of aggression toward indie bookstores, whose owners and employees are particularly suspicious of the company's motives.
This is, of course, precisely what Barnes & Noble did in the early 90s.
posted by scratch at 9:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
This is, of course, precisely what Barnes & Noble did in the early 90s.
posted by scratch at 9:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
So as an Amazon author, both under one of their imprints (Skyscape) and as an indie, I went in hoping to see some of the Amazon Publishing titles. The thing about being published by an Amazon imprint is that you aren't likely to see your books on shelves outside of a few indie stores. Sadly, of all the Amazon Publishing authors I know across a couple of imprints, I saw all of four such names. Everything else was the same stuff one finds at Barnes & Noble.
This made me really sad. The absence of my own books was a bummer, but it's understandable because reasons. But the lack of my fellow imprint authors when I figured this would at least be a store friendly to our work was super disappointing.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:02 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
This made me really sad. The absence of my own books was a bummer, but it's understandable because reasons. But the lack of my fellow imprint authors when I figured this would at least be a store friendly to our work was super disappointing.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:02 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
The cramped and somewhat haphazard layout the writer describes sounds like most indie bookstores — even, or perhaps especially Powell's Books in the writer's hometown of Portland. As a fan of bookstores of all stripes, I'll be curious to see it for myself later this week, once the crowds thin out, hopefully going in with as little of the lazy anti-Amazon bias that the media presents these days.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:05 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:05 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
I would have figured that bookstore organization was pretty much a science at this point, and if the best (read: profitable) is haphazard, it's going to be a specific kind of haphazard, not random and sloppy.
That's ironic about them not carrying many of their own authors, though.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:10 PM on November 4, 2015
That's ironic about them not carrying many of their own authors, though.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:10 PM on November 4, 2015
University Book Store Is not "just up the road". Also it's a bit weird to describe the location as unusual and an attack on University Book Store specifically when there was a Barnes and Noble in that same mall until not too recently.
I've no idea what the point of Amazon doing this is supposed to be though.
posted by Artw at 9:10 PM on November 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
I've no idea what the point of Amazon doing this is supposed to be though.
posted by Artw at 9:10 PM on November 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
Also did Blue C move to make room for this thing? Bummer.
posted by Artw at 9:12 PM on November 4, 2015
posted by Artw at 9:12 PM on November 4, 2015
Artw, Blue C took over the Boom Noodle space.
I for one am glad this reviewer braved the corporate retail Den of Villainy that is University Village (three Starbuckses, not two!) to bring us his enlightened observations. Personally, I think a new bookstore is nice, and maybe people will buy books and read them, or whatever.
posted by Chris4d at 9:38 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
I for one am glad this reviewer braved the corporate retail Den of Villainy that is University Village (three Starbuckses, not two!) to bring us his enlightened observations. Personally, I think a new bookstore is nice, and maybe people will buy books and read them, or whatever.
posted by Chris4d at 9:38 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics? Not that those aren't good reasons to hang out in one and get to know the owners, if you're near one (my own neighborhood lacked one, but had a good public library); but for just discovering and acquiring books Amazon is very helpful.
After all, if they're gaining business at the expense of smaller stores, the customers must be finding what they want at Amazon instead. Sure, maybe your local bookstore had some rarely-sold books with niche appeal, and subsidizes their shelf space by selling the new and popular stuff. (That does set them apart from, say, Barnes and Noble.) But Amazon does the same thing on a larger scale: at least on their website, I can find just about anything, although it might be via a third-party seller.
Some of this article's complaints just strike me as looking for something to dislike. Like this:
posted by Rangi at 9:59 PM on November 4, 2015 [15 favorites]
After all, if they're gaining business at the expense of smaller stores, the customers must be finding what they want at Amazon instead. Sure, maybe your local bookstore had some rarely-sold books with niche appeal, and subsidizes their shelf space by selling the new and popular stuff. (That does set them apart from, say, Barnes and Noble.) But Amazon does the same thing on a larger scale: at least on their website, I can find just about anything, although it might be via a third-party seller.
Some of this article's complaints just strike me as looking for something to dislike. Like this:
Below many books is a small placard—booksellers call them shelf-talkers—giving the book’s average star rating and one of the reviews posted for the book on the site. These blurbs are credited to Amazon account screen names. “Imagine seeing yourself in here” one customer said to another with an identical haircut. Of course these lack the human touch of typical shelf-talkers, but sometimes you have to break a few eggs when you’re taking on those legendarily powerful gatekeepers, indie booksellers writing in unsteady blue ballpoint about books they love.Is he really saying that the people reviewing things with their Amazon accounts are any less human than the "typical shelf-talkers"? Seems like what he really misses is the aesthetic appeal: the "unsteady blue ballpoint." Like preferring vinyl LPs for their sheer size and tactile quality. It's a valid choice, but not one I would give up Amazon for.
posted by Rangi at 9:59 PM on November 4, 2015 [15 favorites]
I don't understand the pullquote at the top and why the author thought it was notable. A customer asked for a book and they didn't have it. Big deal. Did he think the back of the store would have every book Amazon sells?
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think he assumed that they would order it for him and have it shipped to his house, perhaps with a "you bought this in the store" free shipping prime type deal. I was really surprised when that did not happen. It's not like they don't have an app for that.
posted by sockermom at 10:14 PM on November 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
posted by sockermom at 10:14 PM on November 4, 2015 [9 favorites]
Uh, yeah? That's Amazon's USP (it has everything!). What definitely is not Amazon's USP is neighborliness. And according to TFA, it misses on both.
Let's see if this lasts longer than Amazon Local.
posted by notyou at 10:14 PM on November 4, 2015
Let's see if this lasts longer than Amazon Local.
posted by notyou at 10:14 PM on November 4, 2015
I hope I don't have to upgrade to Prime BrickandMortar to be able to make purchases there. When the bog B & N closed at U Village a couple of years ago it meant you couldn't buy a book anywhere in that shopping center. I was hoping a bookstore would move back in, but I wasn't thinking of Amazon.
posted by Cassford at 10:27 PM on November 4, 2015
posted by Cassford at 10:27 PM on November 4, 2015
The article frames this as Amazon vs. University Bookstore, but that's not what this is about at all. Overlooked is this: University Village is the highest-end retail space in Seattle. It houses not only the sole Apple store in the city, but also a Microsoft store across the street.
Amazon's storefront is half aspirational, half threat to Apple and Microsoft. The books are mostly decoration, I'd guess. Amazon has been dipping its toes into hardware; not just readers and tablets, but also things like the Echo, the Fire Phone, and the Dash. Not to mention the recently-announced AWS IoT that will soon have all kinds of third-party gadgets running Amazon software. And then there's the Amazon Basics line, which apparently now includes Bluetooth speakers. This store is probably not expected to pay for itself with sales. It's an advertisement for the Amazon brand, just down the street from all of the other luxury brands.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:52 PM on November 4, 2015 [28 favorites]
Amazon's storefront is half aspirational, half threat to Apple and Microsoft. The books are mostly decoration, I'd guess. Amazon has been dipping its toes into hardware; not just readers and tablets, but also things like the Echo, the Fire Phone, and the Dash. Not to mention the recently-announced AWS IoT that will soon have all kinds of third-party gadgets running Amazon software. And then there's the Amazon Basics line, which apparently now includes Bluetooth speakers. This store is probably not expected to pay for itself with sales. It's an advertisement for the Amazon brand, just down the street from all of the other luxury brands.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:52 PM on November 4, 2015 [28 favorites]
That Microsoft store is kind of crazy also, TBH.
So Boom didn't work out? A pity - as an attempt to rip off Wagamama it wasn't quite as successful as Blue C ripping off Yo Sushi, but it was a decent enough try at it. Unless that too has been shuffled on....
posted by Artw at 11:17 PM on November 4, 2015
So Boom didn't work out? A pity - as an attempt to rip off Wagamama it wasn't quite as successful as Blue C ripping off Yo Sushi, but it was a decent enough try at it. Unless that too has been shuffled on....
posted by Artw at 11:17 PM on November 4, 2015
Amazon has a store (well, one of those kiosk type things) that sells t-shirts at the Valley Fair Mall in San Jose.
posted by sideshow at 11:27 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by sideshow at 11:27 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics?
Yes, of course. They have books in them. If you happen to like e-books, great, but some of us have good reasons for liking physical books.
And there's nothing like a good bookstore for finding new books, not ones almost exactly like the ones you've bought already but things you'd never have thought to look for.
It's nice that Amazon is opening a store; it's pitiful that it apparently stocks just 6000 titles. If anyone understood the long tail I'd've thought it'd be Amazon.
posted by zompist at 11:32 PM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
Yes, of course. They have books in them. If you happen to like e-books, great, but some of us have good reasons for liking physical books.
And there's nothing like a good bookstore for finding new books, not ones almost exactly like the ones you've bought already but things you'd never have thought to look for.
It's nice that Amazon is opening a store; it's pitiful that it apparently stocks just 6000 titles. If anyone understood the long tail I'd've thought it'd be Amazon.
posted by zompist at 11:32 PM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
Amazon Books—like the surrounding mall—feels like it's predicated on anxiety.
Welcome to the 21st century.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:38 PM on November 4, 2015 [8 favorites]
Welcome to the 21st century.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:38 PM on November 4, 2015 [8 favorites]
So Boom didn't work out?
Boom and Blue C are the same company. I will say that my visits to Boom featured some of the worst service I've ever had. 90 minutes for a bowl of lukewarm soba... at lunch.
The new Blue C is larger and brighter, but also impossible to get into on a Friday night.
posted by dw at 11:41 PM on November 4, 2015
Boom and Blue C are the same company. I will say that my visits to Boom featured some of the worst service I've ever had. 90 minutes for a bowl of lukewarm soba... at lunch.
The new Blue C is larger and brighter, but also impossible to get into on a Friday night.
posted by dw at 11:41 PM on November 4, 2015
Amazon vs. University Bookstore
This comparison made zero sense to me. U Bookstore survives because it's a coop and remains the only source for class materials at UDub. Amazon doesn't need a bookstore to compete against that. It has itself.
And while we're at it, shouldn't we talk about all the other indies in the U District that have died off the last decade? The only indie left is Magus, and it's the epitome of an overstuffed used book store. Everything else has faded away between the rapid changes in the district -- higher rents, sketchier clientele, and cranes everywhere throwing up condos.
Whatever Amazon is doing, it's not what this guy thinks it is. Knowing them, it's another pet project, just like the about to be late and lamented Amazon Fresh (thanks to that $299 annual fee).
posted by dw at 11:49 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
This comparison made zero sense to me. U Bookstore survives because it's a coop and remains the only source for class materials at UDub. Amazon doesn't need a bookstore to compete against that. It has itself.
And while we're at it, shouldn't we talk about all the other indies in the U District that have died off the last decade? The only indie left is Magus, and it's the epitome of an overstuffed used book store. Everything else has faded away between the rapid changes in the district -- higher rents, sketchier clientele, and cranes everywhere throwing up condos.
Whatever Amazon is doing, it's not what this guy thinks it is. Knowing them, it's another pet project, just like the about to be late and lamented Amazon Fresh (thanks to that $299 annual fee).
posted by dw at 11:49 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
I still desperately miss Spine & Crown and Kris Minta.
Zompist mentions the spacial serendipity and specialized focus above, but I also think the community interaction of bookstore workers can have massive but subtle positive externalities in an urban setting. Similar to coffee shops, they can be repositories and vectors of playful and important information.
On Capitol Hill Spine & Crown did that thing. Ada Technical Books and Elliot Bay both still do that thing. It may not be a coincidence that the two that survived also have cafes.
posted by tychotesla at 11:52 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Zompist mentions the spacial serendipity and specialized focus above, but I also think the community interaction of bookstore workers can have massive but subtle positive externalities in an urban setting. Similar to coffee shops, they can be repositories and vectors of playful and important information.
On Capitol Hill Spine & Crown did that thing. Ada Technical Books and Elliot Bay both still do that thing. It may not be a coincidence that the two that survived also have cafes.
posted by tychotesla at 11:52 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yeah, my own connections to Amazon as an author aside: framing this as Amazon vs University Bookstore is faintly ridiculous.
U-Books carries textbooks for the university. This bookstore doesn't. U-Books also has far more space to carry a larger volume of inventory.
U-Books carries art supplies, computers, software, and buckets of UW swag. This bookstore doesn't.
U-Books also has enough space to host author events. Amazon Books might try that, but I somehow don't think they'll be remotely as active or done on the same scale. It's a much smaller place.
Amazon vs U-Books is a great way to make this look like a giant corporation preying on a defenseless little guy, but only if you don't know anything about that alleged little guy. I think U-Books is gonna be fine.
...oh, and I went to the new Blue C tonight. My gf and I have been to the old location many times. The new place is nicer. Seems like they expanded the menu, too.
Admittedly, we went to Blue C because Din Tai Fung had an hour & a half wait, but that's our own fault for not getting there before 6pm. Oh god, Din Tai Fung...om nom nom.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:13 AM on November 5, 2015
U-Books carries textbooks for the university. This bookstore doesn't. U-Books also has far more space to carry a larger volume of inventory.
U-Books carries art supplies, computers, software, and buckets of UW swag. This bookstore doesn't.
U-Books also has enough space to host author events. Amazon Books might try that, but I somehow don't think they'll be remotely as active or done on the same scale. It's a much smaller place.
Amazon vs U-Books is a great way to make this look like a giant corporation preying on a defenseless little guy, but only if you don't know anything about that alleged little guy. I think U-Books is gonna be fine.
...oh, and I went to the new Blue C tonight. My gf and I have been to the old location many times. The new place is nicer. Seems like they expanded the menu, too.
Admittedly, we went to Blue C because Din Tai Fung had an hour & a half wait, but that's our own fault for not getting there before 6pm. Oh god, Din Tai Fung...om nom nom.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 12:13 AM on November 5, 2015
I still desperately miss Spine & Crown and Kris Minta.
I felt a serious pang just reading that. Lord, do I miss that place (and Kris.) It was right around the corner from my house so I was in there for hours every week.
Though, thank all that is good and righteous, we still have Joe at Lamplight Books, and he's doing a killer job.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 1:12 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I felt a serious pang just reading that. Lord, do I miss that place (and Kris.) It was right around the corner from my house so I was in there for hours every week.
Though, thank all that is good and righteous, we still have Joe at Lamplight Books, and he's doing a killer job.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 1:12 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
And there's nothing like a good bookstore for finding new books, not ones almost exactly like the ones you've bought already but things you'd never have thought to look for.
This. Exactly this x1000.
I still regret not buying the amazing mysterious hardcover book that I once saw on a B&N remainder table, full of odd illustrations and mysterious text. It was steeply discounted, but I still passed it up.
It was The Voynich Manuscript in its original print run.
But that kind of thing, I never would have even SEEN in person and looked through and handled in real life if it were an online store.
Should'a bought it. Dammit.
I remember the days when "going to the bookstore" was a bit of a minefield. I could go there and browse to my heart's content, but once I found ONE thing I needed to buy, that somehow unlocked the gates where I'd then go scoop up another 6 or 7 books and walk out a couple of hundred dollars poorer. And these weren't books I was looking for... they were books I just happened to find.
(I also miss the days of giant newsstands of print magazines where I could go in and for under $50 walk out with more than a few bits of fascination and oddness to take home and digest after a lengthy browse of the shelves.)
Spokane has a bookstore that used to occupy 4 floors of a building, that during the 12 years I have lived here I have watched shrink to 2 floors with a deeply truncated EVERYTHING IN EVERY SECTION. They still do a lot of author readings (they had Sherman Alexie here recently, I think)
and children's story hour and music events and stuff... but they are truly a shadow of what they were when I moved here. It's heartbreaking. (But easier on my wallet.)
I would also like to say... Powell's is the opposite of haphazard layout. That place is like Mecca for me, when I make the drive. Like a wallet-Hoovering Mecca.
posted by hippybear at 2:12 AM on November 5, 2015 [8 favorites]
This. Exactly this x1000.
I still regret not buying the amazing mysterious hardcover book that I once saw on a B&N remainder table, full of odd illustrations and mysterious text. It was steeply discounted, but I still passed it up.
It was The Voynich Manuscript in its original print run.
But that kind of thing, I never would have even SEEN in person and looked through and handled in real life if it were an online store.
Should'a bought it. Dammit.
I remember the days when "going to the bookstore" was a bit of a minefield. I could go there and browse to my heart's content, but once I found ONE thing I needed to buy, that somehow unlocked the gates where I'd then go scoop up another 6 or 7 books and walk out a couple of hundred dollars poorer. And these weren't books I was looking for... they were books I just happened to find.
(I also miss the days of giant newsstands of print magazines where I could go in and for under $50 walk out with more than a few bits of fascination and oddness to take home and digest after a lengthy browse of the shelves.)
Spokane has a bookstore that used to occupy 4 floors of a building, that during the 12 years I have lived here I have watched shrink to 2 floors with a deeply truncated EVERYTHING IN EVERY SECTION. They still do a lot of author readings (they had Sherman Alexie here recently, I think)
and children's story hour and music events and stuff... but they are truly a shadow of what they were when I moved here. It's heartbreaking. (But easier on my wallet.)
I would also like to say... Powell's is the opposite of haphazard layout. That place is like Mecca for me, when I make the drive. Like a wallet-Hoovering Mecca.
posted by hippybear at 2:12 AM on November 5, 2015 [8 favorites]
I think Dustin Kurtz should marry Kirsten Dunst.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [15 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [15 favorites]
Dustin Kurtz works in independent publishing and lives in Portland, OR.Of course he does.
Given how much this man clearly despises Amazon with every fibre of his being, this shop must surely be amazing to have got 2.5 stars.
There's plenty to hate Amazon for. But transparently pretending you're writing a review instead of a hatchet job is really irritating, especially in a piece this long.
posted by howfar at 3:07 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
I am fascinated by the topic but so annoyed by the writing here. I guess the author was trying to be funny but it was just distracting. Why does it matter that two customers have matching haircuts, for instance?
I also had a bit of a sentimental attachment to the old B&N that was in University Village. When I first moved to Seattle, I lived just up the street from U Village (I actually was just up the street, unlike the UW Bookstore!) and I used to enjoy spending an evening or an afternoon browsing there. After a while, I got more of a life in Seattle so I did that less frequently, but I was still a bit sad when it closed down.
I honestly think this was one of the big things that made B&N do successful - they really got how to be friendly to browsers, with the big open spaces, lots of seating, and coffee shops you can carry a stack of books or magazines into. I love independent bookstores but they are rarely as good for browsing, probably for financial reasons (Elliot Bay Books in Seattle and Powell's are two notable exceptions).
posted by lunasol at 4:55 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I also had a bit of a sentimental attachment to the old B&N that was in University Village. When I first moved to Seattle, I lived just up the street from U Village (I actually was just up the street, unlike the UW Bookstore!) and I used to enjoy spending an evening or an afternoon browsing there. After a while, I got more of a life in Seattle so I did that less frequently, but I was still a bit sad when it closed down.
I honestly think this was one of the big things that made B&N do successful - they really got how to be friendly to browsers, with the big open spaces, lots of seating, and coffee shops you can carry a stack of books or magazines into. I love independent bookstores but they are rarely as good for browsing, probably for financial reasons (Elliot Bay Books in Seattle and Powell's are two notable exceptions).
posted by lunasol at 4:55 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Ha. Funniest thing I've seen about the Amazon store.
posted by marxchivist at 4:57 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by marxchivist at 4:57 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
And there's nothing like a good bookstore for finding new books, not ones almost exactly like the ones you've bought already but things you'd never have thought to look for.
As a contrarian on the subject of bookstore-nostalgia, I disagree vehemently with this -- especially as someone whose whole life and living revolves around books (yes, an academic). The rise of the internet, of networked library catalogs, of e-books, Google Books, Amazon, and many other electronic platforms has made book discovery *far* easier and more powerful than wandering the stacks or shelves of physical books hoping you spot something or that the proprietor of this shop actually has some clue about what the important new titles are in your field. I can search by keyword, citation, or any other content across millions of volumes in seconds. I can find every book and article cited in the references of the book I was searching for, again in minutes. In full text. At my desk, drinking coffee. And read it and mark it up on the subway home without breaking my back since my tablet has hundreds of books on it at any given time. And copy and paste from it. And share it with a friend. Etc. etc.
There's a reason the physical bookstore has become a nostalgic site of entertainment for a dwindling number of people. I have never in my life met a bookstore proprietor (or clerk) who knew the subjects in which I am well read with anything like the necessary level of granularity, and not too many librarians either. I have no reason to think the stack of titles on either side of the [specific field] text I came in to find represent anything other than the random suggestions of a publisher's rep. Or the obsolete expertise of some old Koren-looking dude behind the counter grumbling about Amazon ruining his business.
Sorry pops. I haven't been in a physical bookstore in search of something for myself in a decade.
Also to the point of some of the implied "support labor" framing of many bookstore buffs, my local fancy academic brick and mortar bookstore just had a labor dispute in which it came out that their clerks make less than Amazon warehouse workers and have no benefits. $9 an hour. No benefits. Exploitative conditions.
Yet their books are 10-50% more expensive than on Amazon, and their selection is at best 1/1000th of Amazon's selection of new, important academic books in multiple languages. In fact I'm just recalling the last time I *needed* something right away (probably to check a reference or a quote in some way-past-deadline article) and gone in there, they haven't had it and have offered to "order it for me."
With a freaking straight face. Here, wait a week and we will sell you this book at our 50% markup. Just be patient and pay in advance.
I lol'd and hit "purchase with one click" on my phone, had the book the next day for less money (or I check the citation or quote on Google Books or my university electronic library), as usual I wasted a trip to the bookstore. If you don't have it in stock, the entire rationale for your brick and mortar bookstore disappears for me. I have no need of your expertise or recommendations, and you probably aren't as well read as I am in the fields I care about anyway, and I don't care about your random taste in science fiction or art history either. I get book recommendations all the time from experts in my field, thanks.
I'm sure renaissance lords sat around reminiscing about the good old days before Gutenberg.com ruined everything, back when you had to actually go to the monastery and pay the expert Friar Immanuel for a 2 year illumination job just to read a bible. Those were the days.
Amazon is just another business, but monopoly power in the book trade is nothing new and way predates the internet. How did Barnes and Noble or your university bookstore (any one, corporate or coop all work the same scam on students) get away with charging $20 for a 100 page paperback of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason for decades?
And as someone who taught at UW in the mid-90s, right as Amazon was starting, nostalgia for University Bookstore strikes me as Stockholm Syndrome-esque. Hated that place.
I'm no stranger to the charms of the dusty shelves. I've wandered the aisles of Harvard Bookstore, Black Oak, Powells, Foyles, and the Strand, many times in my young life as the son of bookish parents and a budding scholar myself. Not to mention many the stacks of many a university library. Now I sit at my laptop outside and the world of books is at my fingertips, far more vastly and efficiently. That, my friends, is progress from my point of view. I refuse to be nostalgic about a particular mode of shopping.
I have colleagues who still write in fountain pen and fancy themselves very retro and 19th century flaneur for doing so. I have colleagues who insist LP records sound better than 24/96 digital audio too. I like vintage guitars and cars a lot. We all have our old things that make us feel young again. But the book is not going back to paper, and the local independent bookstore will not last another generation except in a few wealthy cities where people can afford the pleasurable diversion of encountering a relatively random sample of books made out of dead trees.
Everyone I know in the publishing industry accepts this as a fact of life at this point. It's really readers and not authors or publishers who hang on to the dream. My 10-year old modest little academic best-seller continues to sell better every single year and I've rarely ever seen it on a bookshelf. Two years ago, royalties from Kindle sales surpassed those from physical sales, and my last royalty check was the largest I've ever received (I donate it to the subjects of the book, by the way, and this one bought a very nice brand new guitar for an old friend.)
I know this is third rail territory on MeFi. Note I am not praising Amazon's business model, just pointing out that here we are all reading and writing on the internet about the pleasures of dusty old bookstores.
posted by spitbull at 5:15 AM on November 5, 2015 [19 favorites]
As a contrarian on the subject of bookstore-nostalgia, I disagree vehemently with this -- especially as someone whose whole life and living revolves around books (yes, an academic). The rise of the internet, of networked library catalogs, of e-books, Google Books, Amazon, and many other electronic platforms has made book discovery *far* easier and more powerful than wandering the stacks or shelves of physical books hoping you spot something or that the proprietor of this shop actually has some clue about what the important new titles are in your field. I can search by keyword, citation, or any other content across millions of volumes in seconds. I can find every book and article cited in the references of the book I was searching for, again in minutes. In full text. At my desk, drinking coffee. And read it and mark it up on the subway home without breaking my back since my tablet has hundreds of books on it at any given time. And copy and paste from it. And share it with a friend. Etc. etc.
There's a reason the physical bookstore has become a nostalgic site of entertainment for a dwindling number of people. I have never in my life met a bookstore proprietor (or clerk) who knew the subjects in which I am well read with anything like the necessary level of granularity, and not too many librarians either. I have no reason to think the stack of titles on either side of the [specific field] text I came in to find represent anything other than the random suggestions of a publisher's rep. Or the obsolete expertise of some old Koren-looking dude behind the counter grumbling about Amazon ruining his business.
Sorry pops. I haven't been in a physical bookstore in search of something for myself in a decade.
Also to the point of some of the implied "support labor" framing of many bookstore buffs, my local fancy academic brick and mortar bookstore just had a labor dispute in which it came out that their clerks make less than Amazon warehouse workers and have no benefits. $9 an hour. No benefits. Exploitative conditions.
Yet their books are 10-50% more expensive than on Amazon, and their selection is at best 1/1000th of Amazon's selection of new, important academic books in multiple languages. In fact I'm just recalling the last time I *needed* something right away (probably to check a reference or a quote in some way-past-deadline article) and gone in there, they haven't had it and have offered to "order it for me."
With a freaking straight face. Here, wait a week and we will sell you this book at our 50% markup. Just be patient and pay in advance.
I lol'd and hit "purchase with one click" on my phone, had the book the next day for less money (or I check the citation or quote on Google Books or my university electronic library), as usual I wasted a trip to the bookstore. If you don't have it in stock, the entire rationale for your brick and mortar bookstore disappears for me. I have no need of your expertise or recommendations, and you probably aren't as well read as I am in the fields I care about anyway, and I don't care about your random taste in science fiction or art history either. I get book recommendations all the time from experts in my field, thanks.
I'm sure renaissance lords sat around reminiscing about the good old days before Gutenberg.com ruined everything, back when you had to actually go to the monastery and pay the expert Friar Immanuel for a 2 year illumination job just to read a bible. Those were the days.
Amazon is just another business, but monopoly power in the book trade is nothing new and way predates the internet. How did Barnes and Noble or your university bookstore (any one, corporate or coop all work the same scam on students) get away with charging $20 for a 100 page paperback of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason for decades?
And as someone who taught at UW in the mid-90s, right as Amazon was starting, nostalgia for University Bookstore strikes me as Stockholm Syndrome-esque. Hated that place.
I'm no stranger to the charms of the dusty shelves. I've wandered the aisles of Harvard Bookstore, Black Oak, Powells, Foyles, and the Strand, many times in my young life as the son of bookish parents and a budding scholar myself. Not to mention many the stacks of many a university library. Now I sit at my laptop outside and the world of books is at my fingertips, far more vastly and efficiently. That, my friends, is progress from my point of view. I refuse to be nostalgic about a particular mode of shopping.
I have colleagues who still write in fountain pen and fancy themselves very retro and 19th century flaneur for doing so. I have colleagues who insist LP records sound better than 24/96 digital audio too. I like vintage guitars and cars a lot. We all have our old things that make us feel young again. But the book is not going back to paper, and the local independent bookstore will not last another generation except in a few wealthy cities where people can afford the pleasurable diversion of encountering a relatively random sample of books made out of dead trees.
Everyone I know in the publishing industry accepts this as a fact of life at this point. It's really readers and not authors or publishers who hang on to the dream. My 10-year old modest little academic best-seller continues to sell better every single year and I've rarely ever seen it on a bookshelf. Two years ago, royalties from Kindle sales surpassed those from physical sales, and my last royalty check was the largest I've ever received (I donate it to the subjects of the book, by the way, and this one bought a very nice brand new guitar for an old friend.)
I know this is third rail territory on MeFi. Note I am not praising Amazon's business model, just pointing out that here we are all reading and writing on the internet about the pleasures of dusty old bookstores.
posted by spitbull at 5:15 AM on November 5, 2015 [19 favorites]
Imagine if this bookstore was located in the lobby of one of Amazon's fullfillment centers. Is that book in the back? Yes, and we've pushed it to the top of a picker's queue and it'll be out in a jiff. Should he bring along anything from your Amazon wishlist?
Of course, they'd never do that, for reasons which say a lot about Amazon.
posted by joeyh at 6:02 AM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
Of course, they'd never do that, for reasons which say a lot about Amazon.
posted by joeyh at 6:02 AM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
The bookstore situation in Los Angeles is disastrous.
It's pretty much Book Soup in Hollywood, The Last Bookstore downtown, a couple B&Ns nowhere convenient, and a handful of used/speciality or foreign language shops. (Why did Dutton's ever think it was a good idea to open a second store in Beverly Hills while the industry was in a free-fall? Were the rents in Brentwood not high enough for them?)
I have mixed feelings about this, but I'd give it a shot because I miss bookstores. Even bland, corporate bookstores in malls are better than no bookstores. I love my kindle for some stuff (especially the sort of thing I used to buy in cheap paperbacks) but am not ready to give up print. My place is full of books and I like it that way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:04 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's pretty much Book Soup in Hollywood, The Last Bookstore downtown, a couple B&Ns nowhere convenient, and a handful of used/speciality or foreign language shops. (Why did Dutton's ever think it was a good idea to open a second store in Beverly Hills while the industry was in a free-fall? Were the rents in Brentwood not high enough for them?)
I have mixed feelings about this, but I'd give it a shot because I miss bookstores. Even bland, corporate bookstores in malls are better than no bookstores. I love my kindle for some stuff (especially the sort of thing I used to buy in cheap paperbacks) but am not ready to give up print. My place is full of books and I like it that way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:04 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
As a contrarian on the subject of bookstore-nostalgia, I disagree vehemently with this
Much of the key is, I think, in the descriptor "a good bookstore." Most bookstores are far from good. Doubly so for independent bookstores, which in my experience tend to be downright terrible unless you happen to share the owner's tastes quite specifically.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:20 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Much of the key is, I think, in the descriptor "a good bookstore." Most bookstores are far from good. Doubly so for independent bookstores, which in my experience tend to be downright terrible unless you happen to share the owner's tastes quite specifically.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:20 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics?
Author signings and readings.
posted by BWA at 6:36 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Author signings and readings.
posted by BWA at 6:36 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm no stranger to the charms of the dusty shelves. I've wandered the aisles of Harvard Bookstore, Black Oak, Powells, Foyles, and the Strand,
What spitbul said! Another point is his list of bookstores is almost the complete list of bookstores worth entering in the entire country. Perhaps a small exaggeration but I needed to get a book/gift and was not needing to be too picky or obscure in what I was looking for. Just outside of Seattle last week -- and went into a B&N thinking it'd be a quick show and it was a total wasteland of generic teen and religious pablum.
The Amazon marketplace almost needs to become a regulated public monopoly. It's amazing in ways, scary in other ways, but certainly culture changing.
posted by sammyo at 6:39 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
What spitbul said! Another point is his list of bookstores is almost the complete list of bookstores worth entering in the entire country. Perhaps a small exaggeration but I needed to get a book/gift and was not needing to be too picky or obscure in what I was looking for. Just outside of Seattle last week -- and went into a B&N thinking it'd be a quick show and it was a total wasteland of generic teen and religious pablum.
The Amazon marketplace almost needs to become a regulated public monopoly. It's amazing in ways, scary in other ways, but certainly culture changing.
posted by sammyo at 6:39 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Oh and the world certainly does change, University Village was the smallest dingiest strip mall not all that long ago. Funny.
posted by sammyo at 6:41 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 6:41 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
The stacks are situated too close to one another so that you have to brush past other browsers—Paco Underhill’s famed “butt brush”—and can’t comfortably bend down to see books on lower shelves.
Whatever the physical store's other deficiencies, this odd criticism does not distinguish the store from most of my favorite bookstores, honestly. It makes me think the author has only shopped at Barnes & Noble and not actual indy or used bookstores. And what little I know about Paco Underhill has only made me suspect he has no interest in the books in bookstores.
Life sort-of imitates You’ve Got Mail
So in the end Jeff Bezos turns out really to be a great guy with a friendly dog and we realize we were in love with him all along? ;-)
Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics?
I think most people would say yes. Personally, I go to indy and more specificially indy used bookstores for the possibility of finding something unexpected and unusual, or something out-of-print that I am interested in reading. For my interests, contemporary/modern literary fiction and poetry, and science fiction on the literary end of the scale, things go OP quickly and are rarely carried by chain stores.
Niche interests in general are not served well by big-box stores focusing on volume sales, though of course one of the paradoxes is that Amazon.com with its panoply of warehouses does serve niche interests reasonably well (but then so does Powells, or for poetry, SPDbook.org) if you're willing to wait a few days for a book to be shipped to you.
posted by aught at 6:53 AM on November 5, 2015
Whatever the physical store's other deficiencies, this odd criticism does not distinguish the store from most of my favorite bookstores, honestly. It makes me think the author has only shopped at Barnes & Noble and not actual indy or used bookstores. And what little I know about Paco Underhill has only made me suspect he has no interest in the books in bookstores.
Life sort-of imitates You’ve Got Mail
So in the end Jeff Bezos turns out really to be a great guy with a friendly dog and we realize we were in love with him all along? ;-)
Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics?
I think most people would say yes. Personally, I go to indy and more specificially indy used bookstores for the possibility of finding something unexpected and unusual, or something out-of-print that I am interested in reading. For my interests, contemporary/modern literary fiction and poetry, and science fiction on the literary end of the scale, things go OP quickly and are rarely carried by chain stores.
Niche interests in general are not served well by big-box stores focusing on volume sales, though of course one of the paradoxes is that Amazon.com with its panoply of warehouses does serve niche interests reasonably well (but then so does Powells, or for poetry, SPDbook.org) if you're willing to wait a few days for a book to be shipped to you.
posted by aught at 6:53 AM on November 5, 2015
When I was knee-high to a grasshopper, the newly-opened University Village Barnes & Noble tore out my heart and feasted on it (literally, yes LITERALLY ACTUALLY) by running independent, friendly, and beloved Kay's Bookmark out of business. For historical context, this took place in 1996, one year after the sad death of Village Lanes.
Now Amazon is running the big-box stores out of business. The silver lining of Hurricane Amazon is the finger-lickin' good schadenfreude of Barnes & Noble execs' tears.
posted by duffell at 7:01 AM on November 5, 2015
Now Amazon is running the big-box stores out of business. The silver lining of Hurricane Amazon is the finger-lickin' good schadenfreude of Barnes & Noble execs' tears.
posted by duffell at 7:01 AM on November 5, 2015
I love books. I've worked in bookstores. I read at least two books a week.
And you know what? I'm not paying 5 dollars more to buy a book from an indie bookstore when I can get it in two days with free shipping from Amazon. I'm not.
Even better, I can pay far less and have it instantly delivered to my e-reader. No waiting and no human interaction whatsoever.
I don't mourn the loss of the brick-and-mortar bookstore. Make it quicker, cheaper, and easier for me to shovel words into my face, please.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:07 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
And you know what? I'm not paying 5 dollars more to buy a book from an indie bookstore when I can get it in two days with free shipping from Amazon. I'm not.
Even better, I can pay far less and have it instantly delivered to my e-reader. No waiting and no human interaction whatsoever.
I don't mourn the loss of the brick-and-mortar bookstore. Make it quicker, cheaper, and easier for me to shovel words into my face, please.
posted by fiercecupcake at 7:07 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
and poetry,
-- oh, I meant to add, while I don't live in Seattle, I have visited a number of times over the years, and a great example of a physical bookstore that does a great job in meeting one of my niche needs that big-box stores cannot touch and Amazon.com has a problem with, is Open Books -- also "just up the street" from University Village -- which specializes in poetry only and which I make a beeline to whenever I am in Seattle. If you like poetry, make a point of going there when in Seattle (and to Berl's in Brooklyn, Innisfree in Boulder, Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, or Grolier's in Boston... if it still exists, haven't been to Boston in too long).
posted by aught at 7:21 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
-- oh, I meant to add, while I don't live in Seattle, I have visited a number of times over the years, and a great example of a physical bookstore that does a great job in meeting one of my niche needs that big-box stores cannot touch and Amazon.com has a problem with, is Open Books -- also "just up the street" from University Village -- which specializes in poetry only and which I make a beeline to whenever I am in Seattle. If you like poetry, make a point of going there when in Seattle (and to Berl's in Brooklyn, Innisfree in Boulder, Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, or Grolier's in Boston... if it still exists, haven't been to Boston in too long).
posted by aught at 7:21 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
zompist: It's nice that Amazon is opening a store; it's pitiful that it apparently stocks just 6000 titles. If anyone understood the long tail I'd've thought it'd be Amazon.
-and-
scaryblackdeath: The absence of my own books was a bummer, but it's understandable because reasons. But the lack of my fellow imprint authors when I figured this would at least be a store friendly to our work was super disappointing.
Amazon understands the long tail, and there's a solid reason they only have 6,000 titles, and choose to display them at the less space-efficient face-out method, opting to stock well-known titles instead of their own publications: their physical store is the head of their very long tail business model. Finite space means making hard decisions about what to stock and how to display it. Just like you'd expect any other major chain and most indie book stores to stock the popular stuff, because it sells and they need sales to stay open.
That's the beauty of the internet and global markets: the world is your warehouse, so your inventory can include the very tip of the long tail, and you still make money with the popular stuff, too.
Rangi: Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics?
Serendipitous discovery. Much like MetaFilter, I like local book stores precisely because I can wander around and find things I didn't know anything about previously. Sure, like MetaFilter, it could be organized in a better fashion, but if it were, I wouldn't browse, as in the Amazon Bookstore, apparently. I learned about Sir Richard Burton from a random selection from the biographical section in a used book store. I found a copy of Place Names of New Mexico, and other books on local history. I've found plenty of enjoyment from cheap pulp sci-fi and fiction that I picked up for its cover art. I was really, really tempted by an early collection of Wizard of Oz books, but they were really expensive and I couldn't justify the purchase, but I was able to casually leaf through them.
You can get some of that in any book store, but the added level of nostalgia and comfort make local indie shops a cozy place for me.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:31 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
-and-
scaryblackdeath: The absence of my own books was a bummer, but it's understandable because reasons. But the lack of my fellow imprint authors when I figured this would at least be a store friendly to our work was super disappointing.
Amazon understands the long tail, and there's a solid reason they only have 6,000 titles, and choose to display them at the less space-efficient face-out method, opting to stock well-known titles instead of their own publications: their physical store is the head of their very long tail business model. Finite space means making hard decisions about what to stock and how to display it. Just like you'd expect any other major chain and most indie book stores to stock the popular stuff, because it sells and they need sales to stay open.
That's the beauty of the internet and global markets: the world is your warehouse, so your inventory can include the very tip of the long tail, and you still make money with the popular stuff, too.
Rangi: Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics?
Serendipitous discovery. Much like MetaFilter, I like local book stores precisely because I can wander around and find things I didn't know anything about previously. Sure, like MetaFilter, it could be organized in a better fashion, but if it were, I wouldn't browse, as in the Amazon Bookstore, apparently. I learned about Sir Richard Burton from a random selection from the biographical section in a used book store. I found a copy of Place Names of New Mexico, and other books on local history. I've found plenty of enjoyment from cheap pulp sci-fi and fiction that I picked up for its cover art. I was really, really tempted by an early collection of Wizard of Oz books, but they were really expensive and I couldn't justify the purchase, but I was able to casually leaf through them.
You can get some of that in any book store, but the added level of nostalgia and comfort make local indie shops a cozy place for me.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:31 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
And as someone who taught at UW in the mid-90s, right as Amazon was starting, nostalgia for University Bookstore strikes me as Stockholm Syndrome-esque. Hated that place.
Heh. From my own past bookstore wanderings in Seattle, I would think the fondness or nostalgia would be for Elliot Bay, Magus Books, Mercer St Books, or Ophelia's, or even one of the quirky little places in the labyrinth of the Market, rather than the University Bookstore, which feels very much like a university bookstore -- though my understanding is that it is at least independent and not a stealth appendage of Barnes and Noble like the vast majority of generic university bookstores.
posted by aught at 7:33 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Heh. From my own past bookstore wanderings in Seattle, I would think the fondness or nostalgia would be for Elliot Bay, Magus Books, Mercer St Books, or Ophelia's, or even one of the quirky little places in the labyrinth of the Market, rather than the University Bookstore, which feels very much like a university bookstore -- though my understanding is that it is at least independent and not a stealth appendage of Barnes and Noble like the vast majority of generic university bookstores.
posted by aught at 7:33 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
While I agree with everything that spitbull said, it's still possible to also think that the current climate for bookstores is in some ways problematic, with Amazon a key instigator.
Here's an op-ed in the NYT. In it, it discusses countries that have enforced book pricing laws, stating that companies can only discount books within a certain degree of their mark up price. What this does is eliminate large stores operating on economies of scale (like Amazon) from aggressively pricing their books and crowding out other competitors. This allows for competing stores and publishers, which then allows for a greater diversity of books.
Without these laws you see what is happening in the United States where stores in order to compete are only going to be selling the Top 50 Bestsellers or what have you, at aggressively marketed price, which then influences the publishing scene because bookstores are only buying the Top 50 Bestsellers, so they're going to be disinclined into making risky investments or what have you.
posted by Dalby at 7:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Here's an op-ed in the NYT. In it, it discusses countries that have enforced book pricing laws, stating that companies can only discount books within a certain degree of their mark up price. What this does is eliminate large stores operating on economies of scale (like Amazon) from aggressively pricing their books and crowding out other competitors. This allows for competing stores and publishers, which then allows for a greater diversity of books.
Without these laws you see what is happening in the United States where stores in order to compete are only going to be selling the Top 50 Bestsellers or what have you, at aggressively marketed price, which then influences the publishing scene because bookstores are only buying the Top 50 Bestsellers, so they're going to be disinclined into making risky investments or what have you.
posted by Dalby at 7:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Skylight and Vromans, too.
posted by persona au gratin at 7:48 AM on November 5, 2015
posted by persona au gratin at 7:48 AM on November 5, 2015
Or the obsolete expertise of some old Koren-looking dude behind the counter grumbling about Amazon ruining his business.
"Koren-looking dude"? Are you being incoherent, or invoking some weird stereotype? Can't tell.
posted by listen, lady at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2015
"Koren-looking dude"? Are you being incoherent, or invoking some weird stereotype? Can't tell.
posted by listen, lady at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2015
I'd rather take the Amtrak to Powell's. because I mean, that's like enough reason to go to portland for a day right?
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:52 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:52 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
And sizzle pie. It's literally right there you know. Amazon doesn't do that.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:52 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:52 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think there's an article waiting to be written about the evolution of U-village as an allegory for the economic change in Seattle. No moss accumulates there.
posted by stowaway at 8:05 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by stowaway at 8:05 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Edward Koren draws cartoons of fuzzy-haired big-nosed people(and creatures).
The BH Dutton's opened there because the mayor at the time wanted a bookstore and gave them tax breaks; the next mayor couldn't care less about books and rescinded them.
Kurtz is from MI. He used to work at McNally-Jackson and Melville House.
posted by brujita at 8:17 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
The BH Dutton's opened there because the mayor at the time wanted a bookstore and gave them tax breaks; the next mayor couldn't care less about books and rescinded them.
Kurtz is from MI. He used to work at McNally-Jackson and Melville House.
posted by brujita at 8:17 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
The BH Dutton's opened there because the mayor at the time wanted a bookstore and gave them tax breaks; the next mayor couldn't care less about books and rescinded them.
Well, that explains it. Thanks, I could never make any sense of it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:18 AM on November 5, 2015
Well, that explains it. Thanks, I could never make any sense of it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:18 AM on November 5, 2015
Also, since it's part of the store's methodology & all: Goodreads is not an awesome source. Authors have to be publicly nice about Goodreads, but with any degree of privacy at all (even in front of a workshop of aspiring writers), you'll see authors and well-established editors visibly cringe when the topic comes up. As far as I can tell, Goodreads isn't so much about finding good reads as it is about savaging books one doesn't like to make oneself feel smart and to encourage others not to read them.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:43 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I like Goodreads as a way of tracking my books and getting some decent-ish recommendations. Definitely some weird/toxic culture going on there, so I don't involve myself in that.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:49 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Chrysostom at 8:49 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Of course, they'd never do that, for reasons which say a lot about Amazon.
Well like, their fullfillment centers are in places like Coffeyville KS, where the hundred or so warehouse workers represent about 50 percent of the population. This says little about Amazon's warehouse conditions, and volumes about why their centers are located in the cheapest places possible, in the lowest sales tax states possible, in towns on the border with another state so they can threaten to move the operation a mile down the highway for lower tax burdens. No different than the reasons the previous owner, Golden Books, build their warehouse there in the first place.
posted by pwnguin at 9:00 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Well like, their fullfillment centers are in places like Coffeyville KS, where the hundred or so warehouse workers represent about 50 percent of the population. This says little about Amazon's warehouse conditions, and volumes about why their centers are located in the cheapest places possible, in the lowest sales tax states possible, in towns on the border with another state so they can threaten to move the operation a mile down the highway for lower tax burdens. No different than the reasons the previous owner, Golden Books, build their warehouse there in the first place.
posted by pwnguin at 9:00 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
It's pretty much Book Soup in Hollywood, The Last Bookstore downtown, a couple B&Ns nowhere convenient, and a handful of used/speciality or foreign language shops.
In the specialty category I'd like to call out Hennessy + Ingalls as an amazing resource for art and architecture (and lots more) even though they are moving from my neighborhood to DTLA next year. There's a B&N on the Promenade (which is actually convenient to me!) but it's been so long since I've been in there that I just think of it as a Starbucks.
RIP the old AMOK and Midnight Special.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:02 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
In the specialty category I'd like to call out Hennessy + Ingalls as an amazing resource for art and architecture (and lots more) even though they are moving from my neighborhood to DTLA next year. There's a B&N on the Promenade (which is actually convenient to me!) but it's been so long since I've been in there that I just think of it as a Starbucks.
RIP the old AMOK and Midnight Special.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:02 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Serendipitous discovery. Much like MetaFilter, I like local book stores precisely because I can wander around and find things I didn't know anything about previously.
Here is the Amazon Bookstore that I want to see.
It doesn’t carry real books - well, maybe a small number up front. Rather, the shelves are stocked with thousands of slim volumes with ornate book covers. Each cover is for one of the books being sold, with the requisite author blurbs on it, dust jacket text, etc. on it. Within would be a small number of pages (50?) with excerpted text. Or, alternately, some blank pages -for that good, good book smell- and a kindle with a copy of the book that you can browse. Volumes upon volumes of these little guys, all organized on shelves according to Amazon's theories about which topics relate to which. Amazon imprints and Kindle singles are included. (There should really be some physical copies of the singles, if just for the perk of being able to get an Amazon in-store exclusive physical artifact.)
At the check out, you give the cashier the volume(s?) you've chosen. If it's on kindle, you can get it downloaded immediately. If you want a physical copy, you can get it shipped to your home or to the book store for pick up. If it's one of the books for which Amazon has a license to provide printed copies, they'll make one for you on some massive printer-and-book-binding machine in the basement, while you wait. ("Come back in an hour!")
Maybe there’s a coffee shop, because people like coffee shops in book stores, and maybe there’s a common area where authors can meet for book signings or can do video conferences. (To really make video conferences pop, Amazon should work on getting a working version of Margaret Atwood’s LongPen) so that folks can get things signed.) But really, this store should be about making people feel like Amazon is giving them the things that they currently love about small bookstores while, at the same time, subverting those norms and emphasizing their deficiencies.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:08 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
Here is the Amazon Bookstore that I want to see.
It doesn’t carry real books - well, maybe a small number up front. Rather, the shelves are stocked with thousands of slim volumes with ornate book covers. Each cover is for one of the books being sold, with the requisite author blurbs on it, dust jacket text, etc. on it. Within would be a small number of pages (50?) with excerpted text. Or, alternately, some blank pages -for that good, good book smell- and a kindle with a copy of the book that you can browse. Volumes upon volumes of these little guys, all organized on shelves according to Amazon's theories about which topics relate to which. Amazon imprints and Kindle singles are included. (There should really be some physical copies of the singles, if just for the perk of being able to get an Amazon in-store exclusive physical artifact.)
At the check out, you give the cashier the volume(s?) you've chosen. If it's on kindle, you can get it downloaded immediately. If you want a physical copy, you can get it shipped to your home or to the book store for pick up. If it's one of the books for which Amazon has a license to provide printed copies, they'll make one for you on some massive printer-and-book-binding machine in the basement, while you wait. ("Come back in an hour!")
Maybe there’s a coffee shop, because people like coffee shops in book stores, and maybe there’s a common area where authors can meet for book signings or can do video conferences. (To really make video conferences pop, Amazon should work on getting a working version of Margaret Atwood’s LongPen) so that folks can get things signed.) But really, this store should be about making people feel like Amazon is giving them the things that they currently love about small bookstores while, at the same time, subverting those norms and emphasizing their deficiencies.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:08 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
This thread painfully reminded me I used to have very strong negative feelings about B&N back in the 90s and 00s when they were expanding mercilessly and driving out indies all over the place. I had friends that had worked there, too, folks with library science degrees or lit majors, all working for peanuts and all the corporate bullshit buffet they could stomach, because hey, at least it's books and not Walmart.
My distaste for Amazon and it's walmart-ification of internet commerce and the fucked up libertarian technocratic algorithm worship has eclipsed those memories of B&N so completely I barely remember the chain store as ever being a thing.
My reaction to Amazon is visceral beyond what they've done to independent retailing. I witnessed what Amazon's corporate culture is doing to Seattle. It's fucking horrifying. In 5 years I watched SLU and Capitol Hill go from still kind of quirky to yuppie condo ghetto so fast you can still see the dust in the air from clear over here on the Olympics. Amazon's heavily imported hiring and pay practices are pretty much directly responsible for my rent (in a low income housing building!) nearly doubling in less than five years because of "market rates".
Amazon isn't just forcing indie retailers out of business. It has forced almost all of the artists I personally knew either out of Seattle, if not out of practicing their art entirely due to having to work multiple jobs to survive and save up to try to flee the encroaching low rise condo ghettos, ticky-tacky not so little boxes on the hillside, all the same.
Amazon has become worse than Walmart. When you shop with them, you're paying for those lower prices and convenience in ways that go beyond jobs and money.
While Amazon is not directly responsible for my poverty and underemployment, it is deeply responsible for the housing crunch, rent crisis and ongoing epidemic of homelessness in Seattle by not just pricing everyone out of the market, and not just from their monolithic corporate culture, but more directly because of Amazon's tax avoidance schemes and utter lack of direct corporate social charity or work.
And these days asking people to not use Amazon is like asking for them not to breathe.
posted by loquacious at 11:38 AM on November 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
My distaste for Amazon and it's walmart-ification of internet commerce and the fucked up libertarian technocratic algorithm worship has eclipsed those memories of B&N so completely I barely remember the chain store as ever being a thing.
My reaction to Amazon is visceral beyond what they've done to independent retailing. I witnessed what Amazon's corporate culture is doing to Seattle. It's fucking horrifying. In 5 years I watched SLU and Capitol Hill go from still kind of quirky to yuppie condo ghetto so fast you can still see the dust in the air from clear over here on the Olympics. Amazon's heavily imported hiring and pay practices are pretty much directly responsible for my rent (in a low income housing building!) nearly doubling in less than five years because of "market rates".
Amazon isn't just forcing indie retailers out of business. It has forced almost all of the artists I personally knew either out of Seattle, if not out of practicing their art entirely due to having to work multiple jobs to survive and save up to try to flee the encroaching low rise condo ghettos, ticky-tacky not so little boxes on the hillside, all the same.
Amazon has become worse than Walmart. When you shop with them, you're paying for those lower prices and convenience in ways that go beyond jobs and money.
While Amazon is not directly responsible for my poverty and underemployment, it is deeply responsible for the housing crunch, rent crisis and ongoing epidemic of homelessness in Seattle by not just pricing everyone out of the market, and not just from their monolithic corporate culture, but more directly because of Amazon's tax avoidance schemes and utter lack of direct corporate social charity or work.
And these days asking people to not use Amazon is like asking for them not to breathe.
posted by loquacious at 11:38 AM on November 5, 2015 [6 favorites]
Is there anything more to the appeal of indie bookstores than nostalgia and aesthetics?
Yes. Plenty.
This is such a bizarre, cynical way of thinking about smaller independent shops. As if the experience of a place doesn't have any value. It's like strolling through a garden and thinking "hmm, this has some charm but I could see any plant I want online."
It's the large chains that appeal more to nostalgia and novelty, with cynically crafted bookstore experiences.
posted by AtoBtoA at 11:48 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yes. Plenty.
This is such a bizarre, cynical way of thinking about smaller independent shops. As if the experience of a place doesn't have any value. It's like strolling through a garden and thinking "hmm, this has some charm but I could see any plant I want online."
It's the large chains that appeal more to nostalgia and novelty, with cynically crafted bookstore experiences.
posted by AtoBtoA at 11:48 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
Going to Maine, the University (of Washington) Bookstore has an on-demand press right next to the main counter, with a selection of very long tail books.
posted by clew at 11:59 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 11:59 AM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
This is such a bizarre, cynical way of thinking about smaller independent shops. As if the experience of a place doesn't have any value. It's like strolling through a garden and thinking "hmm, this has some charm but I could see any plant I want online."
Yes, but the product the garden produces is beauty and ambiance - you pay a fee to get in, or you pay with your tax dollars, or you pay a gardener to make one so that you can hang out, or you make one yourself and pay with your time. A book shop is a shop; it exists to sell books, not the experience of browsing. It exists as a community hub because it can sell enough books to still break even while being a community hub.
If I want to go to a book garden (and I love book gardens) I go to my library and hang out in the stacks. Donate to your libraries!
posted by Going To Maine at 1:13 PM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
Yes, but the product the garden produces is beauty and ambiance - you pay a fee to get in, or you pay with your tax dollars, or you pay a gardener to make one so that you can hang out, or you make one yourself and pay with your time. A book shop is a shop; it exists to sell books, not the experience of browsing. It exists as a community hub because it can sell enough books to still break even while being a community hub.
If I want to go to a book garden (and I love book gardens) I go to my library and hang out in the stacks. Donate to your libraries!
posted by Going To Maine at 1:13 PM on November 5, 2015 [3 favorites]
From my perspective as a small press publisher (I run Upper Rubber Boot), Amazon is like an abusive partner I can't leave. I sell both ebooks and print books through them, and for the print books, I sell mostly books Amazon is printing (through CreateSpace, which has quality indistinguishable from Ingram or my local printer) but also some that are left over from Kickstarter print runs printed by J&J Printing (great little printer in Nashville where I live) that I sell as though they are used. Just off the top of my head, here are some weird things Amazon does:
I don't have a lot of sales through indies because it's really hard to keep up with fulfilment and I'm just one person doing this in their spare time (I have a day job), but indies are always so much easier to work with. The ones local to me (East Side Story and Parnassus) hold a lot of events and create buzz for authors in ways that Amazon and the big box bookstores never have. So they're awesome and I want to support them, but as much as I hate Amazon, they have also made it a lot easier for small potatoes folks like me to sell books at all. So I have some really mixed feelings about them.
posted by joannemerriam at 1:37 PM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
- They let me set a publication date and offer pre-orders for ebooks but not for print books. Print books are either published or not. This means it's harder to get that first-day-of-publication boost from a whole bunch of pre-orders all being fulfilled at once—but the big publishing companies can all offer print pre-orders, so they have even more of an advantage in sales rankings than they already had.
- Related to this, I'd like to be able to print copies to send to reviewers, but they only allow me to print 5 sample copies at a time, all of which say PROOF on the final page, so in order to print copies for reviewers I have to keep uploading a "different" version of the book (really exactly the same except I add or subtract a blank page at the end) and go through the approval/proofing/automated-are-you-plagiarizing process again, order 5 copies and have them sent to myself because you can't send the samples to more than one address at a time so I'm paying for shipping twice on every copy, and then repeat until I've printed enough for all my reviewers (usually I send to 25-35 people).
- If I sell an ebook in the US and a bunch of other countries, I get 70% of the cover price. However, for sales in certain countries (Japan is one, I don't recall all of them), Amazon will only give me 30%. I pay between 30 and 40% royalties to my authors, so I lose money on those book sales. I'm considering removing those countries just in case some book becomes popular there, but I'm assuming print revenues would make it worth the small loss on ebooks, if the sales volume was ever big enough to concern me.
I don't have a lot of sales through indies because it's really hard to keep up with fulfilment and I'm just one person doing this in their spare time (I have a day job), but indies are always so much easier to work with. The ones local to me (East Side Story and Parnassus) hold a lot of events and create buzz for authors in ways that Amazon and the big box bookstores never have. So they're awesome and I want to support them, but as much as I hate Amazon, they have also made it a lot easier for small potatoes folks like me to sell books at all. So I have some really mixed feelings about them.
posted by joannemerriam at 1:37 PM on November 5, 2015 [5 favorites]
Loquacious, I wish I could favorite your comment eleventy billion times. Amazon has colonized downtown Seattle. It's...astounding (not in a good way) what they did there.
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:04 PM on November 5, 2015
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:04 PM on November 5, 2015
Going To Maine: "If I want to go to a book garden (and I love book gardens) I go to my library and hang out in the stacks. Donate to your libraries!"
I shop at my local bookstore and donate to my local library. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:12 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I shop at my local bookstore and donate to my local library. They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:12 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I shop at my local bookstore and donate to my local library. They don't have to be mutually exclusive
They don’t - it’s true. But I’ve gone into my local bookstores once or twice in the past year and I go to my local libraries at least three times per week. So I’d prefer to keep my cash in the one that I actually use.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:52 PM on November 5, 2015
They don’t - it’s true. But I’ve gone into my local bookstores once or twice in the past year and I go to my local libraries at least three times per week. So I’d prefer to keep my cash in the one that I actually use.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:52 PM on November 5, 2015
Yeah, if we're going to worry about preserving something, libraries seem more important than bookstores.
I used to drive from the suburbs to Atlanta several times a month to shop/browse at Oxford, so I remember the fun of going to a "real" bookstore. But I find more interesting books online than I ever did browsing in person. I have no more desire to go to a bookstore. They served a purpose back when it was difficult to find new material any other way, but the Internet is vastly superior for that purpose (not just Amazon, but forums/sites/etc. Back then I had Usenet, but its userbase was a tiny fraction of the net today).
posted by thefoxgod at 3:34 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I used to drive from the suburbs to Atlanta several times a month to shop/browse at Oxford, so I remember the fun of going to a "real" bookstore. But I find more interesting books online than I ever did browsing in person. I have no more desire to go to a bookstore. They served a purpose back when it was difficult to find new material any other way, but the Internet is vastly superior for that purpose (not just Amazon, but forums/sites/etc. Back then I had Usenet, but its userbase was a tiny fraction of the net today).
posted by thefoxgod at 3:34 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
This like if metafilter opened small community centers all over
posted by ServSci at 6:16 PM on November 5, 2015
posted by ServSci at 6:16 PM on November 5, 2015
I feel like libraries always get used as a kind of "gotcha!" in these conversations.
Libraries are amazing resources that need all the support they can get but they function very differently than book stores and will never replace what I, and I assume others, like about them. And when travelling, I will almost never visit a library, unless it is architecturally interesting, but will almost always seek out a local book store.
If you love your e-reader and online shopping, that's great. I'd never immediately assume you only appreciate these things out of some weird technolust and desire to be around the aesthetics of the future. So, why assume an appreciation of books and the stores that sell them is based on nostalgia and affectation rather than, y'know, general interest and enjoyment?
What's gross about Amazon opening up a book store is that it's a clear attempt to eat into a market and world it's already done a pretty good job of dominating and destroying.
posted by AtoBtoA at 6:36 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Libraries are amazing resources that need all the support they can get but they function very differently than book stores and will never replace what I, and I assume others, like about them. And when travelling, I will almost never visit a library, unless it is architecturally interesting, but will almost always seek out a local book store.
If you love your e-reader and online shopping, that's great. I'd never immediately assume you only appreciate these things out of some weird technolust and desire to be around the aesthetics of the future. So, why assume an appreciation of books and the stores that sell them is based on nostalgia and affectation rather than, y'know, general interest and enjoyment?
What's gross about Amazon opening up a book store is that it's a clear attempt to eat into a market and world it's already done a pretty good job of dominating and destroying.
posted by AtoBtoA at 6:36 PM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
I guess to me the difference is that a library performs a clear service to the community (actually, more than one service). A bookstore exists just for its customers, and clearly very few people care about that (since very few people still shop in them). In areas where the small niche of customers who want actual bookstores exist, they can survive, but otherwise it's just like any other niche business.
In other words, libraries are something that should be supported regardless of the specific level of demand or profitability (as a public service, like hospitals or fire stations). Whereas bookstores are just another kind of business (in my opinion).
posted by thefoxgod at 7:04 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
In other words, libraries are something that should be supported regardless of the specific level of demand or profitability (as a public service, like hospitals or fire stations). Whereas bookstores are just another kind of business (in my opinion).
posted by thefoxgod at 7:04 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I feel like libraries always get used as a kind of "gotcha!" in these conversations.
I agree, but I tend to think that's because they are a pretty good gotcha in these types of situations - that is, where the ambiance is presumed to be on sale rather than the actual product being sold. I guess my question is: what do you find in a good bookstore (in the generic sense) that you don't find in a library? Service to travelers is a real point, but that doesn't seem like the thing that gave rise to your passion.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:09 PM on November 5, 2015
I agree, but I tend to think that's because they are a pretty good gotcha in these types of situations - that is, where the ambiance is presumed to be on sale rather than the actual product being sold. I guess my question is: what do you find in a good bookstore (in the generic sense) that you don't find in a library? Service to travelers is a real point, but that doesn't seem like the thing that gave rise to your passion.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:09 PM on November 5, 2015
And sizzle pie. It's literally right there you know. Amazon doesn't do that.
Not sure if I am stepping on your joke here, but.
posted by St. Sorryass at 10:38 PM on November 5, 2015
Not sure if I am stepping on your joke here, but.
posted by St. Sorryass at 10:38 PM on November 5, 2015
Like barbershops or coffeeshops, indie bookstores do not translate their benefit to society into monetary value in the same way that superstores do.
One of the subtle things local bookstores did in Seattle was provide a quotable sidewalk-level source of education and wit to the neighborhood, be that on sandwich boards or in local newspapers. My local store also mentored people, hosted authors, and helped mind other local shops. None of this urban fabric stuff provides a service to the community that can easily be measured in monetary value. Its a middle class, strong neighborhood, herd immunity against lack of literary perspective, quality of life thing.
There is also ghoulish value like this though: “People treat used bookstores as exhibit halls for online book-buying,” Lutton says. “[They] come in with their smartphones and check prices online.” —from this melancholy 2013 article about disappearing Seattle bookstores.
I think that neatly encapsulates a lot of people's relationship to indie book stores: great in theory, but Amazon is so much less expensive and so much more convenient... Good logistics beats quirky vibe every time. Every new technology comes with new biases, and this technology comes without neighborhood participation and with different kinds of workers. I hate that part, but Amazon is so convenient and now Spine & Crown is gone.
I just visit the library now. I haven't actually used Amazon in years because my budget has been extremely tight while struggling to stay afloat in the neighborhood their well paid workers are plopping down in.
posted by tychotesla at 3:41 AM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
One of the subtle things local bookstores did in Seattle was provide a quotable sidewalk-level source of education and wit to the neighborhood, be that on sandwich boards or in local newspapers. My local store also mentored people, hosted authors, and helped mind other local shops. None of this urban fabric stuff provides a service to the community that can easily be measured in monetary value. Its a middle class, strong neighborhood, herd immunity against lack of literary perspective, quality of life thing.
There is also ghoulish value like this though: “People treat used bookstores as exhibit halls for online book-buying,” Lutton says. “[They] come in with their smartphones and check prices online.” —from this melancholy 2013 article about disappearing Seattle bookstores.
I think that neatly encapsulates a lot of people's relationship to indie book stores: great in theory, but Amazon is so much less expensive and so much more convenient... Good logistics beats quirky vibe every time. Every new technology comes with new biases, and this technology comes without neighborhood participation and with different kinds of workers. I hate that part, but Amazon is so convenient and now Spine & Crown is gone.
I just visit the library now. I haven't actually used Amazon in years because my budget has been extremely tight while struggling to stay afloat in the neighborhood their well paid workers are plopping down in.
posted by tychotesla at 3:41 AM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
"Koren-looking dude"? Are you being incoherent, or invoking some weird stereotype? Can't tell. posted by listen, lady
Or maybe you need to read more books. Benjamin "Ed" Koren, American cartoonist, famous for work in the New Yorker, tends to like drawing sloppy hippy-type characters. It's somewhat of a trope to invoke his name to describe shaggy hippy academics like me, and the sort of dudes and dudettes who run "independent" bookstores tend to look similar in my mind. Hey we're all old hippies now.
I actually feared someone would think I meant "Korean" in the moment I wrote that though, so thanks for validating my intuition!
I also agree profoundly that the "physical book" institution worth maintaining is the library not the bookstore. Bookstores, especially of the precious "independent" sort, are entertainments for the privileged -- and at the prices they are "forced" to charge (while paying their workers nothing) they couldn't be anything else.
And as for street level education? Bookstores? Maybe at the outside margin, since most independent bookstores are in neighborhoods where the "street" is kept pretty sterile of "street type" folks. (An interesting read, however, is Princeton sociologist Mitchell Duneier's "Sidewalk," about street booksellers in NYC, a whole other world of converting trash to income and using the first amendment as a shield for informal commerce . . . Try finding that in your local indy bookstore, seriously, and it's an academic best-seller.)
However, there is no question the internet has brought "street level" education to many millions of people who never bought a book in their life. I know such people, thanks to the thing I write books about. Their homes have no books other than bibles (although lots of those). But the internet has made them knowledge-hungry explorers, consuming huge amounts of text every day on subjects both popular and esoteric at a very low cost. This was always the promise of the 'net: democratizing knowledge. Ever since publishing was invented the privileged have sought to monopolize its power (this is, in fact, the origin of copyright and intellectual property law, it has nothing to do with fostering innovation in its British origins as a stamp of monarchial monopoly over the printing press). It happened in a giant way with books over the last few hundred years. There is no reason a paperback novel should cost $10 or $20 except for the number of middle persons involved taking a cut off the intellectual property rights. In commodity terms it's worth pennies.
Of course monopoly power is hard at work battening down the internet, and Amazon is part of that problem in a big way. But the idea that bookstores were sites of intellectual freedom and discovery is a class-specific, historically and geographically specific truth, ultimately closely tied to the rise of the educated urban bourgeoisie after the French revolution (and the same reason, by the way, that Starbucks is on every corner; coffee drinking as a sign of self-discipline and work ethic stems from the same cultural milieu, and the coffee shop as a site of public rational debate, and it is a dying milieu in terms of political power, in the face of increasing class polarization).
I too have that little erotic thrill even now as I walk through the aisles of books at Powells or the Strand. It lasts only a few minutes before I'm all "this is ridiculous, can't I just search a computer like I always do?" Or maybe I do find something serendipitous that I never noticed (and then I bring it home and put it on a stack of books I found that way that I am too busy reading things I have to read to ever get to . . . .) I totally get the appeal, I get the nostalgia, I get the sense of loss for some of us of the bookstore as a site of culture and experience.
But as a form of shopping for ideas expressed in words? Almost gone, and gone enough to now be a wealthy person's hobby rather than a business. I just read an interview with the owners of the Strand. They would not at all be in business if they didn't own their building and thus make a fortune renting parts of it to other businesses to sustain the book trade. The Strand. In New York City.
Barnes and Noble teeters on bankruptcy's brink as we speak. Most independent bookshops do not make a profit, but instead represent the slow bleeding out of someone's retirement savings until they give up the fantasy (as is true of fancy little wine shops, bed and breakfasts, precious little gift stores, and many other fantasy/boutique businesses people open out of the desire to live a dream or stay in an otherwise economically unproductive place). Old books can be bought by the cubic yard for pennies. The value proposition in buying a new (or quality used) book from a store used to be scarcity and expertise. Neither of those values still accrues to most situations.
posted by spitbull at 4:28 AM on November 6, 2015
Or maybe you need to read more books. Benjamin "Ed" Koren, American cartoonist, famous for work in the New Yorker, tends to like drawing sloppy hippy-type characters. It's somewhat of a trope to invoke his name to describe shaggy hippy academics like me, and the sort of dudes and dudettes who run "independent" bookstores tend to look similar in my mind. Hey we're all old hippies now.
I actually feared someone would think I meant "Korean" in the moment I wrote that though, so thanks for validating my intuition!
I also agree profoundly that the "physical book" institution worth maintaining is the library not the bookstore. Bookstores, especially of the precious "independent" sort, are entertainments for the privileged -- and at the prices they are "forced" to charge (while paying their workers nothing) they couldn't be anything else.
And as for street level education? Bookstores? Maybe at the outside margin, since most independent bookstores are in neighborhoods where the "street" is kept pretty sterile of "street type" folks. (An interesting read, however, is Princeton sociologist Mitchell Duneier's "Sidewalk," about street booksellers in NYC, a whole other world of converting trash to income and using the first amendment as a shield for informal commerce . . . Try finding that in your local indy bookstore, seriously, and it's an academic best-seller.)
However, there is no question the internet has brought "street level" education to many millions of people who never bought a book in their life. I know such people, thanks to the thing I write books about. Their homes have no books other than bibles (although lots of those). But the internet has made them knowledge-hungry explorers, consuming huge amounts of text every day on subjects both popular and esoteric at a very low cost. This was always the promise of the 'net: democratizing knowledge. Ever since publishing was invented the privileged have sought to monopolize its power (this is, in fact, the origin of copyright and intellectual property law, it has nothing to do with fostering innovation in its British origins as a stamp of monarchial monopoly over the printing press). It happened in a giant way with books over the last few hundred years. There is no reason a paperback novel should cost $10 or $20 except for the number of middle persons involved taking a cut off the intellectual property rights. In commodity terms it's worth pennies.
Of course monopoly power is hard at work battening down the internet, and Amazon is part of that problem in a big way. But the idea that bookstores were sites of intellectual freedom and discovery is a class-specific, historically and geographically specific truth, ultimately closely tied to the rise of the educated urban bourgeoisie after the French revolution (and the same reason, by the way, that Starbucks is on every corner; coffee drinking as a sign of self-discipline and work ethic stems from the same cultural milieu, and the coffee shop as a site of public rational debate, and it is a dying milieu in terms of political power, in the face of increasing class polarization).
I too have that little erotic thrill even now as I walk through the aisles of books at Powells or the Strand. It lasts only a few minutes before I'm all "this is ridiculous, can't I just search a computer like I always do?" Or maybe I do find something serendipitous that I never noticed (and then I bring it home and put it on a stack of books I found that way that I am too busy reading things I have to read to ever get to . . . .) I totally get the appeal, I get the nostalgia, I get the sense of loss for some of us of the bookstore as a site of culture and experience.
But as a form of shopping for ideas expressed in words? Almost gone, and gone enough to now be a wealthy person's hobby rather than a business. I just read an interview with the owners of the Strand. They would not at all be in business if they didn't own their building and thus make a fortune renting parts of it to other businesses to sustain the book trade. The Strand. In New York City.
Barnes and Noble teeters on bankruptcy's brink as we speak. Most independent bookshops do not make a profit, but instead represent the slow bleeding out of someone's retirement savings until they give up the fantasy (as is true of fancy little wine shops, bed and breakfasts, precious little gift stores, and many other fantasy/boutique businesses people open out of the desire to live a dream or stay in an otherwise economically unproductive place). Old books can be bought by the cubic yard for pennies. The value proposition in buying a new (or quality used) book from a store used to be scarcity and expertise. Neither of those values still accrues to most situations.
posted by spitbull at 4:28 AM on November 6, 2015
Also note that online publishing has caused a veritable explosion of *writing* books, and while most are terrible and should never have been published (which was true in the old days too, honestly, just less of the crap made it to market) there is something amazing about the number of people who have "written a book," or are "writing a book," and such people tend also to be readers and to stay engaged in literary culture. Admittedly most of it is terrible science fiction or fantasy or whatever people do for NaNoWriMo these days or else ideological non-fiction. But the cost and value proposition of the digital platform has not destroyed literary culture at all, and if anything has greatly expanded the universe of authors and readers for anyone who writes.
This is also democratizing, easily more so than the possibility that poor people might acquire a surreptitious education at the cut-out tables of an indy bookstore in a plush neighborhood of Seattle or New York.
posted by spitbull at 4:34 AM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is also democratizing, easily more so than the possibility that poor people might acquire a surreptitious education at the cut-out tables of an indy bookstore in a plush neighborhood of Seattle or New York.
posted by spitbull at 4:34 AM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
We are, of course, getting afield from this particular bookstore, which sounds not very good.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:29 AM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 10:29 AM on November 6, 2015 [1 favorite]
It's probably just not large enough to have that much stock, given the footprint of the store. The B&N that was in that mall previously was many times its size.
posted by Artw at 10:59 AM on November 6, 2015
posted by Artw at 10:59 AM on November 6, 2015
And as for street level education? Bookstores? [...] most independent bookstores are in neighborhoods where the "street" is kept pretty sterile of "street type" folks.
That's pretty much exactly backwards here, at least until Amazon finishes removing bookstores. Also you'll notice I didn't say "street-level", precisely because I didn't want to imply they are specifically focused that way.
However, there is no question the internet has brought "street level" education to many millions of people who never bought a book in their life.
You're going to have to define "street level" if it simultaneously references people who have easy access to digital books AND are kept off the streets in "sterile" neighborhoods.
"Their homes have no books other than bibles (although lots of those). But the internet has made them knowledge-hungry explorers, consuming huge amounts of text every day on subjects both popular and esoteric at a very low cost."
I'm thinking you're talking about small town America? Or a completely different culture? All this is unlike what I know in Seattle, USA, and I've experienced at least a bit of a cross section here from talking to professors about copyrighted textbook pricing concerns to occasionally stocking a free library for the burgeoning homeless/welfare population.
And I think you're talking about a matter of personal opinion when you talk about the convenience of a google search vs. moving through physical space. Maybe your searches are just hyper focused in a way that many other people's are not? Other people have discussed serendipity above, and I quoted a bookstore owner talking about how people use his stacks of books as a way to find books to then search online.
But the idea that bookstores were sites of intellectual freedom and discovery is a class-specific, historically and geographically specific truth,
I don't actually see people talking about increased intellectual freedom in reference to why we should have bookstores still (although a less powerful but unique way of finding things... see above). In fact, I see few people saying that we "should" have bookstores, they mostly are just saying that they miss them and their disappearance is a sign of changes that must be dealt with. In the same way if Amazon created an espresso delivery system I would partake (it would solve half the problems I have with life) and would then discuss what it means now that coffeeshops are dying off (a specific kind of middlish class work gone, less places for artists to hang work, less of a specific kind of meeting place, etc). These have ramifications that extent beyond the immediacy of the buying experience, and that's worth understanding, and that's all.
Everything else I agree with though. For sure Amazon is convenient. It's just I feel like you've got some unique personal needs and geography that you may not realize. (and surely I do too)
posted by tychotesla at 2:20 PM on November 6, 2015
That's pretty much exactly backwards here, at least until Amazon finishes removing bookstores. Also you'll notice I didn't say "street-level", precisely because I didn't want to imply they are specifically focused that way.
However, there is no question the internet has brought "street level" education to many millions of people who never bought a book in their life.
You're going to have to define "street level" if it simultaneously references people who have easy access to digital books AND are kept off the streets in "sterile" neighborhoods.
"Their homes have no books other than bibles (although lots of those). But the internet has made them knowledge-hungry explorers, consuming huge amounts of text every day on subjects both popular and esoteric at a very low cost."
I'm thinking you're talking about small town America? Or a completely different culture? All this is unlike what I know in Seattle, USA, and I've experienced at least a bit of a cross section here from talking to professors about copyrighted textbook pricing concerns to occasionally stocking a free library for the burgeoning homeless/welfare population.
And I think you're talking about a matter of personal opinion when you talk about the convenience of a google search vs. moving through physical space. Maybe your searches are just hyper focused in a way that many other people's are not? Other people have discussed serendipity above, and I quoted a bookstore owner talking about how people use his stacks of books as a way to find books to then search online.
But the idea that bookstores were sites of intellectual freedom and discovery is a class-specific, historically and geographically specific truth,
I don't actually see people talking about increased intellectual freedom in reference to why we should have bookstores still (although a less powerful but unique way of finding things... see above). In fact, I see few people saying that we "should" have bookstores, they mostly are just saying that they miss them and their disappearance is a sign of changes that must be dealt with. In the same way if Amazon created an espresso delivery system I would partake (it would solve half the problems I have with life) and would then discuss what it means now that coffeeshops are dying off (a specific kind of middlish class work gone, less places for artists to hang work, less of a specific kind of meeting place, etc). These have ramifications that extent beyond the immediacy of the buying experience, and that's worth understanding, and that's all.
Everything else I agree with though. For sure Amazon is convenient. It's just I feel like you've got some unique personal needs and geography that you may not realize. (and surely I do too)
posted by tychotesla at 2:20 PM on November 6, 2015
I'm weirded out on the hate here - maybe because most of the people who support bookstores are busy doing something else?
Bookstores are important cornerstones of culture, for people who would have never been exposed or intrigued to topics and questions outside of their initial knowledge field. I love taking friends who didn't grow up with bookstores to bookstores in different areas, and we get to be astonished and have a great time reading and sharing with eachother what we discovered. It wasn't tangible knowledge or something we could access until we saw it - the same goes for most echelons of education. I found bookstores to be very populist places for that reason. I also love being able to take it home and purchase a cool new or really old book that you have never heard before. That is an experience that I still do not get on Amazon, whose recommendation system drives me up the wall, because I am not looking for similar books, I am looking for different books that are also GOOD.
They also are gathering places and community spaces. If you have access to a shitload of education and pedigree, and being able to search for things you exactly want on your minutae, then yeah, it's not made for you. But bookstores are an important part of sustaining communities, and should not be overlooked.
posted by yueliang at 8:33 PM on November 7, 2015
Bookstores are important cornerstones of culture, for people who would have never been exposed or intrigued to topics and questions outside of their initial knowledge field. I love taking friends who didn't grow up with bookstores to bookstores in different areas, and we get to be astonished and have a great time reading and sharing with eachother what we discovered. It wasn't tangible knowledge or something we could access until we saw it - the same goes for most echelons of education. I found bookstores to be very populist places for that reason. I also love being able to take it home and purchase a cool new or really old book that you have never heard before. That is an experience that I still do not get on Amazon, whose recommendation system drives me up the wall, because I am not looking for similar books, I am looking for different books that are also GOOD.
They also are gathering places and community spaces. If you have access to a shitload of education and pedigree, and being able to search for things you exactly want on your minutae, then yeah, it's not made for you. But bookstores are an important part of sustaining communities, and should not be overlooked.
posted by yueliang at 8:33 PM on November 7, 2015
The Seattle public and university libraries together didn't have all the books I was looking for, pre-ABEbooks. I had a little paper notebook of books-to-find originally, and very gladly replaced it with a database on a Palm Pilot because it was so handy to sort by subject or author while scanning shelves in a used bookstore.
posted by clew at 9:14 PM on November 7, 2015
posted by clew at 9:14 PM on November 7, 2015
The algorithm method
Spend five minutes in Amazon Books and you will likely describe it as a fairly typical corporate bookstore experience, a cleaner and more enthusiastic Barnes & Noble. But spend a little more time in Amazon Books — an hour say, on a Saturday morning — and you’ll realize the true achievement of what Amazon has done. All that data, all those national GDPs worth of products shipped, all of that has built to this moment, this destination, this apex. What Amazon has built in Amazon Books is nothing less than the world’s greatest airport bookstore.posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:39 PM on November 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
They also are gathering places and community spaces. If you have access to a shitload of education and pedigree, and being able to search for things you exactly want on your minutae, then yeah, it's not made for you. But bookstores are an important part of sustaining communities, and should not be overlooked.
So I had the chance to get into Amazon Books for about 15-20 minutes, and my impressions — perhaps clouded by the fact that it was very crowded — are that this is not a place for people to spend time comfortably, in the way that people could perhaps spend time in a Borders of yore, or even a Barnes and Noble of today. The only place to sit and read is an unpadded concrete slab on the south edge of the store, located by the magazine aisle.
When I visited, an Amazon employee was chatting with someone sitting on said slab, and he joked about how the store's employees called this part of the store the "bus stop", in that it was a place where people would sit and read while waiting for their bus. You might wait a few minutes for your bus on that slab of cold concrete, but no longer.
What Amazon has built in Amazon Books is nothing less than the world’s greatest airport bookstore.
Definitely. The store selection is corporate, purposefully. The goal is to move product — popularity sells. Books face outwards so that they can advertise themselves and make a sale off the first visual impression.
The problems with this layout are that fewer books can be promoted, which restricts selection. Also, books at the very bottom shelf — at floor level — do not get the visibility of books on higher shelves.
Along with a one-paragraph teaser about the book, a bar code is printed on a card below the book, so that you can scan the code with your iPhone or other mobile device and get the Amazon price. This kind of analog arrangement seems a bit clumsy. In five years, I could perhaps imagine these wooden bookshelves replaced with "smart" equivalents that offer digital displays below the book, so that you can see the price and description directly.
The layout of the store was a bit disconnected, but really no more crazy and disorganized than the main bookstore of Powell's Books. Only much smaller in scale, necessarily.
A not-insubstantial bit of store real estate is devoted to Amazon hardware — Fire tablets and Kindle ebook readers, particularly. Staff are there to help answer questions, while I did not see many staff elsewhere (other than by the magazine stand, and the woman at the front door making sure Amazon was following fire codes on the number of people going into the store). Amazon is likely paying very high rents to be in the same mall as the high-traffic Apple Store about a five minute walk away, so it makes sense for it to push its tech products.
Not many customers at the register buying books. I wasn't there long enough to know if that was a pattern or just how it was when I was there, but the store was packed and I'd have thought more people would be buying something or other.
In all, there seems very little that indie bookstores have to worry about this particular venue. They need to keep worrying about Amazon as a whole, in general, yes, but this physical presence isn't going to put an indie bookstore out of business that wasn't already deservedly going to go out of business.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:46 PM on November 9, 2015
So I had the chance to get into Amazon Books for about 15-20 minutes, and my impressions — perhaps clouded by the fact that it was very crowded — are that this is not a place for people to spend time comfortably, in the way that people could perhaps spend time in a Borders of yore, or even a Barnes and Noble of today. The only place to sit and read is an unpadded concrete slab on the south edge of the store, located by the magazine aisle.
When I visited, an Amazon employee was chatting with someone sitting on said slab, and he joked about how the store's employees called this part of the store the "bus stop", in that it was a place where people would sit and read while waiting for their bus. You might wait a few minutes for your bus on that slab of cold concrete, but no longer.
What Amazon has built in Amazon Books is nothing less than the world’s greatest airport bookstore.
Definitely. The store selection is corporate, purposefully. The goal is to move product — popularity sells. Books face outwards so that they can advertise themselves and make a sale off the first visual impression.
The problems with this layout are that fewer books can be promoted, which restricts selection. Also, books at the very bottom shelf — at floor level — do not get the visibility of books on higher shelves.
Along with a one-paragraph teaser about the book, a bar code is printed on a card below the book, so that you can scan the code with your iPhone or other mobile device and get the Amazon price. This kind of analog arrangement seems a bit clumsy. In five years, I could perhaps imagine these wooden bookshelves replaced with "smart" equivalents that offer digital displays below the book, so that you can see the price and description directly.
The layout of the store was a bit disconnected, but really no more crazy and disorganized than the main bookstore of Powell's Books. Only much smaller in scale, necessarily.
A not-insubstantial bit of store real estate is devoted to Amazon hardware — Fire tablets and Kindle ebook readers, particularly. Staff are there to help answer questions, while I did not see many staff elsewhere (other than by the magazine stand, and the woman at the front door making sure Amazon was following fire codes on the number of people going into the store). Amazon is likely paying very high rents to be in the same mall as the high-traffic Apple Store about a five minute walk away, so it makes sense for it to push its tech products.
Not many customers at the register buying books. I wasn't there long enough to know if that was a pattern or just how it was when I was there, but the store was packed and I'd have thought more people would be buying something or other.
In all, there seems very little that indie bookstores have to worry about this particular venue. They need to keep worrying about Amazon as a whole, in general, yes, but this physical presence isn't going to put an indie bookstore out of business that wasn't already deservedly going to go out of business.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:46 PM on November 9, 2015
In five years, I could perhaps imagine these wooden bookshelves replaced with "smart" equivalents that offer digital displays below the book, so that you can see the price and description directly.
Since our Whole Foods has had little digital price tags under everything for years now, I wonder if this isn't just a ploy to get people on the Amazon app in the store. Very strange.
posted by fiercecupcake at 6:14 AM on November 10, 2015
Since our Whole Foods has had little digital price tags under everything for years now, I wonder if this isn't just a ploy to get people on the Amazon app in the store. Very strange.
posted by fiercecupcake at 6:14 AM on November 10, 2015
> the University (of Washington) Bookstore
When I worked there in 1989, it was explained to me that it was University (as in the street, not the school, we are not at all affiliated, what an amazing coincidence) Bookstore.
They had free shipping back then, as I recall. It was possible to call them, order a book, and have it mailed to you at no extra charge.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:53 PM on November 23, 2015
When I worked there in 1989, it was explained to me that it was University (as in the street, not the school, we are not at all affiliated, what an amazing coincidence) Bookstore.
They had free shipping back then, as I recall. It was possible to call them, order a book, and have it mailed to you at no extra charge.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:53 PM on November 23, 2015
In the 90s at Penn State, there was an official student bookstore on campus; in town where the University Book Center and the Student Book Store, which were not affiliated, needless to say.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:19 PM on November 23, 2015
posted by Chrysostom at 2:19 PM on November 23, 2015
« Older Denkbild | "She described it years later as a 'boy-meets-dog... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Going To Maine at 8:36 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]