Books
Today I heard a radio station say a lot of book stores will be closing their doors because readers are now buying their books on electronic devices.
This really bothers me. I am all for buying books on your ipad or whatever, but I hate that book stores are closing. It is a less personal experience when you read a book on your kindle. If people stop printing books in my lifetime I will form a group just to keep books in circulation.
Borders went bankrupt because:
- They sold their online retail arm to Amazon, in a deal that pretty much prevented Borders from operating online for SEVEN YEARS.
- Borders (at least in the UK - I can’t speak for the American stores) charged not only more than Amazon for physical books, but also more than most supermarkets (Tesco, ASDA in the UK, Wal-Mart in the States).
- They attempted to diversify into other areas, such as DVDs, Blu-Rays, and Craft Sales. Nothing wrong with that, to an extent - but when you allocate large parts of your floor space to movies that are 30 - 35% more expensive than anywhere else? Suffice to say, you’re not gonna shift enough units to balance the falling book sales.
- Borders, Waterstones (in the UK), etc, etc, have been in decline (sadly) for at least the last five years. At least. Amazons first generation Kindle was released in 2007 (if you were lucky - it sold out in 5hrs, and wasn’t available again until April 2008). The third generation, which has been the ‘iPod’ of the e-reader world, and exploded in terms of sales, wasn’t released until the end of August 2010. By that point, Borders was already a dead business - they just hadn’t finalised it yet.
- Books won’t stop being published…
- They will, however, become more expensive, in physical format. The world is at most, 50 years away from running out of oil. The Environment, to put it bluntly, is somewhat fucked. Resources are gonna be pushed to breaking point during our lifetime. Now granted, Kindles and other e-readers aren’t carbon neutral, but given the resources required to publish a physical book, and dispatch it to a store / to your home - yep, they’re gonna become more expensive.
This quote sums it up best, for me:
Borders has not created a value proposition to be a competitor to Barnes & Noble and the e-commerce challenge,” said Anthony Karabus, a retail turnaround specialist with Karabus Retail Management Consultants.
Note the words ‘e-commerce challenge’. Not e-reader challenge, but e-commerce.
