Borders has been delaying payments to book publishers in signs that it may be one of the first major victims of e-books. Early reports from Publishers Marketplace on Friday said it was putting off the payments to help refinance its debt but also wasn’t certain that the plan would be effective. It might have to break its existing credit deals early into 2011 after facing a “liquidity shortfall,” it said.
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E-books have been credited in part to the damage done to Borders and even more successful stores like Barnes & Noble, where digital downloads are mostly replacing paper copies rather than adding to the business. Borders has been exploring the possibility of financing from an investor to buy Barnes & Noble and get a successful business through a takeover.Any financial collapse at Borders could have a ripple effect on the e-book business. It would cost Kobo one of its most important markets for e-readers and would close one of the few major online book stores. The shift could feed Amazon, Apple and other survivors with extra customers.
In a vaguely not unrelated topic, here’s one guy’s take on how iPads, etc. are killing the old media model.
Unc Dave i think your tag is right on target. Yes, unintended consequences just roll out. Roll out, change, come back at you. Will the internet globalize democracy by providing the truth/info to the people or will it come back the other way with no one outside the government/corps having enough money/interest to invest what it takes to find the truth?
The death of “investigative reporting.” Its a REAL issue. I thinks its going to die along with hard copy books. All your WallMart are belong to us.
I have pretty much decided not to purchase paper books any more. I have gotten rid of a lot of the ones I had by giving them to the local library for their fund raising book sales.
I still collect paperbacks. I never go anywhere without at least one on me. Always catching 10-15 min here and there. Car has about 5 on the back seat, all to service the mood I’m in. I’ve never had a book break when dropped and in a push, it doubles as toilet paper. Try that with an Ipad while traveling in Russia.
I haven’t purchased a book from a brick and mortar retail store since Amazon started offering free shipping. And I haven’t purchased a paper book since I got my Kindle a year ago. Funny thing is I do visit them frequently to browse their selection but then come back and purchase the book elsewhere. Once in a while, I’ll buy something from the cafe, but that can’t be enough to support a large-scale bookstore. Competitive pricing and ebook purchases are the only thing that will save them now.
My reading habits are now 70% ebooks, 30% dead tree.
What’s interesting is that since I started ebooks I read about 3 times more novels and history than I used to. Didn’t expect that. Ebooks pretty much wiped out any TV watching I do.
If I intend to keep a book (a reference book or a book that’s one of a series), I buy a “dead tree” book.
If I think the book might not be a keeper, I read a “dead tree” book from the local library if possible.
I don’t do EBooks so far, as I don’t own any of the readers. I might get a reader once I know that the readers will display any EBook I might buy. This means that Amazon, Borders and whoever else better put their books in a single E Book format or I won’t buy any publisher’s E Books.
After all, paper books are in a book format readable to all…and the book images don’t get canceled after so many months.
Aside: I used to live in a city whose libraries had a lot of movies and educational “books” on DVD, and I would sometimes borrow their DVDs. Free, fairly convenient, and the DVDs didn’t get canceled either.
From my experience, and from the comments I’ve read here, I’d say that Amazon is killing Borders (and other brick-and-mortar retailers).
I buy books, CDs and DVDs/Blu-Ray from Amazon. They’re cheaper, the shipping is cheap (or free) and there’s a better selection.
The apocalyptic prediction that booktores and print publishers are all about to fall into an abyss because the Borders chain is foundering is a very extreme forecast that ignores many other facts.
1. Borders will probably go out of business because they were always superfluous. There were too many chain bookstores and Borders had nothing to distinguish themselves from the others.
2. Borders has been in bad shape for years, before ebooks were a viable commodity.
3. Some Marginal bookstores (and other businesses, too) always fail in an economic contraction.
4. Ebooks don’t yet represent even 10% of the total number of books sold. Plenty of bookstores will still be needed to serve the market for printed books.
5. It is always a mistake to make a an economc prediction during either an economic bust or bubble, as both are anomalous conditions that don’t last.
6.Crown Books, a major chain, went bust in the 90s. The rest of the industry didn’t follow.
Mr Winkler==very extreme forecast huh? I googled for some “facts” but didn’t find much more than a uniform “books, magazine, and newspapers have been dwindling steadily for the past 30 years.” That reflects my own personal observation. Will there always be books? sure. This thread is about the change–less wood, more electrons. No abyss.
This is short and kinda interesting on the growth of paperbacks.
http://dccomicsartists.com/vault/all_in_black_and_white_for_a_dim.htm
I’ve been all digital all the time with pretty much all content. 2008 is when I made the switch to the Kindle. If a book is paper only, I’m probably not going to touch it. Most of my friends are this way as well.
With that said, our local B&N and a locally owned Used Book’s/Comics/Coffee Shop are thriving.
Speaking of the porn industry setting standards and breaking old biz models. I was listening to the end-of-year tech podcasts. One of them was lamenting the fact that in 2010 the porn industry didn’t settle the BlueRay vs. HDDVD battle like they did VHS vs Betamax back in the 1980.
I felt like screaming to the idiots. “Yes they did! They voted ‘Neither’ and are using the web as a distribution channel”. That is where the future of video entertainment is going to be. Netflix is not far behind the porn industry. People don’t want to have to go to a store, or wait for mail, to get video programming delivered to them.
# 3 bobbo said, “I never go anywhere without at least one on me… Car has about 5 on the back seat, all to service the mood I’m in.”
Poo. I’m sitting in an airport in Malaysia with my Nook. I’ve been reading “The Lost Books of the Oddysey” for the last hour or so but now feel like something a little lighter. Maybe a mystery. Or maybe I’ll go back to the autobio of Mark Twain I’m about halfway through. Or something else. I’ve got, right now, 148 books on my Nook. True, about 20 of them are medical reference books – not really between plane reading. Maybe I’ll fire up the dermatology book and see if I can identify this thing growing on my foot. All this in the space of one trade paperback book.
Toilet paper? That’s what banana leaves are for on the rare occasion I need any. With very spicy Thai food, it blows out pretty clean…
Animby–I’ve only posted this once before, so I will repeat myself: ever been to Gorky Park? I went there just because of the Movie expecting a DisneyLand a la Russia. What a pig sty. No hyperbole. The public restroom looked like an end of the world cataclysm = but I had to go. No toilet seats. Had to stand above the toilets not to get dirty. It was one of the rare times I did not have a book as I was in a new city with my camera. Always something to do. Upshot–I used a few rubles to keep myself clean. No banana leaves. Unusual you would think the world is overflowing with banana leaves. Its not. But now I know whether or not an Animby shits in the Jungle. Ha, ha.
Borneo Huh? I’d love to hear your extended thoughts on such an experience. I had a choice to go to Borneo, and went to Thailand instead. I’ve done enough rough travel to enjoy a few rungs up the ladder. This format is all wrong for such a thing. I want slides with commentary. Comparisons to other developing locations. I want to feel good. I want a placebo.
Safe flight back.
One major reason why the stores selling paper books are all going to fail within twenty years is because books take physical space.
I have a 42 volume original set of “L’Univers Des Formes” from “Les Éditions Gallimard” which taking up two shelves in my bookcase and weigh a ton. I would love to be able to have them at hand when doing research. They would weigh almost nothing in ebook form. (How much does a 16GB memory card weigh?)
How much do the books students lug around weigh? They’re the ones that will lead the charge to e-books.
Another major reason why the stores selling paper books are all going to fail within twenty years is because books are disconnected. I can’t facts check or exploit links because, paper books aren’t linked to anything.
One last major reason why the stores selling paper books are all going to fail within twenty years is because books are perishable fixed format pieces of environmentally unfriendly paper.
Hey Foobar, wouldn’t you go to a show starring a Vocaloid?
They are just an entertainment form.
Sort of a revenge by the nerds with talent.
I go shows for the music.
When there’s a vocaloid sitting on stage playing some low down dirty blues, (like 3D images of Mississippi John Hurt or Robert Johnson cutting loose for an hour or so,) I’ll go see that.
Betamax was doomed as soon as JVC came out with VHS. Betamax cost quite a bit more than VHS. Max record time on Betamax originally one hour, VHS two hours.
Sony built Betamax as if it were to be used by the television industry where a one hour record time was standard. If you needed more than one hour assign another machine to the job.
JVC built VHS to be used in someone’s living room.
I’m getting ready to buy an eBook reader but not for novels.
I’m in graduate school and nearly all reference and journal articles are now digital.
So, I’m going with the more expensive Sony reader because it reads the open formats better.
#10
You might want to reconsider as the hologram had a back up band playing live.
Of course music with no band is very old. Ask anyone with a player piano, or other various machine driven players.
Of course there is electronic and much of it is more programming than live instruments being played.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=E3_3JlA8huI
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What really excites me about eBook readers (and pads) is the potential for private publishing.
I’ve produced about a million documents in my career and about 900,000 got quickly out-dated and thrown away. It’s an appalling waste in every large company I’m aware of.
Catalogs, price sheets, product manuals, action plans, office manuals, board reports, etc. (It’s much worse if you work in a multi-lingual organization.)
All these documents would actually be better on an eReader (or pad) because they can be frequently updated and are more easily accessible for traveling employees.
Spending $150 or $200 on a reader per employee to avoid all the waste, postage and distribution headaches would be worth it.
Betamax was a better format, but it suffered from the smaller cartridge syndrome. Since the tape was smaller, it was percieved as less capable.
I still have a betamax and it will do 3+ hours with an L-830 with better quality.
To be fair, VHS finally got decent when SVHS came out, but it was so expensive that it was only for videophiles. I was lucky to get one on the tail end of its demise for only $99 at Walmart.
Back to books, I think we will always have books just because print is such a useful and long-lasting medium. We just won’t print stuff that is for the most part useless after 20 years….like computer books.
As a sci-fi fan, one nice thing about ebooks has been the access to the independent authors. If not for the kindle store I would have never heard of authors like Thomas DePrima or Nathan Lowel.
I hope we see more independents able to make a living off their work without having to use a big publishing house. After all why do you need a publisher if all the author has to do is hit a button and anyone can buy it instantly?
# 21 Rick – “I think we will always have books just because print is such a useful and long-lasting medium. We just won’t print stuff that is for the most part useless after 20 years”
Actually most books published today will be useless in 15 to 20 years. Bad paper is cheaper to make. Glued bindings are cheaper then sewed. Books will stay around but they will be come luxury items. Which of course will be full circle.
Borders is going broke BECAUSE IT SUCKS.
Ever try to find a book in there? Everything is out of order. Then it’s out of stock. It’s great if you’re looking for the latest Dan Brown book right on the table inside the doors. Anything else: forget about it.
Which brings me to eBooks: All you losers who read for entertainment are the ones behind this lousy conspiracy. Not only do the e-reader devices suck — have you ever actually looked at the “book design”, the layout, font choice, etc., in these things? Awful. Anybody who has half of a developed sensibility, who doesn’t simply ignore bad font choice, bad font size, bad page proportion — will run screaming from these things. Same goes for anybody who does any real research, reading dense material like philosophy, etc. EBooks are shi’ite.
Same principle with iPods: shi’ite sound quality for apes who don’t know better.
# 14 bobbo,
Not on my way back. Just island hopping. Couple of days hiking then a couple more days diving then home.
My world IS full of banana leaves. Cook in them, serve food on them, use them as place mat, napkins. Very versatile. Wasn’t always that way. Almost no leaves at all in Afghanistan! (They have learned to clean their behinds with a handful of sand. Now you know why the left hand is considered unclean in Islam.) As for your Russian toilet sorrows, I have lived in the land of squat toilets for so long I sometimes pee like a lady. But then, in times of gastric distress, I have also soiled my shoes. Never wear canvas shoes to a squat toilet. I’ve only visited St Petersburg. Lovely city but the toilets (in the early 90s) were close to what you describe. A good place to wear Depends.
Such toilet facilities are disruptive of my favorite bad habit: reading on the pot. Paper or e, I gotta have one. The electronic variety is easier to clean. But in the instance of a squat, you need one hand to hold the book, one to hold the lantern, one to hold your trousers out of the line of fire and your fourth hand to take aim.
Borneo? Well, I spent yesterday swimming with dugongs. Seem more curious than their American cousins, the manatees. Tomorrow I go on a cross country hike looking for wild orangs and, I’m hoping to get pictures of proboscis monkeys. Probably only get a thousand mosquito bites. Borneo is actually part of three different nations (I’m in the Malaysian sector right now) and can be quite civilized. Or not. Last night I ate at a restaurant built on the dock. Dinner was a bit slow as you had to wait for the cook to catch a fish… Fresh. Glad I had my Nook to fill in the time.
I think Foggie (#23) has it right. Books will never disappear. They’ll just become luxury items again. Leather bindings, gold inlay titles, acid-free paper, sewn bindings. Hell, they may even eventually give up the presses and have them all hand copied by feeble-minded monks! eBooks, though should just get less and less expensive and more readily available.
The future of reading looks wonderful, Mr. Bemis. Sorry about your glasses.
What kill Borders for me is their decision to turn the store into a reading room. I used to love buying books at Borders but all of a sudden I had to make my way through piles of people with no intention of buying anything, sitting in the asiles and spending there day reading.
I’d often see people with piles of magazines they had taken off the rack, reading away like it was their living room.
One time I went in to buy a book on 3D animation and I couldn’t get into the asile because a girl was sprawled on the floor with dozens of art books copying the drawings.
Who needs this?
Now I sit at home, take my time looking through books online and end up buying on the Net; usually through Amazon.
As far as I’m concerned, Borders and Barnes and Noble lost my business when they decided to cater to the seagulls instead of the paying customers.
Electronic Paper
Not to mention that damn Gutenberg screwing up the market for illuminated manuscripts!
What I want to know is how the large, asset rich, public libraries are planning to stay relevant? They usually occupy large, stylish, well lit and airconditioned buildings in high land value areas of town.
Analysts have been predicting B&N and Borders filing bankruptcy for a couple months already so I think this will be the year it will happen.
It’s interesting to see how the internet and technology overall are making many businesses and jobs obsolete. With a rising population worldwide I wonder how our world can handle it.
Bobbo already mentioned one alternative use for paper books, but here are a couple of others-
Recording family history
Pressing and preservation of flowers that you’ve given to your lover
Hiding money or other valuables
Making a short step stool
Helping to create good posture in girls who practice walking while balancing them on their heads
Giving thirteen year old boys a way to ingratiate themselves with the opposite sex at the bus stop (Mary, can I carry your books?)
Proping up or balancing wobbly tables and furniture
Gaining the attention of your teenage son. Try throwing your Kindle vs an unabridged paperback edition of Plutarch’s Lives at your inattentive son and see which one is still readable later.
Quieting a noisy cat in the middle of the night (almost as good as an old shoe).
Using as fuel for fire circles to keep the gouls at bay after the coming zombie apocalypse.