The majority of books by successful writers are failures.

I couldn't tell you the last time I bought a book for me from a bookstore. The only exception might be at an airport.

The last time I was at the Barnes and Noble, the bestseller I wanted was on sale for 30 percent off and I bought it for half of the discounted price on Amazon.

I don't understand the book industry. They pay a $3.7 million advances to Lena Dunham, and there is almost zero chance it makes that back.

 

Our Borders location was one of the last to close.
Our closest bookstore is a B&N about 45 minutes away. Haven't set foot in the store in several years.

 

The local bookstore does some pretty cool events for kids and when we go to those we usually pick something up for the kids as our way of thanking the place. I've gone in there before and there's a long line for the coffee and almost nobody buying books.

 

Two or three years ago somebody was on this forum asking for advice on writing a business plan because he/she was going to open a book store.

And people hassled me for saying, not rudely, it was a bad idea.

 

I don't see the problem with this scenario.

 

Book vending is one of the few enterprises where location means squat.

 

And it's a bad idea for a small business startup.
I love books, and I love bookstores, but that doesn't make it a good idea for a small business.

 

One of my previous cities I knew a guy who opened a delightful store in a terrible location.
He was out of business inside a year, and that was almost 10 years ago.

 

i've been on both sides of the book publishing industry and can tell you it is a remarkably strange business. on the one hand it operates as an industry very much like the movie business, and on the other hand unlike any other first-retail business on earth.

an example: it claims huge overhead and pushes its point to the talent/writer with supposedly detailed yet ultimately opaque numbers for 'overhead.'

here's one way: traditionally PP and B (paper, print and binding) as a percentage of cost was backed out of the ultimate cost of manufacturing each unit -- call it 25 percent per single copy. so on a purported $10 cost basis, PP and B took up $2.50. except the publisher could never/would never disclose the contract prices it paid for these services: "our relationship with (fill in the blank print company like Quad Graphics) is proprietary, so we can't share the billed charge with you. also, we use them for many books so we can't exactly pencil out where your costs fit. but we get discounts so trust us you're paying the bare minimum."

and then they ship the work to India for typesetting at fractional pennies of assumed/reported cost, and then to malaysia or china for PP and B, again at a fraction of assumed/reported cost.

and that 25 percent overhead is the same almost across the board for almost every writer, just as in hollywood 'overhead' is assigned to the budget of every movie but is nearly impossible to pin down:

marketing and PR? overhead most of the time, though sometimes broken out (until the department SVP salary is amortized across every picture made).
office space on the lot for the director/production company/producer/secretaries in every department touching your picture? overhead.

in the way that A-list talent eventually got first dollar gross participation (because they made money), that same way big-time authors (King, Patterson, Steele) were able to command phenomenal advances. just as those tent-pole pictures from A-list talent demand marketing to insure every dollar invested is earned back, so too do the big authors command significant parts of publishing house marketing dollars -- and in the perverse reverse, the little independent film/first novel that NEEDS the marketing yet is made for pennies on the blockbuster's dollar can't get any effort attached to it: 'we paid $5000 for the advance and you want me to spend HOW much on marketing?'

at the same time, it's the only retail industry i can think of that sells its wares on consignment. all those books you're perusing at barnes and noble? if they don't sell the publisher takes them back at par for what B&N paid. think GE takes back unsold washers from home depot at par cost? in almost every retail industry inventory is the seller's problem, not the manufacturers, but not in publishing. and often that return policy is for the life of the book in print -- sometimes years the publishing house has to carry that cost.

as amazon has shown it's an industry ripe for disruption, one which shares a number of issues with its movie/music media intellectual property kin. i'm not sure what the answers are for the future, but not making your authors pay for that high-priced real estate your office sits on, and not making your authors pay for that high-priced marketing department that doesn't really know how to market would be a place to start.

 

I go to bookstores to browse for the next book to put on my hold list at the public library. I may be no. 63 in line for the new King book, but I'll eventually read it and pay no more than what my taxes pay to support a very good local library system.

 

Yes. Book stores may go away forever, but people are always willing to overpay for coffee.

I prefer getting my books from Amazon or the library and my coffee from my French press. It's saves some $$$.

 

What, you can't read your Amazon purchased book in the cozy confines of your neighborhood coffee shop, while sipping on a latte?