{"id":1364,"date":"2009-09-24T11:29:49","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T11:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"\/ifbookblog\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2017-07-25T08:50:30","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T12:50:30","slug":"a_clean_well-lighted_place_for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futureofthebook.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/24\/a_clean_well-lighted_place_for\/","title":{"rendered":"a clean well-lighted place for books"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following started out as a set of notes to various colleagues suggesting that successful digital publishing involves much much more than coming up with a viable form for networked books. rather unexpectedly this led to the question of how bookstores might evolve to give publishers a way to reassert their brands and strengthen their position vis a vis Amazon (as well as Google and Apple). This is very much a work in progress but i thought i’d post it and bring others into the discussion along the way.<\/em>
\nThe idea that “a book is a place (where readers, sometimes with authors, congregate)” arose out of a series of experiments investigating what happens when the act of reading moves from the printed page to an online space designed for social interaction. as we expanded the notion of a work to include the activity in the margin, in effect we re-defined “content” to include the conversation that a text engenders. Put another way, locating a text in a dynamic network brings the social aspects of reading to the fore. (see Without Gods<\/em><\/a>, Gamer Theory<\/a><\/em>, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge<\/a><\/em> and The Golden Notebook<\/a><\/em> projects)
\nIn an earlier set of notes<\/a> (“A Unified Field Theory of Publishing in the Networked Era”) I suggested that as discourse moves off the page onto networked screens, the roles of authors, readers, editors, publishers will shift in significant ways. For example, the author’s traditional commitment to engage with a subject matter on behalf of future readers will shift to a commitment to engage with readers in the context of a subject. Successful publishers, i posited, will distinguish themselves by their ability to build and nurture vibrant communities of interest, often with authors at the center, but not necessarily always.
\nThe purpose of this new set of notes is to expand the thinking beyond how a specific text is presented or interacted with. Reading (and writing) do not happen only at the level of the individual work. There is a broad ecology of behaviors, activities and micro-environments that surround each work and our relationship to it — how things come to be written, how we choose what to read, how we make the purchase, how we share our experience with others. Currently (i.e. toward the end of age of print), that ecology is defined by agent\/editor mechanisms of acquisition, sharp delineation between authors and readers, top-down marketing, heavy reliance on big mainstream media to get the word out, the bookshelves that make our books part of our daily life, bookstores and — yes — Amazon. Much more than not, Amazon is a product of the same DNA that underlies the still-dominant mode of the print-book read by the solitary reader. Everything about the Kindle, from its interaction design to its draconian DRM provisions, underlines its conservative role in preserving the ecologies of print.
\nThe current e-book business (the buying\/selling bits) was designed (or at least evolved) to minimize friction with the legacy business; pricing, release schedules and DRM all structured so as not to challenge print, which is still the predominant source of revenues.
\nTo succeed at publishing in the networked era, it won’t be enough just to re-conceive the work as a “networked book.” If we accept that social interaction will be paramount, not just at the level of the individual work but throughout the ecology of networked reading and writing, then it’s important also to ask the question “if a book is a place, what is the place for books?<\/strong> (or, more accurately but less forceful, “what are the places for books?”)
\nCurrently the predominant place(s) for books are bookstores, libraries, classrooms, cafes (as a stand-in for the general category of informal brick-and-mortar gathering places), living-room reading groups, and the infoweb (mainstream media + internet) where books are reviewed, promoted, and on sites like LibraryThing and Shelfari, discussed. Each of these places has its own culture, its own social fabric that determines how people relate to each other, what their transactions are like, how you meet “new” people, how you come to trust them or not, and how you manage ongoing connections\/relationships.<\/p>\n

The bookstore, The Library and The Cafe<\/strong>
\nBrick and mortar bookstores are much better for (un-directed) browsing than online stores. This is probably mostly a function of bandwidth, i.e. I can see so much more in a bookstore than I can on my 2D screen. This will change as the web and its attendant hardware\/software develops over time, but my guess is that a satisfying browsing experience of the order i can get in a great bookstore is many, many years away from practical. On the other hand if you know what you’re looking for, online shopping excels at simplifying the process of making the transaction. In fact, in every sense except immediate transfer to the buyer of the object they’ve purchased, online buying is vastly more efficient. When the bulk of our book purchases are in electronic form, and therefore delivered instantly, the significant advantages left to the bookstore will be the superior browsing experience, the help desk and the cafe.
\n[And before you say “oh, it will be years before the bulk of what we’re buying is in electronic form,” think about how many iPhone apps or iTunes purchases you or your friends have made in the past few months (including the books you’ve been reading on your phone or Kindle) compared to how many print books you\/they bought. This part of the future seems to be near-now.]
\n[Although many\/most stores have an online presence, presently online and physical experiences tend to be relatively cut off from each other. However, that will change as online and physical experiences increasingly encroach on each other. At first this will happen in obvious ways: having access to the detail on the web when shopping in a physical store, being “joined” by a reading group buddy from Buenos Aires while talking with friends in a cafe. Eventually, as wearables become more powerful and ubiquitous, so much of our behavior will be sufficiently mediated by online access that the distinction will begin to disappear. So . . . whether you start with online or start with bricks and mortar, success will depend on making decisions which take into account the whole range of potential interactions.]<\/p>\n

Intersecting Problems and Questions:<\/strong>
\nIn terms of ebooks, as long as formats are hardware-bound and the hardware vendor controls the store, it will be next to impossible for publishers\/creators to have much influence on the broader ecology (including the purchasing experience) as described above.
\nSadly, publishers put themselves in this situation by believing in the necessity of powerful DRM schemes which made them susceptible to Amazon’s Kindle pitch (and presumably whatever Apple is telling them now about the soon-to-come iTablet).
\nAmazon, by doing its best to disconnect works from their publishers has nearly completed the deterioration of the value\/meaning of publisher brands, a process that started with the rise of the big aggregator bookshops. In order to survive in the networked era, publishers will need to reverse this trend and forge much closer connections to their customers. this could call for a variety of solutions, including newly conceived publisher-owned, online-meatspace bookstores, or a re-imagining of the Foyles arrangement (now since abandoned) of shelving books according to publisher. [in high-end department stores, this is already the norm in the cosmetics sections on the ground floor, with each maker having its own defined sections. <\/p>\n

The first publishers were printers and booksellers. <\/strong>
\nThere was a long tradition of publisher bookshops in in NY. Could a publisher open up a bookshop\/cafe of an entirely new type?
\n\u2022 great cafe\/bar\/restaurant with lots of comfortable\/flexible seating arrangements that encourage interaction.
\n\u2022 POD for out-of-print works AND for chapters
\n\u2022 part of store set-up for optimum browsing of in-print books, both front- and back-list
\n\u2022 concept of “staff picks” vastly extended to include recommendations by readers and represented both on screens and in sections set aside for browsing of actual books.
\n\u2022 immediate download of ebooks in whatever formats are not proscribed by hardware vendors
\n\u2022 knowledgeable personnel
\n\u2022 robust and free wi-fi
\n\u2022 easy access to large monitors for group discussions of various sizes.
\n\u2022 flexible spaces that can accommodate author appearances, saturday morning children’s activities, and group discussions
\n\u2022 very active user\/customer (electronic) bulletin board for recommendations and ad-hoc social group formation (of an endless variety).<\/p>\n

a friend who read an earlier draft of these notes send a note expressing doubt about the viability of physical stores to which i sent the following reply:<\/em>
\nThe point i was trying to make in raising the question of physical stores was that the broader ecology of reading and writing encompasses both online and physical components. While of course it’s cheaper to go 100% online, i’m doubtful that it’s the route to success at this time. By example, wasn’t Bezos’ genius in figuring out how to move one crucial part of the reading experience — the purchase of the book — online; the physical object was still delivered to your door. [The early success (a single as opposed to a home run) of the Kindle is interesting. I think it works because the Kindle’s display is just barely good enough to read on, and again Bezos made the purchase experience relatively painless. But as long as we’re still occupying our corporeal bodies, i don’t think the Kindle\/whispernet combo is sufficient yet to make up for the desire for in-store browsing plus all the social components of the store including knowledgeable personnel and the opportunity to be out and about in a lively retail environment. Shopping isn’t just about the purchase. Would Apple be where it is today if it hadn’t opened its stores?]
\nThe crux of the matter, i think, is branding. Over time publishers yielded the primacy of publishing house brands to the aggregators (Barnes and Noble, Borders, Amazon). and having lost the power of their brands, publishers relied more on the star power of individual authors which made it much more difficult to launch new writers etc., making the publishers even weaker over time.
\nClearly anything as important a game-changer as the shift from page to screen is\/was an opportunity to re-set the terms of the competition. Amazon recognized this much earlier than any of the publishers and in launching the Kindle launch put publishers into an even more defensive position.
\nOne aspect of what i’m working on here is the question of how do publishers (established ones and\/or new ones) change the current model so that they are in a better position to compete. And the answer in part is, in the case of established publishers to take back their brands and for new publishers to build their brands.
\n[Interestingly, GiantChair understood this and built a business model which used google-based discovery to send consumers directly to a publisher’s website rather than Amazon or another aggregator. GC’s embrace of Commentpress and Sophie included the recognition that succeeding with these new formats which allow (nearly require) publishers to sell directly to consumers, will help publishers regain some of the ground lost to Amazon and others.]
\nI find myself thinking a lot about what i call the “Foyles” model. in the not too recent past Foyles in London shelved books, not alphabetically by subject or genre, but by publisher such that there was the Penguin section and the Bloomsbury section. For a more recent example, video stores usually shelve Criterion titles on their own — precisely because of the power of the brand. From this perspective I see two sorts of physical store plays — one could open a completely new sort of superstore . . . . where publishers, like perfume companies, effectively rent space to show their wares (fulfilling in some cases with actual books but also via POD and online). The second is a publisher branded cafe\/store — McSweeney’s, Lonely Planet, Canongate, maybe Knopf\/Vintage but certainly not it’s parent brand Random House which is much too diffuse at this point). As i wrote in the draft i sent you the success of such stores would depend on doing many things right.
\nhowever, just to keep things in perspective, the main point i’m trying to make in “a clean well-lighted place for books” is not about the potential of physical stores to build brands per se, but about the need to re-think the whole shebang of which the retail venues are only one part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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