Staples just announced that they’re going to start selling Kindles and Kindle accessories in their stores. Staples is probably a better fit than Target, which was previously the only brick-and-mortar store selling Kindles. Business travelers are still probably the target audience for e-readers, and now that Amazon has lowered the price below $200, it approaches impulse-buy territory for many business-minded shoppers.
In other e-reader news, Borders has dropped the prices of two e-readers. The Aluratek reader will now sell for $99, and the Kobo Reader will go for $129, which is ten dollars less than the Wi-Fi only Kindle.
Several months ago, when Borders first announced they were going to sell the Kobo Reader in their stores, it looked like a great deal: It was a no-frills e-ink e-reader. Sure, it didn’t have any Wi-Fi or 3G networking capabilities, but it stored a ton of books, and it looked comparable to the Kindle in terms of performance. That was back in the days when the Kindle was almost a hundred dollars more than the Kobo price. Nickel-and-dime fighting with the Kindle isn’t going to convince anyone to pick up the Kobo Reader; the only way they could make a convincing case for the device now is to cut the price by half, but Borders probably can’t afford to eat the profit margin on anything these days.
What are you? A f*cking idiot? This isn’t news. It’s a commercial. And e-books are just another piece of toxic waste made by slaves in China, polluting their country and ours, all the while consolidating wealth by killing local American jobs from retailers to printers to delivery drivers. Oh, and that $9.99 you just spent on a glorified PDF? Nice resale, sucker. Good thing Amazon doesn’t censor books yet.
I really, really like my Kindle.
I think it’s interesting what they’re doing to adjust their strategy to stay relevant post iPad.
Eh, that was overly glib. Sorry, Lew. My point was, though you personally might neither need nor want an e-reader, there are legitimate reasons devices like the Kindle are popular. And while some of your concerns are also legitimate, I think it’s a bit one-sided to simply declare that all e-readers are nothing more than plastic slabs of evil incarnate.
I still think we’re in the absolute infancy of e-readers, and I simply don’t find enough content on them compared to the library, so I’m not bothering with them. The number of limitations and the cost you get with them are still too great in my mind.
I want to live in Gene Roddenberry’s world. In that world, there are e-readers. There’s also no money and all people’s basic needs are met.
Still, the e-reader is a good starting point?
As someone with overflowing bookshelves, I can see the appeal.
I can also see how this can allow smaller publishers to gain more equal footing in the marketplace and give larger royalties to their authors. It’s worked for music. And if cutting down on resales means more first sales, that means the original creators actually reap greater benefits, even if it doesn’t mean I get two dollars back for the twelve I spent (assuming Powell’s doesn’t already have too many copies). So it becomes more viable to be a publisher or an author.
Physical books will never disappear entirely. Retailers will adapt, printers will consolidate, and hooray less pollution and road damage from decreased loads of heavy books. Maybe that will help offset the added pollution from LCDs and Kindle batteries. There will always be stuff that needs to be driven around, but I suppose if not maybe that ex-truck driver will go on to write the next great American novel…
People with overflowing bookshelves should cull the ones they’re not going to read again and sell them, or give them away for a tax deduction. One can’t do either of those things with an e-book. I work for a small publisher. We offer e-books of all our titles, and I can say emphatically that they do not allow us to give larger royalties to authors. There’s virtually no money in them for anyone, except perhaps Amazon. It’s making it harder for us to survive. You’re right, physical books will never disappear, but the harder it becomes to sell even a small print run, the less interesting and unique stuff can get published.
E-readers/tablet computers are the future of reading, period.
Where and how they are manufactured is relevant and hopefully something you can use to differentiate the products in the market (though more likely you’ll use price/functionality).
What’s actually glib? Declaring that any reporting about e-readers is just a commercial for exploitative garbage.
@geyser – What are the publishing problems? Surprised to hear you say there are no cost savings. Making digital copies of a .pdf file is free, for pete’s sake. You don’t have to produce books. Where isn’t there massive cost savings?
As a consumer, e-books are for suckers.
You get nothing. In fact, with a Kindle, you don’t even own the book. Amazon simply allows you to keep a pdf on-file with them. But they can take it back or edit or censor it at any time.
Further, no one is addressing the economic impact on local economies. Perhaps because, like most Americans, you don’t understand this point. Or maybe you just don’t care.
E-books will bring us the same destructive path of online music. We’ll see major losses in book stores just as we saw with music stores – to include all associated jobs with packaging, delivery, building landlords, janitors, etc, etc.
And when you’ve caused Portland to have ever more empty storefronts and greater unemployment? And the State and City taxes continue to spiral down? We’ll just have to increase your taxes or Trimet rates. Or we’ll cut your bus line. And you can thank your own online consumption.
Because it ain’t individual price points or personal functionality for consumers that equate to long-term economic health. That’s just typical thinking by a Walmart American.
Instead, we should be working towards Decentralization. To keep the most money possible in our communities and ensure that everyone can work and contribute.
Oh, and geyser’s right. Unless you’re at Stephen King’s level, authors make no more money with e-books than their print deals. Mid-listers hate ’em.
And with more authors selling ebooks at a consolidated few online stores? Tower of Babel. Just like with music. More Product + Less Demand = Less Money.
Not to mention that consolidating booksellers to these few online sites means Middle America will buy online books like they do online music. Established names only. Or those with a media push behind ’em. No more local stores to help region writers get a boost for national attention.
p.s. Thanks for the note, Erik. No worries. I like glib. But if you really, really like your Kindle? I wonder what Portland’s local booksellers and comic shops will think when they see your public position and consider how it may impact their future.
I can’t see any way of working towards decentralization that isn’t a pipe dream. How do you put the digital genie back in the bottle now that our society has experienced the convenience of one-click content delivery services like iTunes/Hulu/Netflix etc?
The only advantage books have is, well, that they’re books. A downloaded mp3 sounds the same out of a speaker as a CD you bought in a record store. A downloaded movie plays the same in .avi format as it would off a DVD. But the touch and feel of a book in one’s hands isn’t something that technology is able to replicate.
Although it does have a facebook browser.
@lew archer: FUCKING SHIT! WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE WHALE BONE CORSET MAKERS AND PENNY-FARTHING MECHANICS??!?!??!?!?!?
Learn a new business model or die. It’s not our job to subsidize your dumb ass if you can’t adapt to the ever changing realities of the marketplace.
@geyser: I cull my collection all the time, selling back and dropping ’em off at Goodwill, but I like books, live in an apartment, and I always end up with more.
@lew archer: The same destructive path as online music? Have you been in any of our varied and badass local record stores lately? Even in the most cramped corner shop at the oddest hours of the day there are always other people in there shopping, buying, obsessing over records. (Okay, sometimes I’m the only one in Green Noise, but rarely.) Between that and all of our (enable sarcasm detector now) totally empty music venues that no one ever goes to, online music has totally killed our local music economy.
It sucks that mid-level authors don’t make any more off of e-books. They should take a page from the varied indie music scenes, put out their own “label”, and treat their artists right, if anyone is able to pull it off.
@lew archer: I’m cool with publicly saying that I really, really like my Kindle. I’m also cool with publicly saying that I really, really like Powell’s, Cosmic Monkey, Floating World, Bridge City, Excalibur, and a whole slew of other local booksellers and comics shops. It’s overly simplistic to assume that just because I’m open about throwing a few bucks at Amazon now and then, then I must not understand the importance of supporting local booksellers, too.
Thanks to all who took the time to respond. Three comments per post is my limit, so this is probably it for me.
And, to be honest, I’m not looking to convince anyone. But I do think discussions like this are totally worthwhile as we look at the real-world impact of our consumer choices.
That said, no one raised a convincing reason for buying an Amazon Kindle. (since this post, after all, was an Amazon commercial) Saving space maybe. But I resell or give ’em away, thus helping spread the virus of readership. Kindle ain’t gonna do that.
And unless you buy hardbacks, e-books aren’t cheaper. They aren’t better for the environment. They definitely aren’t good for jobs, writers, small publishers, etc.
And e-readers aren’t a forgone conclusion any more than the Walmartization of America is. We’re the consumers. We have the power. Amazon or Walmart…they’re over if we want it.
@ Crowsby: I’m not sure that genie is really out of the bottle. You could argue that, by your logic, once everyone has experienced the cool rush of Walmart’s low prices and one-stop shopping, that no one would ever go to small businesses. Which…I guess has happened in the Midwest and South. But now that Americans have witnessed this destructive swath of Walmart on local businesses and American manufacturing – and seen the real reduction in their purchasing power – many people are starting to go back to buying local.
@Graham: WHAT? I COULDN’T HEAR YOU.
@tk: Again, I’m totally, totally with you… Portland has *amazing* local music stores. I only buy CDs and DVDs. (wotta luddite…) But have ya been outside PDX lately? Holy sh!t. Everything looks the same. It’s scary out there. Take a tour sometime. Their options are hideously limited. And while we in PDX may be fine should books go the same as music…it probably won’t be pretty in, say, Springfield, IL.
@Erik: Cool. I honestly did assume that, since you laid down something like $200+ for a Kindle, that you would use it regularly. If you truly don’t use it regularly, and if you support all the awesome shops you mentioned with the vast majority of your books/comics dollars (when you aren’t throwing a couple bucks at Amazon now and then), then please accept my apologies.
All right. Now I’m going to Pirate Bay to download a rip of Inception to watch on my iPhone 4.
(Kidding, Graham. Kidding…)
“But I resell or give ’em away, thus helping spread the virus of readership. Kindle ain’t gonna do that. “
So buy a reader without DRM, and share your books on the torrentz.
“And unless you buy hardbacks, e-books aren’t cheaper. They aren’t better for the environment.”
You are talking trees being cut down, mass shipped using fossils across thousands of miles, versus less than a penny’s worth of electricity to store and forward. Energy efficiency is only going to improve with computers and as renewables come online.
“And e-readers aren’t a forgone conclusion any more than the Walmartization of America is. We’re the consumers. We have the power. Amazon or Walmart…they’re over if we want it.”
Of course they aren’t. However when I can hold an entire library in my hand for a few hundred, why would I bother reserving pulp? it makes no sense from an economic or convenience standpoint. And as much as you hate it, wal*mart is successful because they are cheap and that is what consumers care about the most, not local economics. Put your Portland microcosm “activism ” aside and think big picture here.
“But now that Americans have witnessed this destructive swath of Walmart on local businesses and American manufacturing – and seen the real reduction in their purchasing power – many people are starting to go back to buying local.”
[citation needed] Wal*mart and many big International shops continue to have record revenues Q to Q.
“Portland has *amazing* local music stores.”
That are eventually going to go tits up unless they adapt their business model. Nobody owes any business their money with archaic business models.
Afraid books as we know them as a primary source of reading will be gone in 10-20 years, in our middle-class world, at least.
And saying that authors don’t make any more money off e-books than they do off hardbound is ridiculous. They don’t even need publishers – convert their final copy to a .pdf, put a PayPal button on their blog, and they are good to go. They could sell a million copies with no other expenses.
If Amazon is charging a huge fee to list them there, that’s a problem with Amazon, not the technology. If Amazon charged $30 to sell a book, would that mean books are a bad idea, or just that you need to find a new sales portal?
The argument AGAINST e-books is just so ridiculous, I can’t even get started on a rebuttal. It’s like you’re saying black is white.
@Reymont: I was going to reply to your previous post, but seeing the above I won’t try to convince you of anything. But to explain better what I meant, I did not say there were no cost savings with ebooks. There are, to an extent, and so many readers expect a dramatically lower retail price. And many authors expect (and in some cases succeed in getting) a higher royalty. Looking at the whole picture, however, ebooks mean lower sales of print copies, and more returns, because people buy ebooks instead. For small publishers this makes it harder to sell a print run that will make it cost effective to put the book in print in the first place.
If you don’t see a role for publishers, I don’t think we’re speaking the same language. Even if an author finds a good freelance editor to get the book ready, if they plunk a manuscript in pdf on the web, how are they going to market it? I’m talking about the vast majority of authors here, not Dan Brown or Stephen King. The latter could probably go it alone on the strength of their established readership. 99.999 percent of authors could not, I would imagine.
As for a finding some other “sales portal” that’s a real alternative to the corporate behemoths that currently control retail book sales — good luck.