The Mission of Earthrise Press
http://www.fglaysher.com/mission_of%20earthrise_press.html

Frederick Glaysher

As far as the pricing of ebooks, Rocket_ace is right. They’re priced ridiculously high, which means books will be quickly Napsterized as soon as the demand curve hits a critical mass (sooner than you think). Everything will be available to everyone for free, which is glorious if you are a member of the human race but lousy if you’re counting on a dead tree and scarcity business model to pay your bills.

This battle has just begun…

didn’t know compendium closed, that’s really sad, it was the best bookstore by far in london. skoobs seems to have moved too, meh, modern life is rubbish.

http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/11/local-book-search-new-way-forward-for.php

It’s still a bit rough, but it’s kinda neat.

Here’s the page for Freakanomics:

http://www.librarything.com/work/675/getlocal

For me, the ideal bookstore is a combines a good used selection, for those out-of-print titles, with a good selection of in-print books in a few specific genres (no sense trying to be a Chapters / Barnes & Noble superstore, pick what you want to be be good at and work hard a being very, very good at it).

Hire staff who live and breathe books.

Some comfy seats and a coffee counter don’t hurt.

I think bookstores will continue to serve a niche market, much the way vinyl hangs on. The superstores will die.

Not sure exactly what this will do to the publishing industry but not all will survive.

Moscow, admittedly, has a big reading culture. The proportion of people on the metro reading books is very high. I’d guess 15 percent books, matched by 15% each of magazines or newspapers. Yes, I’m saying 45% of Muscovites, those not overly crammed into subways during peaks, are reading. Bulging bookshelves are sexy. Perhaps it’s the result of a culture in which books have always been cheap.

See, your typical legal (meaning licensed or past copyright) book here costs the equivalent of $7 for a decent-quality hardcover. Penguin paperback editions of classics (in several languages including English) go for one to three dollars, but so do most paperbacks in Russian (translated or original). A lot of people choose hardcovers.

As you probably know, a lot of video and software piracy happens here, as well. Guys sell their pirated movies off folding-tables on busy streets. Cam or pre-release versions are common. And on the internet, piracy truly abounds. Many providers offer subscribers free access to a huge library of unlicensed recent films.

So when music, books, and movies can be had so cheaply here, at home or on the streets, what makes a popular chain (called ‘Respublika’) succeed in selling them, all legally?

I think it’s simple. They appeal to the young, hip, and/or nerdy. They offer a selection of offbeat, classic, import, or specialty stuff. The staff is good. Most locations are open to 11:00pm (some 24 hours), there’s good music playing, some have an espresso bar. Near the entrance they sell gifts: mostly cool stuff that you’d like on your desk. And location: some stores near the metro, some high-rent, some near colleges.

It’s a chain I really like. I think the formula is a no-brainer. I haven’t been out in a while: don’t such chains exist in Europe or the Americas?

/\/.

(DISCLAIMER: nothing to disclaim, I’m a guy off the street; I also couldn’t really tell you what Respublica’s financials are, either.)

Upfront, here’s my bias: I work in publishing, so naturally I don’t want that to go away, but here’s what I know. Aside from really elaborate editions with really, REALLY nice covers and attached googaws, the manufacturing costs for books is pretty low. You’re paying the authors, marketers, typesetters, art department, copyeditors (and yes, even otherwise good authors can be abysmal with spelling and grammar). Yes, eBooks are only digital blips, but someone has to pay, at the very least, for the electricity that makes the retrieval and distribution for those blips possible, nevermind the upkeep and maintenance of the website and assorted mechanisms that make selling those books possible, along with whatever cut the sellers take, UNLESS the author is a one-man or -woman writing, marketing, selling, webinating machine. I don’t know the exact numbers for the eSide since I work mainly with print, but it’s not insignificant.

I’ve also heard the case that marketing is pointless if you can just put it on the web, but let’s face it: Unless you already have a very heavily trafficked blog, which is a lot of work in and of itself, nobody’s going to find, review, or read your book. As Cory has often said, what he fears is obscurity more than pirating, and no matter how you do it, getting the book out there is a lot of work. If the authors do it themselves, that’s great, but shouldn’t their time be reimbursed?

To me, the “they’re just blips so the price should be almost nothing” is the same as that old argument, “A car is only $200 worth of raw materials, so that’s all it should cost me.” Somebody designed it, tested it (one would hope), refined it, and built it. Those people should get paid. Personally, I’d pay most musicians even more than the price of their CD for the enjoyment I’ve gotten from their work. I want artists to be able to make a living at what they do–most of them can’t.

As far as the Hollywood comparison, I’m not sure where you’re getting those numbers. I paid $7 for “Logan’s Run” on DVD at Best Buy, and that movie is 30 years old. How many recent, blockbuster movies are on DVD for any less than $20 a unit, unless they were giant bombs or have been out for a while? I don’t know the business, but I suspect that making the money back on those movies involves moving a hefty number of DVDs–more than most mid-list book titles sell–for about $20 a pop, at least.

That is, in addition to serving as a warehouse for the in-your-hand physical books, those physical books might also be the display models for electronic books you could purchase. Browse physical item in-store; purchase electronic copies using an in-store/at-home computer.

Pretty please?

That being said I don’t think we are going to see a drop in online buying any time soon.

“I also obsessively check out bookstores, dragging my family into them wherever I go.”

Something else to consider is what does online shopping do to our communities? When I am not at home slogging through the online world, it is nice to visit a community that has a interesting bookstore, music shop, gift shop, etc. It would really suck that if every community you visit in the future only had a Wal-Mart MacDonalds and Starbucks.

Books are dead. I got a Kindle 2 for $100 and the first time I used it I had exactly the same sensation that I had the first time I played a DVD or touched an iPod. No, it’s not a 1:1 replacement for the old media, but where it wins it wins so decisively that it’s just a mater of time.

And that’s good.

Just like my first iPod changed the way I appreciate music, my Kindle has changed the way I read. I read at least twice as much now. (And I read a lot before.) Rather than carrying a single heavy book that I may feel like reading, I’m now always carrying a dozen books that I want to get into. When I finish a book at 2am, I can immediately buy the sequel and keep reading. Without leaving my comfy chair. I now look up words that I don’t know because it’s so laughably easy. I make and take notes in a text now where I never would before–I hated the idea of defacing a book with my pens and pencils, and finding those notes again in a print book was a tedious process. With digital notes and highlighting I can do it non-destructively and I can search my notes almost instantly.

But just like the 1st gen iPod, I wouldn’t buy an eReader yet. They’re a little pricey, the features are a little lacking and the display is a little murky. But wait two or three generations and it’ll be a no-brainer. In 2012, anyone who calls themselves a bibliophile will own one.

“Contrary to popular belief–or at least to those dullards who swear by Amazon–shopping for books is like shopping for clothes, or a husband: sometimes you don’t know what you want until you see it, and this is where a good store comes in. When I woke up last Friday morning I had not even heard of a book called Women Who Read Are Dangerous but later that same day I made a trip to a new shop, Lutyens & Rubinstein in west London, and there it was, sitting in the window, calling out to me at the top of its voice.”–Rachel Cooke in the Guardian

If there wasn’t a hard copy analog way to get information then the internet would become a snake eating it’s own tail of “facts”.

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/judging-book-by-its-pretty-cover.html

“Library books often contain beautiful drawings and illustrations. Unfortunately, their book covers can often be dark and plain, hiding all this wonderful content from unsuspecting eyes. Over time, we’ve tried a bunch of different approaches for getting better covers, for example, using the book’s title page or recreating a simple book cover by featuring the book’s title and author. Finally we hit upon an idea that we like — why not surface the illustrations inside the book to be its front cover?”

The publishing industry is eating it’s young, killing off the back catalogs, and increasingly, only printing stuff that they know will be big. That means most new F&SF is crap series, and most of the rest ordered by libraries is now just the bestsellers, because that’s pretty much all that’s left that they can afford. Does this mean the novel is dying? I hope not, but I think it may be on life support for a while at least.

I don’t think the issue will be book “selling” as much as it will be book “selecting.” One overlooked aspect of the publishing ecology was how good publishers established their reputations by serving as gatekeepers … they kept the trash off of the shelves. They made some famous errors, of course, but this worked in a general sense. There were, and are, many good second-tier publishers handling regional and narrow interest titles, also selecting “what was good” for their own readers.

These “good books” may not have made a lot of money, but (taking the long view) they established the value of the publisher, making other books more sellable.

E-books are only part of a changing ecology. One major change that has been going on for 25 or so years is an ever tighter focus on that hard to reach goal, the best-seller. The cash cow of the publishing world that tickles the hearts of the MBAs who now run publishing houses.

Authors can, of course, work the various book-centered social networks in order to generate interest, but that (I think!) will be pretty much restricted to novels by more-or-less known authors. What happens to the “not quite ready for prime time” authors whose first efforts were often money-losers, but who would have been added to a publisher’s “stable” in the belief that more popular books would come in the future? What happens to the non-fiction author whose obvious audience is likely to be small unless the book has shelf (think “face time”) exposure? What happens to the great author who just can’t work a social network?

The magazine _Publishers Weekly_ helped booksellers select titles, but with more and more authors going to more and more small press publishers (or self-publishing) there a need to reassess how this is done. Ditto for those of us in the library world since we’ve depended far too much on what the major publishers have sent us for review in _LJ_, _Booklist_, etc.

In my view, the booksellers and librarians need to develop new ways, new online ways, to obtain and review titles so we can purchase them and make them known to the public. (And, yes, library purchases actually help sell books to the public … it’s another form of exposure.)

I’m not at all against e-books, but wouldn’t it be ironic if e-books failed the reading public because all that could be purchased were mediocre best-sellers?

Cory, you get close to the heart of it when you say that independent bookstores must move to a curatorial role heavily inflected with local interests and sensibilities. The successful independent has to be a destination–it has to give potential customers a reason to come, and a reason to come back regularly.

I read a good bit of midlist or backlist stuff, so B&N’s selection frequently disappoints. Where I do get my browsing and recommendations are from the web — specifically shelfari.com, which I think has surpassed LibraryThing in the social aspects of bibliophilia. I can get to know people in group discussions, look at what’s on their shelves and get personalized recommendations. It has led to me buying and reading a lot more. Clever of amazon.com to acquire the site, but they’ve kept a light hand in how they promote themselves.

I think this may also be relevant to librarybob, who seemed to be looking for ways to discover lesser known but excellent writers.

I think what people miss about bookstores is the same thing they miss about libraries:

1. That the tactile experience is important in numerous different ways. First is the ability to not only freely browse the book, but to instantly access related and non targeted material by just the organization of that material alone (this provides an instant method of brainstorming). Second the value and authority of the material can be instantly recognized much like secured transactions recognizes valid instruments (although there may be fraud, the overall picture of the source instantly comparable to others in a multithreaded environment like reality provides some measure of comparative quality). Third physical books have a very small hurdle to overcome (if intellegently indexed etc.) to achieve a self expanding analytical display thus allowing hundreds of differing opinions to be compared and most important for the USER to select the relevant passages that may contradict. Trust me, I have worked with some of the most sophisticated search systems out of there and the major limitation is how the user interfaces with the machine and if the machine can read the intent of the user (no it can’t = phone support).

2. There is a fundamental win-win situation in a physical presence. Let us ignore that it not only allows the education of the buyer, but also allows exposure of the buyer to relevant material. It also prevents fraud via inspection. There simply is no way to view a book electronically as completely as a physical book. With a physical book you limit the amount of faith you put into a publisher because you can inspect the item. Case in point how many of us would buy shoes online if we couldn’t inspect them or even if we could we bought them as is without redress (the ability to fix a situation is a source of Zappos success since it models the physical world). However If you need to depend on a book or shoes for that matter you have to be secure that you hold basic property rights in it and that it is accessible. This is perhaps 5the greatest advantage of a physical book, they exist and will be accessible for years based on little initial outlay of effort. If properly made they are extremely long lived – remember that a hundred years is nothing to a physical book (see http://nost.gsfc.nasa.gov/). Moreover during this time they require only basic literacy to read. Bookstores one up this one by actually being a ble to instantly gratify your needs in most instances.

3. The physical presence of stores lets us hold them accountable. The physical presence of books lets us not only own them, but also stops people from taking away what we own rights or licenses irrespective (thus no “1984″), and perhaps more importantly stops others from determining what information we can access or if we have accessed the information.

as borges (and cantor elsewhere) noted in “the library of babel” browsing an infinite selection is also a bit of a downer, so you’re a bit screwed.

The primary basis of your long, hyper-defensive post is that book stores and publishers are doing it right, but the consumers are just idiots and won’t consume correctly. Publishers and bookstores work hard to put stuff on the shelf that is tuned to the readers eye. Really? If you’re so good at it, why do such a small percentage of books ever show a profit? Don’t tell me you blame the consumers.

You tell me there are enough books at B&N to keep me read for a lifetime. BS. I recently decided to get caught up on the classics of Science Fiction. I started with a list of the 100 best SF classics as defined by the SF authors, and I pulled 25 from that list to read.

I was able to find exactly five of them between the two B&N near my house. Trips to other book stores netted me exactly one more. So of the very best SF in the world, bookstores netted me 1/5th of my list. Yup, bookstores sure are meeting my needs. Can anyone explain why bookstores would be so negligent?

But bookstores aren’t all to blame. Nine of the books on my list are–if you can believe it–out of print! The worlds best books, out of print!

Once books have gone digital, they never have to go out of print. Once the publishers have invested the nominal costs of digitizing, they can sell that book forever, and make money off of every single copy. They no longer have to be slaves to expensive and risky publishing runs.

Gah. It’s just so infuriating, bookstores and publishers! I very strongly want to be your customer, I very much want to give you my money You can easily provide the things I want to buy. Why aren’t you doing it? It makes no sense!

My response:

Their reviewing system is also based on a worldview, which, like all worldviews, closes itself off to other possibilities. That it’s the same worldview that other controlling sectors subscribe to, i.e., universities, largely the media, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and so on, not to leave those in traditional publishing, means truly serious and needed alternatives are shunted aside.

The usual rebuttal is the cream rises to the top. The reality is much of it sours for lack of requisite refrigeration to get it to market.

Fortunately, the Internet has perhaps come along just in time for civilization. Though those entrenched are straining every muscle to preserve the status quo, the truly creative have gone around them, as has happened with music. Books and publishing are on the cusp and the next few years will increasingly witness the massive changes for which Jason Epstein, ebooks, and Lightning Source have laid the foundations.

I’ve never liked the fact that librarians were in between me and what I wanted to read. Too many of them got in the way, arrogantly thinking of themselves qualified to judge what’s “trash” and what isn’t. Political, religious, or non-religious bias always figures way too much in that for my tastes. I have to differ. Many librarians, indeed, do want to be in control of that screening process. The Internet now gives that control to the individual, the individual reader of what Saul Bellow called “the great public,” who alone has the ability to find and recognize what is new and worthwhile, not “trash.”

The Mission of Earthrise Press on my website discusses the Post-Gutenberg Age in more detail.

Except that it really doesn’t. I mean, kudos to you for helping to sell the books and bringing attention to books and authors that people would normally miss (I’ve read at least 10 books based on your reviews), but you’re not putting yourself at risk by stocking these titles in a bookstore and hoping that people come in and buy them. Independent bookstores are a volatile business, where people have to take large risks in going up against the larger stores that can afford to offer huge discounts based on bulk stock, and hope to also appeal to the demographic of people who normally frequent independent bookstores. Offering up reviews and drawing people to a place where they can buy books does not make a person a bookseller.

I really like the idea that there might be opportunity in curating and designing the experience of reading public domain literature. Print on demand is a really exciting development- I’ve used Lulu.com quite a few times to put custom book anthologies together of content I’ve come across online for my own use, mostly because I’d rather read this material in a printed format. Of course, I can’t sell these books, but the concept of putting real care into the internal layout and jacket design could apply to what you’re describing. I called my latest anthology A Year of Ideas (you can see it for yourself here: http://www.newfangled.com/synthesizing_web_content_with_print_on_demand). If I do another for 2010, I’ll probably include this article in it.

Chris

An example of one that’s doing this, and thriving, is Camden Lock Books at Old St Underground station in London. Old St is a medium-sized transport hub on the border between hipster Shoreditch and the financial City of London; the mix of people walking past the shop every day typically

- have design/architecture/web/fashion jobs (Shoreditch), or
- work in mainstream financial jobs (City)

…but in both cases are generally travelling to and from work by train and want something to read.

The shop stocks a moreish-but-crunchy mixture of current bestsellers and well-chosen (and sometimes abstruse) literary fiction, along with a decent selection of niche genres and nonfiction. It’s ace. I spend 2+ hours on the train every day (I work at Old St) and recently worked out that in a typical month I spend more money in that shop per week than I do in the pub.

Camden Lock Books is the only independent bookstore I know of that’s thriving. I think it’s down to how well-tuned it is to its market (graduate professionals who need something at least reasonably intelligent to read while they travel), and the fact that its market is naturally bibliovorous. It’s interesting to speculate about other locations with specific niche markets, and beyond that to how many of these buy enough to make niche stores worthwhile. But in essence, with the proliferation of both titles published and sales channels the only survival strategy for physical bookstores has to be a mix of curation and shrewd observation of what will make the bookworms keep coming back.