Are bookshops a dying breed in the digital age?
January 2010 Business is a cruel sport sometimes. The way we conduct commerce is constantly changing and evolving, leaving the slow and less clever among us behind. Our favorite store, the bookshop is about to be swept away by new technology - digital books & magazines.
Battered by supermarkets, department stores and superstores with 50,000 to 100,00 titles under one roof, our tiny local bookstores have been kicked from all sides, hanging on by their thumbnails to turn a profit. With the great success of Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's offerings and a dozen new competitors, the new generation of e-Book Readers will very likely push most of the survivors off the edge.
In case you are not familiar with this technology, portable e-Readers are dedicated electronics which use e-ink technology to create very sharp and realistic looking book pages on their screens, remarkably similar to real ink on real paper. They retail for $200 and up but experts predict the numbers of users in the US will double from three million to six million in 2010 and I predict they will jump to twenty to thirty million within three years if basic e-Reader prices fall below $99.00. History predicts they will.
But it is not just e-Readers that will drive small stores out of business, e-Book technology & distribution has massively increased to a comparable level of digital music downloads (like MP3 files). There are now thousands of online retailers offering e-Books with titles just like the kind you find in Borders or Amazon at significantly lower prices. Why pay $9.95 for a Dan Brown book when you can pay $7.95 for a Kindle version. Across the board, e-Books are usually 20 to 30 percent less expensive than paperbacks and priced far below hardcovers.
Battered by supermarkets, department stores and superstores with 50,000 to 100,00 titles under one roof, our tiny local bookstores have been kicked from all sides, hanging on by their thumbnails to turn a profit. With the great success of Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's offerings and a dozen new competitors, the new generation of e-Book Readers will very likely push most of the survivors off the edge.
In case you are not familiar with this technology, portable e-Readers are dedicated electronics which use e-ink technology to create very sharp and realistic looking book pages on their screens, remarkably similar to real ink on real paper. They retail for $200 and up but experts predict the numbers of users in the US will double from three million to six million in 2010 and I predict they will jump to twenty to thirty million within three years if basic e-Reader prices fall below $99.00. History predicts they will.
But it is not just e-Readers that will drive small stores out of business, e-Book technology & distribution has massively increased to a comparable level of digital music downloads (like MP3 files). There are now thousands of online retailers offering e-Books with titles just like the kind you find in Borders or Amazon at significantly lower prices. Why pay $9.95 for a Dan Brown book when you can pay $7.95 for a Kindle version. Across the board, e-Books are usually 20 to 30 percent less expensive than paperbacks and priced far below hardcovers.
Amazon.com , the online retailer, announced that in Qtr 4 of 2009, they sold more Kindle digital downloads books than physical books shipped. This is an indicator of the future and as a result, they and other retailers have slashed the prices of their paper-book versions to match the e-Book price.
Duthie's Books of Vancouver, Canada explained on their website why they closed last year: "Everybody knows that Independent bookstores have been under pressure from the 'big box' operations for many years now and it is clear that it is not going to get any better; the likes of Chapters (equivalent to Borders or B&N), and Amazon are ruthless in their drive for market share and we cannot compete on price anymore. The book itself is in the throes of a technological transformation and book readers undergoing a major demographic shift."
All booksellers, including big box stores are going to have to adapt and change quickly because as the adoption of e-Readers and portable computers that will have e-Reader technology spreads, their profit margins are going to shrink as book lovers abandon thumbing through shelves of books for instant, cheap and convenient downloads of e-books at home. Even Borders and Barnes & Noble stores will have to expand their gift sections, coffee shops and add other categories to keep some of their smaller stores open.
I am going to have to split this topic into another article. I have too much to say but lets leave with this idea. Walk into any small bookstore (without an internal cafe) these days and the owner will tell you that he or she is running the shop more as a hobby than as a profitable venture. They can see the writing on the wall and now you do too.
Duthie's Books of Vancouver, Canada explained on their website why they closed last year: "Everybody knows that Independent bookstores have been under pressure from the 'big box' operations for many years now and it is clear that it is not going to get any better; the likes of Chapters (equivalent to Borders or B&N), and Amazon are ruthless in their drive for market share and we cannot compete on price anymore. The book itself is in the throes of a technological transformation and book readers undergoing a major demographic shift."
All booksellers, including big box stores are going to have to adapt and change quickly because as the adoption of e-Readers and portable computers that will have e-Reader technology spreads, their profit margins are going to shrink as book lovers abandon thumbing through shelves of books for instant, cheap and convenient downloads of e-books at home. Even Borders and Barnes & Noble stores will have to expand their gift sections, coffee shops and add other categories to keep some of their smaller stores open.
I am going to have to split this topic into another article. I have too much to say but lets leave with this idea. Walk into any small bookstore (without an internal cafe) these days and the owner will tell you that he or she is running the shop more as a hobby than as a profitable venture. They can see the writing on the wall and now you do too.
