
I am shutting down my bookstore in New Delhi - devnonymous
http://www.dailyo.in/arts/fact-and-fiction-bookstore-new-delhi-independent-book-shops-india/story/1/5415.html
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Paul_S
Nostalgia aside (I spent my childhood in a library) I don't see any value in
high street bookstores. Stories like this are sad on a personal level for
people involved but they are trying to suggest that we are losing something
when we're anything but. My book consumption has quadrupled because of how
easy it is to find new books and recommendations online. I am never in a
situation where I don't have a book I want to read or I can't get it within 10
minutes.

~~~
signal11
A criticism of online bookshops like Amazon is that they destroy serendipity
by encouraging you to look at related books. For example, someone who usually
buys engineering textbooks and SF may never see a travelogue. Offline
recommendations from friends are good to have, but no substitute for self-
discovery. One example I like to give is -- if I wander through the Daunt
bookshop in Marylebone St (which despite the press doesn't only stock travel
books), I can always lots of books to buy about stuff I would never have
dreamed of entering into a Google or Amazon search box.

~~~
anilgulecha
I get what you're saying, but that's again partly nostalgia for the old way.
Algorithms can add serendipity as well, in more ways than one -- by
recommending things on the long tail.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
> that's again partly nostalgia for the old way

Book discoveries, like album discoveries, happen better in stores. It's not
nostalgia, but just the way the physical world works. (Think of how music
lovers connected with album covers in the vinyl world.)

Just because something is "the old way" and there is nostalgia for it doesn't
_automatically_ make it worthless.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
I don't think everyone would agree that album discoveries happen better in
stores. They certainly don't for me, I would guess like most things it's
subjective.

~~~
pearle
Yeah, I still like visiting record stores and book stores but I agree with
this.

For me, Spotify is the best way for me to discover new music. Usually through
the thematic aligned playlists or unofficial playlists curated by other users.

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trendroid
" The art of browsing and the serendipity of finding unconnected books are
hard to emulate in the virtual world. "

I am not so sure about this. I always felt internet made this experience
seamless and super convenient. Also, the higher confidence(with more data)
with which I buy a book has decreased the regret value in case it turned out
to be not so good.

Of course, if their was a highly interactive bookstore which had best of both
the worlds, I would always prefer it over the virtual one. Maybe someone
should focus on making those.

~~~
GFischer
An Oculus Rift use case? :)

I mostly agree with your statement... Goodreads has made me discover a lot of
books.

On the other hand, there are many good books I wouldn't have read if I had the
selection available over the Internet (of course, many bad ones too, but I
think everyone needs to read a few of those)... it makes it very easy to stay
on your comfort zone.

~~~
trendroid
>An Oculus Rift use case?

Funny that you said that. That's exactly what I was imagining few minutes ago.
People walking in virtual bookstores, meeting and discussing books with their
friends in other countries, instantly exploring and accessing related
articles, essays and research papers etc. The ability to touch and feel the
book should eventually be integrated in this whole experience. The design
decisions for making these interactive virtual shops are fascinating to ponder
upon.

I wonder if meetup.com is considering investing money in VR considering most
meetups would be online 20-30 years from now.

~~~
eterm
No one wants virtual worlds like that. A lot of the convenience of the
internet is that it removes the need for such interaction. This leads to
better information density online which leads to more buying confidence.

People were saying the same thing about Second Life, about how stores would
need SL equivalents.

VR bookstores which try to model real bookstores will fall flat for the same
reason Second Life ultimately failed to provide mainstream experiences.

~~~
GFischer
I haven't tried Second Life, but most virtual worlds I've seen do not provide
the kind of experience I'm hoping for with Oculus Rift (maybe Oculus itself
won't be able to either, but I can hope). And Second Life didn't become
mainstream enough, and the user interface had a lot of friction.

Virtual worlds/Cyberspace are a very pervasive trope in mainstream culture
(see Matrix, etc... down to the latest hits like Ready Player One)

Discoverability in many online stores sucks, and the browser doesn't lend
itself to the kind of experience needed - I REALLY hope there can be a better
user experience through virtual reality, and that access to an Oculus or
similar device will remove friction - it needs to be a pain-free experience.

This thread got me thinking, and I already DO enjoy a kind of virtual
experience that is very well suited to the Oculus - Google's Street View and
similar. I and my girlfirend both love exploring through Street View. If
something like the Street View experience can be replicated for shopping, it
might become very popular.

My second thought is that a company that would be well suited to provide the
kind of experience needed is Apple :) , but John Carmack and his team have
been working very hard to provide an inmersive environment and a good user
experience. I'm very excited for this technology.

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arihant
Within a year, this is the third out of the four bookstores I frequented as a
child, that have gone out of business. Those are Bookworm CP, Landmark in
Lucknow, Fact & Fiction. Only one remains, and that guy refuses to give a
single rupee as discount, so I don't know how long will he last.

That's not all. Most Landmark stores are reducing in size, if not shutting
down. Same is happening with Crossword.

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gregjwild
As a member of the publishing world, I'm naturally sad to see book stores like
this go. But I also know that most of our own sales are direct or via Amazon.

As a customer, while I frequent book stores regularly I almost always find
myself thinking "I can probably save a few pennies on Amazon".

~~~
adrianN
In Germany books on Amazon cost exactly the same as in the store by law. I
still go to Amazon because it's much more convenient to get things delivered
and because there is often a used version available that doesn't require
killing trees (and is cheaper).

~~~
ido
ebooks are still often cheaper than physical books on German amazon.

~~~
germanier
For books published in Germany, the ebook price is the same for every shop as
well (but doesn't need to be the printed price).

~~~
vollmond
What's the government's rationale here? How can you have market competition if
they ban competition?

~~~
germanier
The law (BuchPrG) provides a rationale to restrict the free market in this
particular case in it's first section (translation by me):

> This law provides protection for books as a cultural heritage. Fixing prices
> for customers ensures availability of a wide range of books. Additionally,
> this law ensures that this offer is available to the broad public by
> encouraging the existence of a large number of stores.

Fixing the prices makes books more expensive but ensures that even small
niches are filled that would otherwise be unprofitable and bookstores sell
those. It's supposed to be a cross-subsidy by buyers of popular books.
Additionally, almost every book store will sell you almost any book (if it
isn't in stock they get them overnight).

I think around half of the EU members have such laws in place. It is widely
debated whether the law has the predicted effects.

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YogeeKnows
Most business shut down because they don't reinvent themselves. If you
continue to do what you have been doing you will become obsolete.

Bookstores need to find new model of keeping their customers.

Also its not the online competition but also the pirated books market, where
you can find all the NY best sellers at a very cheap price on the streets of
India. Students don't buy textbooks but xerox them from seniors or infact
there are some shops where they offer to create copies of such highly
recommended textbooks for a fraction of the price.

I have purchased 100's of books most of them because while flipping them I
happen to stumble upon a paragraph or quite which reasonated with me or the
table of contents seem to contain what I was eager to learn.

Amazon offers that with their quick look feature.

Only thing I hated about offline bookstores was that I had to tilt my neck
sideways to read the title of these books.

~~~
Kluny
I propose this business model for bookshops:

\- Have one copy of each book, like a library, with the option of ordering a
copy in, available for browsing.

\- People can pay $10 for a day pass to come in and enjoy the facilities:
unlimited books, coffee on tap in reusable mugs, soup on tap in reusable
bowls, showers, free wi-fi, lockers (lockers are pay-for-time), inexpensive
sandwiches, comfy seats

all in a convenient walkable location.

\- Option to buy the book you were reading for Kindle or order a physical
copy, to be delivered in two days (pay for shipping) or pickup at the bookshop
(free shipping).

Money comes from:

$10 facility fee

Physical book sales

Amazon commissions

Sandwich sales

~~~
YogeeKnows
I think model needs a social element and an experience element and not just
the ownership of an asset. * More author visits and signing and book reading
sessions, More QnA's with Authors. * Work with nearest businesses for peer
coupons and if any customer buys a coffee at the nearest starbucks give him a
coupon which lasts 2 hours for the books. This way force customer to come into
your shop even when they left the house without any thought of buying the
books. * Trunk Club like service for books. Send them books and they can keep
the ones they want and return the rest. This can be done by somehow making
sure only first x%/20%/50% book can be read and if consumer still wants to
read it they will have to break the seal which will be considered as a
purchase.

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codecamper
Interesting read. It made me realize that the big "value add" for a bookstore
is essentially expert human curation.

Too bad that the Internet has not fostered a way to monetarily reward
curation. Not doing so means that we lose our curation experts.

Or??

~~~
robryan
I think goodreads is good enough. If a website gets popular enough there are
no shortage of people that are willing to share their thoughts on books for
free.

~~~
codecamper
The trouble is how do you find the needle in the haystack?

If there isn't financial reward you won't have experts who can devote their
lives to finding & sharing the good stuff.

Maybe it will work like this: Before there would be people who's full time job
was to find great books. Now there are tens of thousands of people who, on
their spare time, find those books & report back online.

The reality though is that any sort of review system gets hacked. Amazon,
yelp, & trip advisor are good examples.

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jensen123
I still prefer to buy my books from physical book stores. Having all the books
I read listed in a few central databases owned by companies like Amazon makes
me uncomfortable.

However, if anyone comes up with a way to sell/rent ebooks while preserving my
privacy, that would be nice, since I'm not always in a big city where there
are any decent bookshops.

~~~
LargeWu
Are you equally as uncomfortable with libraries?

~~~
sleepyhead
Well there is a significant difference between a public library and a private
company.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
TBH in the UK I wouldn't put it past my local council (who run the public
library) to be selling library user data (and probably getting a low price for
it too).

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Sven7
I think I need to leave this here - [http://www.polkacafe.com/iconic-
independent-bookstores-acros...](http://www.polkacafe.com/iconic-independent-
bookstores-across-india-1606.html)

~~~
listic
Great! Is there a similar list for other countries? Is India special in this
regard?

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m52go
I made an attempt at digitally replicating the bookstore-browsing experience.

What I learned: while there is no shortage of people who appreciate the idea,
the number who would appreciate the same experience made virtual is
exceedingly small. Small enough to not make an attempt like this worth it.

For those interested:
[http://bookshopcrawl.meteor.com/](http://bookshopcrawl.meteor.com/)

I haven't completely abandoned it...but I am now tweaking it to make something
more widely appreciable [ with a new name and new site, so no shameless plug
here ;) ].

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jpatokal
Bittersweet: seeing a whole wall of the unmistakable blue spines of Lonely
Planet guides behind him, another venerable publishing institution that's
having a hard time transitioning to the digital age.

~~~
listic
What problem do they face, exactly?

~~~
selimthegrim
Why buy some travel guide that's out of date as soon as it's published when
you can go to the LP Thorn Tree forums?

~~~
listic
Hm, never been there.

I thought travel guide is a convenient format, and they do sell their books as
pdf's, per-chapter if desired, so I thought they are doing well?

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anon5446372
TLDR the internet killed the bookshop industry

~~~
anta40
Nowadays most people (including myself) prefer the convenience of digital
books (EPUB, PDF, etc).

I still do buy and read physical books, but then again I can easily put dozens
or even hundreds of digital books on my iPad for reading while travelling.

Can't do the same thing with physical books :(

~~~
bobadams5
One advantage to physical books is their lack of sleep-altering screen time.
The blue light from screens is supposedly bad for sleep patterns (Recent
freakonomics podcast: [http://freakonomics.com/2015/07/06/the-economics-of-
sleep-pa...](http://freakonomics.com/2015/07/06/the-economics-of-sleep-
part-1-a-new-freakonomics-radio-episode/) )

That being said I still am a supporter of digital technical books. The
information goes out of date too quickly for a physical book to be useful.
However, if you want to read Homer's The Iliad, it may be better to have a
physical copy you can read before bed and retain on your shelves for easy
access.

~~~
icebraining
F.lux, redshift and similar software is supposed to help with the blue light
problem, though I don't know if it's scientifically sound. I use them because
I find it more pleasant, but I can't say I had trouble sleeping before.

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PSeitz
I read much more than in the past, because I have instant access to all books
I own or want to buy with my kindle.

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nsns
I remember when I visited Delhi and found out that Bookworm in CP has closed,
I was devastated.

But of course, you can always travel to Daryaganj, where the supply of books
seems endless, if not too friendly to normal customers

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arjn
This makes me sad. It feels like the slow passing of a loved age. I had the
same feeling when an old bookstore called "Premier" closed in Bangalore may
years ago.

I doubt algorithms and AI can replace the feel of a quiet bookstore where you
can browse old, new and unrelated books. Maybe meet someone else with a
passion for reading and strike up a conversation, perhaps a friendship.

Bookstores are much more than merely bookstores.

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thebiglebrewski
This would've been better if it was like a cliched startup closing. "It's been
a wild ride", "privileged to get to go on such a journey", etc.

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27182818284
He should pivot to more of a rare-book, specialty shop if he can. I mean I see
a shelf full of travel books to Canada. That's like selling paper maps when I
have GPS.

