
Let's reinvent the bookshop  - jamesbritt
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/lifestyle/rosanna-de-lisle/bookshop-design?page=full
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sirgawain33
I've bought over 100 books in the last 6 months. Maybe more. I wouldn't step
foot into any of the bookshops proposed here.

70% of so of my books are from a local thrift shop. We go every week and buy a
stack of books at a time. There's stuff here that you don't find anywhere
because it's coming from people cleaning out bookshelves that are decades old.

I think the Internet has made the printed book even _more_ important, largely
because so many people are ignoring it. Information is only valuable if it's
asymmetrical: the ease and abundance of online information makes you feel
informed, but usually just results in me-too thinking.

Jonathan Franzen notes in an essay that people used to wait for the next great
novel like we wait for summer movies. I believe he goes on to lament the fact.
I think this change is for the better; the book has transmuted into a source
of arcane information that's of real consequence in business, writing, or,
best of all, just living.

With that in mind, the bookshop shouldn't emphasize what's popular, "curated",
or recommended. Give me things no one else is reading. I want Zafon's Cemetery
of Forgotten Books, not "Yo! Sushi".

A few specific responses to the article:

Recommendations: Amazon's recommendation engine never gives me good
suggestions. I think it's because once you've read something you like your
thinking evolves and you want something _different_, not something similar.
For that reason, I would be really skeptical of the digital suggestion
features these proposals tout.

Social: reading is anti-social. Period. It should enrich your ideas and
conversation without people noticing. Nobody is impressed that you're carrying
around _Infinite Jest_.

e-books: the materiality of a book is crucial. I can often remember spatially
where something is in a book. Underlining physically helps attach ideas. When
you flip through the book, the lines don't flow to different pages each time
you read (very annoying when trying to dig up quotes later). You're not going
to read that many books in your life, the expense of physical books isn't
really a good excuse.

This is probably all really terrible business advice for booksellers.

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hershel
> Information is only valuable if it's asymmetrical

That's very true. The question is - how do you use the internet(which i
believe is more suited than book stores to that task), to find such valuable
asymmetric information ?

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theoh
I'm not sure it is the only way information can be valuable. There can be an
economic advantage to having information others don't have, but it's not a
zero-sum game.

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camillomiller
I still think that these truly interesting visions wouldn't save a bookshop.
Apple Stores - mentioned in the article - were revolutionary because they were
selling electronics like nobody else ever did. They proved to be a long
lasting success, so great that it actually shaped a big chunk of Apple public
presence and perception by customers.

So, I can probably envision a revolutionary approach to the bookshop by Barnes
and Nobles or other big names in the industry of distribution, but I really
can't see it working for a single, low capital independent bookshop.

To run a place like that you still have to hire a lot of well motivated and
dedicated people, though, and you need to invest A LOT in planning and
building the actual shop. Then you'll have to turn a profit from a core
business of selling goods at a very low margin, if you want to somehow be
competitive with the ease of buying the same exact thing from Amazon or even
other online retailers.

Apple Stores still sell highly priced exclusive products with hefty margins,
designed and produced by the very company that is selling that to you. That's
a control over the complete customer experience that you'll never have for the
majority of stores out there, let alone bookshops.

What stops me from joining the experience of such an interactive bookshop to
discover some new exciting title, just to purchase the book or ebook later at
home from my device at a very steep discount?

You can do the same with Apple products in the Apple Store - try the product
live then buy it off of the Internet. Many people do that, but in the end
you're still buying an Apple product and Apple is still turning a profit,
thanks to its brick and mortar presence. Apple Store per-store revenues show
that's not even a problem, though, since they're incredibly profitable on
their own.

The fact that Amazon is a fucking leviathan already would fit perfectly in the
discourse, but I will let that out, since the whole bookshop 2.0 idea has its
own flaws even without dragging Bezos and co. into consideration.

P.s. I find it very amusing that my iPad changed Bezos to bozos automatically,
even if that doesn't reflect my personal views on the Amazon founder.

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rmc
As a kindle owner, I have to chime I'm and say that the Kindle can read and
display books that aren't drmed and can load any mobile file. So, yeah the
Kindle can only take books in the Kindle format, but any digital retailer
could sell them.

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Turing_Machine
"Bookshops are closing down like nobody’s business"

Except that they aren't.

[http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/260752911.htm...](http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/260752911.html)

