

Book Shopping in Stores, Then Buying Online - sathishmanohar
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/book-shopping-in-stores-then-buying-online/

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marcomonteiro
Over the years I've actually done the opposite. I'll read reviews on books I'm
interested in on Amazon and go to a local bookstore to buy it. I appreciate
the book reviews but I'm impatient and want the book now.

The iPad and iBookstore have changed my behavior slightly in that I can both
read the reviews and buy the (e)book at the same time. I'm still buying mostly
physical books because I love the weight and feel of books but I'm starting to
gradually switch.

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ja27
I've done this quite a few times. If Amazon has the book for 40+ percent off
and the bookstore has it for full retail, it's hard to overcome that though.
Borders and their constant 25-40% discount coupons also made it hard for me to
consider buying any but the cheapest books without that deep of a discount.

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rwhitman
I worked in an independent bookstore while in college for about 3 years,
shortly after the rise of Amazon as an ubiquitous force in bookselling.

The independent bookstores that are still operating today are survivors.
They've somehow survived the big box retailers, the bargain booksellers,
Amazon, the Amazon / eBay used book secondary market, the rise of e-readers,
the decline of magazine & newspapers, and the general decline of long-form
reading across the board.

I doubt indie booksellers are worried at this point. They've survived the
apocalypse several times over in the last 15 years. Barnes and Noble has
something to worry about, but the indies survive purely on the sense of
community among avid readers and generally being a staple of intellectual
pride in the neighboring community.

If you have a local bookseller on your block, who is still operating it means
they are a warrior and a survivor. I'd take a bet they're more worried about
the economy and inflation than technology-based disruption at this point...

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joejohnson
Hmmm, I think the trends in book sales closely resemble music sales from 5-7
years back.

And in the last decade, many indie music stores have gone out of business.
Small record stores are uncommon today. I wouldn't be surprised to see this
same trend effect bookstores.

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keithpeter
Have you noticed more musical _instrument_ shops? In Birmingham UK there are
several classical music instrument shops including a violin maker, and a
number of electric/pop music shops. One or two independent music media shops
left clinging on... Has to be a trend there.

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msie
For someone like me who buys a lot of books is it worth paying an extra 30%
every time to keep a large chain alive? What's the difference between taking a
picture of a book and writing down the title? I still buy a lot of books from
brick and mortar stores anyways. Also, I think buying the used books at my
local bookstore is more profitable for them than buying the new books they
sell.

Edit: I'm a Canadian so the special "Canada" pricing makes the price
difference 40% sometimes despite our dollar being close to parity. I don't
like the disappearance of small bookstores either so I do the best I can to
support them. What can brick-and-mortar stores do against Amazon? What
Chapters does is sell a lot of other stuff besides books. Stuff they can mark
up with higher margins.

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amartya916
Absolutely correct about the Canadian prices. I have spent the last 2.5 years
here, and I get your point about selling other stuff (like Chapters/Indigo
already does).

The thing is, that other stuff can also be bought online. People browsing for
books in store (before buying it from Amazon), don't really buy those other
items either (why should they). So, these stores aren't really gaining
anything from people browsing their selection, other than perhaps taking a cut
from coffee shops.

On the other hand, if I want to gift a book, I almost always pick it up from a
store. I generally don't plan ahead enough to order from Amazon (no Prime in
Canada either :)) and dropping into a store works well. I am caught in two
minds about these stores, I love going there, but I can't figure out a way for
those guys to turn a profit without charging us the premium that they do.

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tomjen3
If this is really a problem (and I suspect it the number of people who do this
is much lower than the number of people who don't buy the book at all) then
maybe the stores should focus on those who come to buy only one book or the
immediate gratification of walking out with the book, rather than waiting days
for it to get from Amazon.

Finally looking it up on Amazon means you can read the reviews -- and, funny
enough, take advantage of Amazon to decide if the books should be brought or
not.

But it is also clear that the future of book buying isn't going to happen in
book stores -- I am kinda amazed they lasted as long as they did. With
expenses for employees, heating, rent, theft, etc you would think the stores
would have gone banckroupt a long time ago.

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reader5000
Just like with online referrals, Amazon should release a barcode scanning
system with store-identification or perhaps simply a geotracking system where
brick and mortar stores get a cut of sales from Amazon made by recent visitors
to the store. Everybody wins.

The only difference between online and offline referrals is the difficulty of
tracking credit for the purchase but I think that can be surmountable.

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thesis
Why should they? Amazon isn't a charity.

I think the problem is the pricing in the stores. Often books are over 50%
more in retail stores then on Amazon.

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Sindisil
For the same reason they pay for online referrals - it's an avenue that drives
sales their way. No charity involved.

As for the pricing at b&m stores, at least in the case of smaller shops, they
simply don't have the ability to price anywhere _near_ Amazon. They don't have
the leverage to negotiate low enough prices from publishers and distributors.

B&N I don't know about. I'd think they could discount somewhat more, even in
store.

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pflats
A parallel: a local hockey pro shop charges a "fitting fee" ($25, I think) for
trying on ice skates there. If you end up buying skates, they put the fee
towards your purchase.

I find the practice repellant, but that's just me.

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wmeredith
Repellant? They're providing a valuable service with both expertise and
physical equipment; I see no reason why they shouldn't charge for it.

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pflats
There's a number of other local pro shops that are equally apportioned that
don't charge such a fee. Some even offer incentives to buy there (free
sharpenings, free stick if you buy a top-end pair, etc.) rather than the
disincentive to leave without purchasing.

I've played hockey all my life. I know the type of skates and holders I
usually like. When I see a sign like that, even though I'm pretty sure I'll
buy the first pair I try on, it encourages me to take my business elsewhere.

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w33ble
I do this a lot, not just in book stores either.

For me, it's the reviews. I see a book (or product) that looks interesting,
make a note of it and check the reviews online (typically Amazon) to see if
it's worth the purchase. If the reviews are favorable and I decide I want to
buy it, the choice is pretty simple; I'm already at the online store, the
price is usually lower and the purchase is a click away (versus a drive back
to the store and potentially waiting in line).

If I do bother to check the reviews on my phone while I'm in the store, then
it's a simple price comparison, and the online retailer almost always wins
again.

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DasIch
I do this quite regularly, mainly because it is a lot more convenient to
"browse" in book stores and taking a look at titles that seem interesting than
using Amazon for the same purpose.

I think that this is more of an UI failure on Amazon's part than an inherent
advantage of physical stores, a failure that a competent designer or even
someone who things rationally should be able to solve quite easily.

Unfortunately I doubt we'll see an Amazon redesign proving my theory as long
as any brick-and-mortar store is still standing.

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yobbobandana
Could a bookstore not offer an Amazon purchasing option? If customers want to
browse books in the store and purchase off Amazon, why not explicitly enable
this? The tradeoff is obvious to the consumer: either get the book now for a
heightened price, or get it later more cheaply. The bookstore could make a
commission off the Amazon referral.

A quick web search turns up: <https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/>

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Tangurena
Amazon won't go for that because a number of states treat having an affiliate
in their state as a "business presence" which triggers the requirement to
collect sales tax in that state.

All the affiliates in my state were eliminated that way.

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wyclif
Former independent bookseller here, and former employee of Borders and Amazon.

There is little new to see here in this story. In general retail, physically
checking out the competition's pricing has a long history. The only new twist
is the barcode apps to check price immediately. Brick and mortar bookstores or
"showrooms" are going to have to compete with better service and markup on
non-book items. I don't think that's going to save the bookstore chains,
though.

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Fargren
I do this, but I buy all most of my books from www.betterworldbooks.com. It
has free shipping to Argentina(where most pages won't even ship here, and
Amazaon charges a hefy fee), and it gives a lot of the profits to charity.
Getting books in their original language is damn ahrd here, and I care a lot
about that. I don't like reading translations if I can help it.

But honetly, the bookstore seems to be blossoming here. I've seen more
bookstores opening than closing in teh last few years. Specially ones that
serve coffe on the side(or maybe it's their main business), and ones that
selled niche or used books. I'm sure the fact that importing books is ahrd for
a private citizen has a lot of imapct on this. Shipping from Amazon takes at
least two weeks, and I've waited as much as two months for a shipment from
BWB. And I can't even think of a good book page for books in spanish, but I
can't say I've looked to hard for that.

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clarkevans
I try to buy from the Tattered Cover (<http://www.tatteredcover.com/>) when
possible since they stood up for civil rights
(<http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020411_hodes.html>)

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bshep
Definitely a problem for the bookstore's business model, however I don't see
how this is different than going to your local public library seeing a book
you like and buying it on amazon later, in fact most public libraries will get
a book for you ( and you can borrow it! ) for no or very little charge.

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dangrossman
> I don't see how this is different than going to your local public library

The activity is no different, but the impact is totally different. When you
don't buy the book from the store, they lose potential income from a limited
pool of local book buyers; if that happens too often, they don't make enough
money and go out of business.

When you don't take the book from the library, they _save_ money they would've
spent handling you. If that happens too often, nothing's likely to happen,
since most of the library's funding is from local taxes, traffic fines, and
state grants (which includes federal money given to the states to support
libraries).

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saturdaysaint
If you prefer the e-reader to the bound book, what choice do you have? I
"showroom", but then again, I only drop in bookstores because they're a
calming detour in a busy day in some city - almost never as a lone destination
(which was common for me 5 years ago). As much as I love the stores, I've
completely bought into the convenience of e-books and Audible, which have made
it possible for me to take in orders of magnitude more books in a given week
than I could in the era of the printed page.

The focus on customer ethics is misguided when you consider the likelihood
that a good portion of bookstore's best customers are probably exactly the
kind of people ready to rapidly adopt new reading mediums.

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jakarta
I do this all the time. I spent a summer working in NYC and used to visit
Strand Books pretty frequently (at least once a week). Stand has an
interesting model because the downstairs is filled with used books. I'd
regularly do a price comparison check on the used titles versus their Amazon
counterparts.

What I found is that sometimes the brick and mortar bookstore actually had the
price advantage with these used books. When you factor in the minimum $3.99
shipping cost on a lot of used Amazon non-prime titles, they came out to being
slightly more expensive than the used books I looked at in the store. This
wasn't always the case, but it happened at least 30-40% of the time.

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robryan
Most of what the store is doing, apart from the human and atmosphere aspect
can be replaced by an online curated browsing site. I think ultimately it's
not enough to keep them operating on current form and would need to move
towards something of a book club or reading space that only sells really niche
things and things like coffee.

I think amazon could make physical spaces in certain locations as somewhat of
a club or browsing experience an sell the books near the online price with
same/ next day ordering in. Could be like an extended prime membership.
Whether they would go down this probably low margin path though is another
thing.

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cafard
My preferred method of purchase is locally, and in cash.

My usual temptation is different: to go onto Amazon and review some book that
I bought elsewhere. I don't do this--it implies no economic loss to Amazon,
but it seems to me to involve bad manners.

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newobj
"December 4, 2011, 10:36 PM" ... "Now a survey has confirmed that the
practice, known among booksellers as showrooming, is not a figment of their
imaginations."

Really, just figuring this out in 2011?

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kylemaxwell
There are people who _don't_ do this?

