http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0719/Borders-closing-remaining-stores

Kind of conflicted in what I think about this.

Big box retailers put most of the independent bookstores out of business, just a they did with record stores, coffee shops, and various other types of stores.  I still have faint memories of going into record stores and bookstores where the clerks or owner would have some idea of my taste and make recommendations, clue me into local events, or just have a pleasant exchange with the clerk or maybe someone else interested in the same music/genre of book/whatever.  The only store now where I can get that is the comic shop I've been going to for the last 7 years.

People were willing to trade that entire social value for lower prices and wider selection (and fewer jobs, less competition, and everything else that goes along with a market consolidating to a handful of owners).  I think that's lamentable and I'm still a little angry about it.  I'm still angry when it happens, like Baltimore approving a new Super Wal-Mart that's going to put a dozen little stores out of business.  So there's a little perverse pleasure in seeing Borders go out of business and Barnes and Noble barely hanging out (and looking to wind up its liabilities in the brick-and-mortar side of its business to focus on e-books and e-readers).

On the other hand, seeing Borders (a fairly large employer) go out of business trying to compete with Amazon (a much less labor-intensive employer) makes me pretty irritated.  Kurt Vonnegut wrote "Player Piano" about how industrialization (now coupled digitization, if you wanted to re-imagine it) basically makes humans an afterthought.

I would argue that the reason the government, both state and federal, is such a huge employer in the US is because there is simply not enough meaningful labor to go around.  They've become an employer of last resort, entangling people in endless, meaningless bureaucratic jobs meant to occupy time and quell discontent.  I think the current social order simply doesn't work, for a variety of reasons.  Maybe I'll write about that elsewhere, as I'm running pretty far off the rails from the topic of a major book chain closing.

Well I love my Nook Color.

I used to worry about the same things, and still kinda do, but I don't know if it's that I've become more jaded, or disconnected, or just that my one half-useful talent is seeing the larger picture, but... it's like drive-in theaters.  They used to be socially relevant places for people to meet, but society evolved away from them, and movie theaters are about to go the same way.  Maybe that means we're evolving toward an isolated form of life where people hardly see or speak with each other in person, and humanity is separated into the two classes of street trogs and rich corporate wageslaves, or maybe it just means that society is in a period of flux while waiting to evolve into something new after adapting to technology.  A couple days ago, my roommate turned to me, chuckling and said, "Remember in Shadowrun, the Pocket Secretary?  An amazing pocket device that OMG was a computer and cell phone and electronic organizer and all that neat sci-fi techno stuff?"  Then he held up his iphone and laughed.  "Just fifteen years ago, in our lifetime, this was science fiction.  THE FUTURE IS NOW!"

In the words of Arcade Fire, I guess we'll just have to adjust. 

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I agree with everything you just said. except I have a kindle and a sony reader, not a nook.

I've never used a nook/kindle so this is an uninformed opinion, but I don't feel myself drawn to the concept at all. A good quarter of the fun of a book is the tangible feeling of progress through it that can only be recognized if you're holding it and visually weighing the read-to-unread fraction each time you read it. Maybe 1/8 of the fun comes from the fact that I can file it in my bookshelf next to others that I've enjoyed. Then 1/16th of the fun is the fact that it has no licensing agreements or any of that DRM bullshit attached or in-built and then another 1/16th is the smell. I feel like an eBook leaves you with nothing but the story.

I'll try them eventually though because I hate the idea of becoming a confirmed luddite.

I agree with everything you just said. except I have a kindle and a sony reader, not a nook.

Sony's ok, but I won't touch Amazon books or Kindle because of the DRM and proprietary format, in addition to their bullshit business practices regarding web publishing.  Nook supports epub, and that's awesome.

I have a Sony e-reader.  I use it mostly to read books from Project Gutenberg or other ones I can get for free.  I prefer free forever to trying to renew stuff at the library.

I haven't bought very many ebooks because publishers really fuck you on the price.  For instance, the publisher of the Dresden Files series just published a new book on Tuesday and the price was the same for the ebook or the hard back.  They're basically trying to lock in increased profits with lower costs as they begin to shift away from the actual physical publishing portions of their businesses.  Record companies did the same thing through several medium changes (kept retail prices relatively static as they switched mediums). 

Well, for starters, Apple is a lot of the reason behind that.  They had a lot of tomfuckery with the e-publishing industry from the start.  I don't remember the specifics, and I can't find the article I read about it, but they're basically the reason you're paying as much or more for ebooks as for print.

thing is, I'm not entirely sure I disagree with it.  Yeah, at its base, ebooks should be cheaper, because there's much less overhead, but if ebooks were REALLY cheaper, and sold at a price relative to their actual production cost, then it would swiftly murder the print book industry, and throw a lot of shit into disarray.  I'm all for moving into the future and honest trade and all that, but not at the expense of the publishing industry on the whole.

One thing I do think, is that when you buy a print book, you should get an electronic copy of it as well instead of having to buy it separately, since the production cost on that side of things is virtually nil.

I agree on getting the e-book with the purchase of a hard copy.

I don't have a problem with shifting prices slowly.  I think the problem is that there is typically no shift in prices.  They want to keep the price people expect to pay for a book pegged at the hard copy price - more profits, less overhead.  And it's not like the additional money saved on overhead is going to the authors - Jim Butcher, who wrote the Dresden Files, has stated that the format you purchase doesn't make any difference to what he sees in his royalty checks.

So ultimately the social cost is less productive jobs, no extra money to the author, and no cost savings passed on to the reader.

Wow, didn't know that.

An online friend of mine just self-published an ebook, of some writing shorts she did over the last three years (it's crap, but maybe she'll make a few bucks off of some bored people).  She put it on amazon first, and said they let her set her own price (2.99), and she got 70% or more of the money.  I told her about Amazon's proprietary format, DRM issues, and especially the shit way they seem to handle authors sometimes, so she decided ot put it up on B&N as well.  They seemed to be trying to make her think she had to let them set the price, but she finally realized she could set it herself (both Amazon and B&N have a rule that all copies of an ebook have to be the same price across all distributers), but B&N only let her keep around 65% of the money I think.

I bought a copy just because I was curious and to help her out because I know her and her husband aren't doing well financially lately, but it made me think of how e-publishing would work in the future.  What if Butcher, or some other famous authors decided to do that same, and forego print altogether on some projects?  Or maybe some aspiring author that actually has talent but no resources puts one up and it becomes popular?  Makes things interesting.

Kinda makes me finally want to finally try to write "Crack the Sky" like I've been wanting to do for nanowrimo for the last couple of years...

[irony]

A couple days ago, my roommate turned to me, chuckling and said, "Remember in Shadowrun, the Pocket Secretary?  An amazing pocket device that OMG was a computer and cell phone and electronic organizer and all that neat sci-fi techno stuff?"  Then he held up his iphone and laughed.  "Just fifteen years ago, in our lifetime, this was science fiction.  THE FUTURE IS NOW!"

In the words of Arcade Fire, I guess we'll just have to adjust.

posted via android.

[/irony]

Yes, Thrash, that is the joke.

Hahahaha! BURN!