Pssstt... wanna buy a book?

One of the stated concerns about the impact of an open market on the Australian book industry is that it will further weaken independent booksellers. A recent blog post by on HuPo by owners of an independent bookstore in the US outlines how dire things are in the States. In comparison, Australia has a far healthier independent bookshop culture, and though personally I'm extremely concerned about the continuing disappearance of academic titles from bookshop shelves, net-based resellers such as Amazon and even Barnes & Noble have not (yet) devastated Australian independent booksellers as US bookstores have been.

US bookstores work with even smaller margins than Australian booksellers which gives them less opportunity to compete with aggressive price cutting by the big players (who are doing a pretty good job of beating each other up at the moment - witness the price stoush between Amazon and Walmart). And it has also been acknowledged that many of the independents in large urban centres in the US had the sense to locate themselves in locales that were ripe for gentrification; post 'urban renewal', the subsequent steep rise in rents has been at least as responsible for businesses failing as falls in turnover.

But the article by Praveen Madan and Christin Evans is by no means all gloom and doom. Their optimism might seem typically American can-do but I'm inclined to agree with them in general if not to quibble over some of the finer points.

While online book resellers can offer an enormous inventory, high discounts, door to door delivery, the Tower of Babelesque enormity of that offering can only work because you as a buyer know what you are after. I strongly suspect a minority of users of online providers make their selections on the basis of what is new and hot or whatever merchandising term the website might use to promote the recent or top selling release. You enter the site having a book or books in mind and begin from there. Perhaps selling strategies such as "what other people bought' works for you; I'm very very interested to know what impact that strategy actually has in terms of additional purchases. Somehow I don't think Amazon will be telling me anytime soon.

Why the success of those additional sales matters is because it is the only user-friendly strategy that the behemoths have developed to provide customers with a moderated selection of book titles that might be of interest to that particular buyer.

To apply a concept from the web, all bookshops and online resellers are ultimately aggregators. The scale of that aggregation obviously is wildly different between a small independent bookshop and Amazon or The Book Depository. But successful aggregation depends upon two key things. That the material being aggregated is of consistent quality and interest to the users, and that the materials are also intelligently moderated. Know thy market; know thy product.

And this is why the type of aggregation practiced by Amazon is reliant on maintaining a vast inventory. Their inability to intelligently moderate their content they attempt to overcome by insinuating that they have everything. (It is also why they have the customer review process - other customers become the de facto moderators of a book; given the rather less than riveting nature of most customer reviews, again I'd love to know how successful this is.) The problem is, you end up on relying on the customer knowing what they want in the first place. This is also why chain stores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble are running into problems; carrying inventory to compete with Amazon's promise of instant consumer gratification is expensive and lacks those vital elements of moderation of your aggregating process. In reality, chain stores are far more likely to buy front list titles on the basis of which books offer better margins and previous sales on authors. A not particularly intelligent form of moderation.

Which is where independent bookshops if canny enough have a great and glorious future. Aggregators yes, but highly moderated and intelligent aggregators if done well. In an information world whose vast oceans of data, and bytes and published materials are ever expanding, the user response to intelligent aggregators are already plain to see. And the failure of earlier models of aggregation to evolve as new technologies bring competitors into play is also plain to see in the decline and fall of newspapers.

One of the best bookshops I ever had the pleasure of visiting began as a small post-retirement occupation for two women in Maitland. It was small, and the books they sold were eclectic but highly moderated. Their stock purchases were based on their own very personal preferences. As they sold, they responded to their customers suggestions for additional titles. Had I lived closer, that bookshop would have bankrupted me. No dumpbins of best-sellers, no fear in explaining politely to customers that they didn't carry a particular book (but would order it), and yes it grew like topsy and consumed the two women's retirement.

Many Australian independent bookshops already have strong connections with local literary programs, schools, reading groups and the like. Aggregators for their local communities. What often seems to be missing is quite enough rigorous and intelligent moderation of the books. If we were to move to an open market, and with access to new printing and supply technologies such as Lightning Source, rather than doom, smart independent booksellers should be able to posit themselves as on the ground and responsive aggregators. Minimising their inventory, while vigorously moderating their selection in response to their clients. The blooming of a thousand flowers.

If I were an independent bookseller, I'd have two mantras pinned above the somewhat grubby sink in the back of shop kitchenette:

Think global - act local

Know thy market - know thy product

Web based strategies matter but they should be driven by the intelligence gathered from your customers face to face; a website should reflect what the shop does. Websites are never a matter of 'Build it and they will come". They should be for independent booksellers an adjunct to their retail spaces. Acting as a highly selective aggregator, a website offers a brilliant opportunity to showcase the skill and knowledge that supports the process of aggregation. They also should offer the ability to order titles they may not stock, but this is an additional service, not a replacement for intelligent moderation of stock selection. Combine this with use of social media, and a focus on gathering intelligence from your customers. And into all of this also slides the ebook. It should be viewed as simply another edition of the book, not the town crier wailing "Bring out your dead".

Oh and great coffee. Don't forget the coffee. But no teabags OK?

more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/praveen-madan/evolve-or-die-why-reinven_b_337322.html