Thursday News: The changing marketplace for goods is eliminating the line separating brick and mortar and online stores
Publishing Newsbrick and mortar4 Comments
First, tomorrow is our Book Club discussion of The Last Hour of Gann by R Lee Smith. I asked the author some hard questions and she took them on. I think it was one of the more interesting and provoking author interviews partly because I’m a pretty inept interviewer but mostly because Ms. Smith really gave us some no holds barred answers. Hope you join us.
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I liked this book and so did Kati so I agreed to post the new cover for Lick by Kylie Scott. I think the cover reveal was supposed to be yesterday but there are all these rules (time to post etc) so today’s the day at Dear Author! This will be Momentum’s first international publication and will be in stores May 2014.
Bookworld transforms bus shelters into pop-up bookshelves for Christmas – Amazon has launched a store specific for Australians so its a smart marketing move for Bookworld, an online bookstore, to launch pop up bookshelves in bus shelters in Sydney. Commuters are encouraged to help themselves and encouraging residents to buy local even if it is online. mUmBRELLA
In Amazon and Walmart’s Battle for Dominance, Who Loses Out? – This is a great, in depth article (unlike the New Yorker piece) about Amazon, Wal-mart, eBay and Google’s struggle for dominance over the wallets of consumers. With same day delivery, the lines separating online and brick and mortar is being rubbed out.
Local retailers without a large presence are feeling this so keenly they are taking punitive action. Target, for example, is threatening to blacklist vendors (and I’ve heard that they are becoming to publishers what Walmart was in the 90s). For smaller retailers, the recommendation is to hook yourself to a distributor like eBay that is presenting same day delivery or move into products that render themselves to in person shopping. Knowledge@Wharton
Amazons Unpopular Kindle Proposition – The New Yorker article is predictable. Indies don’t want to get in bed with Amazon but one of the arguments is that Kobo presents a serious alternative to Amazon. The New Yorker says that Kobo has a “small but growing market share” but according to the expert witness report in the DOJ publishing lawsuit, Kobo shared a 2% portion of the digital book market with Smashwords, All Romance, and the like. Amazon, BN, Apple, and Sony accounted for 98%. The New Yorker
Ooooh! Look at the pretty, pretty cover of Lick! I love it! I loved this book so much! It’s one of three A reads for me this year.
Really looking forward to the book club discussion of The Last Hour of Gaan tomorrow. I had a relatively visceral reaction to it, so I’m really looking forward to the author’s answers and am hoping for a really robust discussion of the book.
WARNING: Seriously Off-Topic Ranting
I may be revealing how O-O-OLDDD I am, but am the only one who really really hopes the trend for Tattooed Dude covers plays out soon?
I don’t mean to insult people who have tattoos or those who love them, but tattoos are one of my personal squicks. (I don’t like needles, and I’m not much of one for body modification, period; even pierced ears creep me out a little.)
Honestly, what happened to the pretty iconic image covers (you know, the fan and the pair of gloves, the high heeled shoe, even the 50SoG-style cufflinks or cuffs) that replaced the clinch cover? Waxed mantitty and headless people in their undies do not give me either warm sentimental feelings or even lusty tingles.
I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…
I shop a lot more at Kobo nowadays than I did a year ago. Even though their allowing coupons on former agency titles didn’t last long, their coupon codes make it easy to save money there. I think the fact they were allowing agency books to be couponable the same month they had a reusable 50% off code is why the books are no longer couponable. I know I bought a whole bunch.
Love the cover of “Lick”.
And I tend to buy from KOBO rather than Amazon.