ComicCon Stirs Up Thoughts About DC--B&N Showdown

ComicCon officially starts today with press night tonight from 4-7, so I'm ready with my Book Country t-shirt to head over this afternoon and start boothing it up. It's my first time at ComicCon and it's sure to be insanity but what I'm most curious about actually has nothing to do with the Con itself.

Last week, Barnes & Noble confirmed that they will be removing a number of DC Comics products from their stores due to DC's recent deal with Amazon, according to ICv2.com:

Cv2 has confirmed that Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookseller, is removing 100 of DC’s bestselling backlist titles from its 705 retail stores in the U.S. The action is being taken as a result of DC’s exclusive deal with Amazon on those titles for the Kindle Fire (see “Watchmen on Kindle”), making them unavailable for Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader. Amazon priced at least some of those titles at $9.99, or roughly half the price of the print editions (see “Kindle Launches Graphic Novel Price War”). It appears that the action, at least for now, applies only to the brick and mortar stores; BN.com is still offering Watchmen (at $10.87) as of this writing.

Barnes & Noble appears to be making an example of DC for other publishers thinking of giving Amazon exclusive content for the Kindle, and is willing to lose some sales to make its point clear.

We haven’t heard what the term of the DC exclusive with the Kindle is, but there will be a window of at least some months, including the all-important holiday season, with vastly reduced availability of those titles in chain bookstores. This will offer an opportunity for all of B&N’s competitors, and will undoubtedly hurt DC’s graphic novel sales through the end of the year.

As we wrote when this started, “DC’s deal with Amazon for the Kindle Fire is a potentially disruptive game-changer that could have far-reaching impacts on the market for physical and digital graphic novels in the future.”

Read the original article HERE

The piece goes on to provide a list of the graphic novels in question, including beloved titles like THE SANDMAN, THE GREEN LANTERN and FABLES.

With this big development, you can bet my ears will be open for commentary at the Con the next few days. I'm sure exhibitors and wanderers alike will have much to say...

B&N Lays Off 40+ Book Buyers and More

It's no surprise that in this extremely volatile market, major publishing and bookselling corporations have been struggling. Indies closing, Borders unable to pay its bills, houses reorganizing imprints and laying off employees, etc. The one book biz staple we hadn't heard much from was Barnes and Noble.

Until yesterday, that is, when the news that Barnes & Noble was "restructuring" their office environment by laying off more than 100 staffers spread like wildfire yesterday.

Readers and industry insiders alike are up-in-arms about this new development, not only because of the firings themselves but also because of B&N's cavalier attitude toward the matter.

Here's the skinny from Publishers Weekly:

Barnes & Noble has confirmed what it is calling “a small number of organizational changes this week” that the retailer said were “designed to better align our resources with our business.” The changes appear to be mostly in the buying group. B&N wouldn’t confirm the number or names of people let go, but PW has learned that Bob Wietrak, the well-known v-p of merchandising, and Marcella Smith, director of small press and vendor relations, have left the along with a number of buyers, including cookbook buyer Lee Stern. Reports say about 45 to 50 positions in the buying group were eliminated.

A B&N spokesperson stressed that the company is reallocating resources to areas that are expanding, such as its digital operations, but had no comment on how duties of the departed buyers and others would be divided up. Publishers were shook by the news with the larger publishers wondering who would oversee merchandising, while smaller presses questioned who would be looking out for their interests. The growth in digital is great, one publisher noted, but added "someone has to be in charge of getting books into the stores."

See the article HERE

The news certainly hit home for a lot of people I know, with many of them closely acquainted with some of the laid-off employees. While I don't have any personal relationships with the buyers and other staffers that were let go, it's a sad state of affairs in publishing these days. It's upsetting not only on an individual level but for the future of the industry as a whole...

E-books, E-books, Everywhere

E-books are everywhere this week.

Borders opened their first eBook Store yesterday with a flourish. They not only offer more than one million titles but also discounted their stock of Sony E-Readers, provided $20 gift cards with the purchase of a Kobo E-Reader, and accepted (and continue to accept) pre-orders for the upcoming low-priced Aluratek Libre eBook Reader Pro (on sale 7/20). In honor of the new online store and e-book application, store locations also handed out free coffee with the presentation of your downloaded Borders app.

It's incentive-tastic.

The Borders eBook Store hook--in addition to all the free goodies and discounts--is the "any device" angle. According to the online store:

With Borders eBooks, you're not tied to reading on a particular device. Our eBook store offers more than one million titles (including lots of free ones!) that you can read on your computer, iPad, and many popular smartphones, as well as on eReaders — devices dedicated to eBook reading.

[...]

Borders offers several free eReader apps so you can browse, buy, and read Borders eBooks on multiple devices.

Our desktop app works with both Macs and PCs. We also have free apps for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch as well as the BlackBerry and Android devices. Each mobile app is specifically designed to work with the unique features of the device on which it is used.

It's surprising to me that it took Borders quite so long to hop on the e-book bandwagon. Barnes and Noble came out with the Nook, and thus launching an e-book store, in late October 2009. Amazon's Kindle and the Sony E-Reader were, of course, already established at that point, but one would think that B&N's swan dive into the e-book biz would've made Borders kick it into high gear, especially with the hits their stores have been taking lately (they closed 200 locations in January, if you recall).

But now that Borders finally has caught up, it'll be interesting to see what happens in the e-book rat race. With two of the major chain stores on board, it's only a matter of time before smaller, indies and specialty stores start creeping into the lead.

The Idea Logical company projects that these specialty stores are truly the future of e-books, not the superstores B&N and Borders have launched. Mike Shatzkin, a blogger for The Idea Logical, wrote an interesting piece on the subject earlier this week:

[...]

It has been a long-established “fact” (although I question if it is still true, as we’ll explain later) that the larger is the selection of books available in a single location, the more powerful is the magnet to attract customers. My father found this out when he was in charge of the Brentano’s chain in the 1960s. Their Short Hills, New Jersey store was the worse-performing store in the chain until they doubled its title selection. And then, like magic, it became the best-performing store in the chain.

[...]

So to that point — one could say to this point — the largest possible selection in one place has been as important to the success of an ebook retailer (obviously: online) as it was historically to a print book retailer with a physical store.

[...]

But there’s another thread of bookselling history on- and offline that I believe will soon become the dominant paradigm for ebook retailing. And, of course (just so you are reminded what blog you’re reading), it fits into the concept of “verticality”.

Publishers have known for a long time that good deals can be made and large sales can be registered through what we call “specialty retailers”. (The label for these sales in a publishing house, and others such as sales to catalogers or premium sales, is “Special Sales.”) The store that sells the tools and materials to refinish your floors can sell you a book to explain how to do it. The store that sells computers and paper and ink can also effectively sell resume or how-to computer books. The garden supply store can sell books on how to make your roses bloom.

[...] [T]he guess from here is that this is about to change and that the change we’ll see in the next few years will obliterate the notion that “all subjects in one place” is a significant marketing advantage, online or in a store. Many book sales, and particularly ebook sales, will move to “contextual” resellers. Your accountant’s web site will sell you the book(s) that help you understand a new tax law or how to ready your business for sale. Your favorite sports web site will sell you the new biography of Alex Rodriguez. And your favorite “Literary Review” newsletter and website will take care of your needs to acquire fiction directly and without your having to shop the vaster stacks of an online superstore.

That is: curated ebook offerings (a click away from the ability to buy lots more content beyond the curated selection) will be featured on every web site with any significant traffic. Delivering purchaseable content — books right now, but ulimately magazines, shorter articles, and relevant audio- and video-content as well — will become a standard expectation of any site (or web community) that aspires to a true mutual embrace with its site visitors. “What I’ve read lately and liked, and why” is a legitimate offering to anticipate from every blogger or commentator with a following.

Read the full article HERE

Shatzkin makes some very compelling arguments here, and his knowledge of publishing history is pretty impressive, I must say. It's certainly a possibility that his prediction turn into a reality.

As always, only time will tell.

In other e-book news...

Amazon was just granted a dual-screen e-reader patent. This new e-book development could cause trouble for B&N's nook, as well as other e-readers on the market. Engadget.com reports:

Looks like the battle for e-reader dominance between Amazon and Barnes & Noble could soon expand beyond the recent spate of price drops and into the courtroom as well: the USPTO just granted a 2006 Amazon patent on e-readers with secondary LCD displays (like the original Kindle's scroller-navigation panel), and several of the claims are potentially broad enough to cover the Nook and many other devices with both electronic paper and LCD displays. What's more, Amazon agreed not to file for any corresponding foreign patents during the four-year approval process and thus wasn't required to publish the patent application -- meaning this is likely a complete surprise to the entire industry. Yeah, it's juicy. Here's one of the claims that could cause problems for Barnes & Noble -- in plain English, it potentially covers any device with both an electronic paper display and a second smaller LCD display next to it.

Learn more HERE

A New Way to Study

Barnes & Noble College is trying something different. In addition to selling new and used textbooks to students at universities around the country (including my own alma mater, Boston U.), they're offering textbook rentals, for a fraction of the cost.

SeekingAlpha.com fills us in:

After test-piloting a textbook rental program at three campus stores, Barnes & Noble College is rolling out the program more broadly to 25 U.S. colleges. Students will be able to rent textbooks from their campus bookstores, online, or from Barnes & Noble (BKS) stores on campus. Students who want to rent online will be able to do so through their campus bookstore websites, such as Ohio State’s or the University of South Carolina’s.

[...]

Campus bookstores still have a lock on a lot of textbook purchases because professors order their books through those stores. But the rise of these rental options has students asking themselves why should they pay $150 for a textbook when they can rent one for $25 instead? As more students do the math, Barnes & Noble had better hurry up and roll out textbook rentals across all college campuses.

Read the whole post HERE

This is the first I'd heard of a textbook rental program, but apparently, it's not all that new. In implementing this program, B&N is playing catch-up to internet start-ups Chegg and BookRenter. While I'm sure this is something students will clamor for--pinching pennies is HUGE when you're a struggling college student--I'm not sure I would have participated if this had been available when I was in school. I had a tough time even buying used books! Other people's margin notes, highlighting, etc. always threw me off. I needed the fresh and clean pages to mark up on my own. And I'd imagine that is a no-no for book rentals.

However, it's likely to happen anyway. The wear and tear on college textbooks is tremendous, and so I'm not sure how well the books will hold up. Just like DVDs that get scratched at Blockbuster, these books are going to get torn, written in, spilled on, and who knows what else.

But, on the plus side, the stressful rush on the university bookstore when the semester begins will certainly be minimized. Anyone who's ever had to fight for a copy of The Norton Anthology of British Literature knows what I mean.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how many students jump on board this growing trend. And how many books get destroyed in the process.