The Digital Future of Indie Bookstores by Anthony D Fiore

 

It is no longer a question of durability. The e-reader is here to stay. 

Sales of products like Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and Sony’s Reader have nearly doubled every year for the past three years and are expected to continue this steady climb throughout the rest of the year and into 2013.

Online E-book sales have also sky-rocketed in the past 3 years since the ground breaking release of the Kindle. So much that Amazon has recently reported that they sell 105 e-books for every 100 print books. The New York Times Bestseller List reflects similar statistics with several titles selling more digital copies than print.

The numbers don’t lie, people are really taking to the e-reader. And it’s no wonder, these little devices are addicting. Owners of e-readers, myself included, love the portability, the sleek appearance, and handy digital features like being able to search the text, adjust the font size, and look up dictionary definitions.

And there’s an e-reader for everybody. I love my Nook for its simplicity. No distracting keyboard, no internet browser, no games. Just a pocket sized book on a digital matte screen. It’s so streamlined, I find it even less distracting than reading a real book. No more licking my fingers to turn the page, no more flipping ahead to see how many pages to the next chapter. I’ve read twice as many books this summer since I got my Nook than I normally do.

But for people who feel that constant need to be plugged in, there are e-readers that connect to the internet, receive emails, have built in mp3 players. A step up there are tablets, for people who like picture books and comics, who need vibrance and color, or just like to play games between chapters.

The question is no longer how the e-reader will survive, the electronic age of books is starting now. The question is how books will survive in this digital age.

Well, not actual books. Many types of books, like coffee table books or art books, will never have to compete with an electronic tablet. But even your run of the mill novels or memoirs will continue to survive in the same way that CDs and even vinyl records have continued to survive in the age of MP3s. As long as people continue to appreciate the intellectual aesthetic of a full bookshelf in their homes, there will be places to find print books. Even if that means mass pilgrimages of print purists to obscure back alleys in Brooklyn or Alameda County to find a rare copy of The Help.

Rather, the question is, how will the independent booksellers survive in this online market?

As if it wasn’t enough to have to compete with corporate giants like Barnes & Noble, Costco, and Amazon, now these independently owned neighborhood book stores have to find ways to keep their sales up as more and more people are buying digital.

Luckily, there are some really cool innovations to combat this very dilemma. Many organizations like Google, the American Booksellers Association (ABA), IndieBound, and Blue Fire are working together to keep independent bookstores in the game. Because we all love our neighborhood bookstores; they’re warm, they’re inviting, and they have those hand written index cards that let us know which books are the best read. People want to support their local bookstores, and now they can online.

Google got the ball rolling by putting over 3 million e-books online, the biggest selection of e-books online, surpassing Barnes & Noble by 1 million and Amazon by a little over 2 million. They then teamed up with the ABA’s IndieCommerce, a branch devoted to supporting independent bookstores in the digital age, to put those e-books on any independent bookstore’s website. Thus creating online independent bookstores where booksellers can sell digital copies of books just as they would sell print in-store. On May 9th, Old Harbor Books of Sitka Alaska was the 250th independent bookseller to open an online bookstore with Google e-books.

Now IndieCommerce and IndieBound are working with Blue Fire technology to produce an app for iPhone, iPad, and droid that will connect to an online database of independent bookstores so you can shop and read on the go.

The next logical step seems to be e-readers being sold in store at indie bookstores to promote online sales.

The biggest opposition to these advancements, however, is the Kindle itself. The Kindle is the only e-reader that uses exclusive reader software. In other words, if you own a Kindle, the only books you can read on it are books bought off of Amazon. Thus Amazon has cut out any competition.

With Kindle being the most recognized name in the current e-reader market, this poses a serious threat to any forward progress for indies. It’s still early, so all we can do is hope that the Kindle phases out like HD DVDs or the Betamax, allowing room for more open-minded devices like the Nook or the Reader to take the market.