Is The Physical Bookstore A Thing Of The Past?

from the may-finally-be-getting-there dept

It's been talked about for over a decade now, but are we finally reaching the tipping point for physical bookstores? Some are pointing out that Amazon's continued success in online sales represents an element of "creative destruction" for physical retailers, and a NY Times piece notes that plenty of bookstores are shutting down -- including some of the big name brands, such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.

What may be most interesting in the NY Times article, though, is that the blame isn't necessarily placed at online retailers directly -- but on the fact that online sites have made it much easier to resell used books. Thus, the argument goes, the market is now flooded with used books that individuals are selling out of their bedrooms, meaning that it rarely makes sense for anyone to pay full price for a new book anymore. It's an interesting argument -- and it's the type of argument we've seen made against used book sales in the past, and more recently that video game makers have been making concerning used video game sales.

However, it's not clear if this is really true. Past studies have shown that an active second hand market helps to boost the sales of new goods, because it makes those goods more valuable to folks who recognize they'll be able to resell them on the second hand market later. That may not be helpful to physical bookstore retailers, but those retailers have to learn to adjust with the times as well. Obviously, just selling books is going to make less and less sense, but we've seen retailers that have worked hard to turn their stores into destinations, where there were good reasons to go and buy stuff, rather than just being a physical version of what you could get online. If bookstores are unwilling to make those changes then is it really a huge loss?

Filed Under: online sales, retail stores, used books
Companies: amazon

Author Sues Amazon And eBay For Having Used Copies Of His Books For Sale

from the please-google-first-sale-doctrine dept

Eric Goldman alerts us to yet another ridiculous lawsuit that is likely to be tossed out of court incredibly quickly. In the meantime, though, it's worth looking at, just for the amusement factor. An author (who isn't worth naming here) has sued both eBay and Amazon because used copies of his books are for sale on both sites. He claims that this is a violation of his copyright, and claims that this "piracy" is no different than what the music, movie and software industry faces when they see their products downloaded. Apparently, he's never heard of the first sale doctrine, recognized by both the courts and directly within the law, allowing the legal owner of a copyrighted work to transfer that work to someone else. He also seems to be unfamiliar with the various safe harbors that would protect both eBay and Amazon from the actions of its users. But, to make it even more fun, before filing the lawsuit, he sent letters to the companies asking for half a billion dollars to shut him up. After claiming that he would clearly win a lawsuit leading other authors to sue as well, he literally says in his letter to them: "should I be compensated fairly, I will be as quiet as a church mouse.... I think [a] number in the high seven figures will be fair enough for me to suddenly catch amnesia." If his novel writing is as unsubtle as his legal threat letters, one would be hard pressed to believe that his books sold very much either at full price, or in these "used" sales.

Filed Under: copyright, first sale, safe harbors, used books
Companies: amazon, ebay

Are Used Textbooks To Blame For The High Price Of Textbooks?

from the damn-that-marketability dept

It's back to school season, and once again, students are getting gouged on textbooks. There are plenty of reasons for this. The biggest has been that you had inelastic demand. Students were required to buy the textbooks and, especially in a pre-internet age, there were usually only one or two sources where you could buy the books. That's started to change thanks to the internet, but the NY Times has an odd opinion piece suggesting that the inelastic demand has nothing to do with high book prices, and that it's all due to those damned used book sales. The idea presented by the accounting professor who wrote the article is that book publishers have to sell textbooks at an insanely high price in order to capture the profits from the additional sales afterwards. That may make sense from an accounting standpoint, but it doesn't hold up under an economic analysis. You might be able to make the case that thanks to used book sales, students are more willing to pay the high price for a book knowing they can resell it at the end of the semester and recoup some of the costs. However, the idea that the book publisher is baking in all that extra profit to offset future resales ignores the fact that the market should squeeze out that extra margin -- if there was a real free market. The professor's suggestion that school's simply buy site licenses to textbooks and have the schools pay a set fee per student is an interesting one that could make sense in some circumstances, but hardly seems likely to cure the problem of high prices. If anything, it gets rid of the competitive price pressures of the market, and simply opens up additional opportunities for publishers to gouge even more by charging higher rates while knowing there were no substitute products (used books) in the market.

Filed Under: economics, textbooks, used books