April 14, 2010
I believe in Books. Books is a God with a growing number of temples, aka bookstores, all over the world. In the US alone, according the 2002 census count, there are some 19,725 bookstores. Of course, compared with the roughly 300,000 outlets devoted to Yahweh, Books is strictly a minor deity. Still, minor or not, what’s important for believers is that there be a temple within reach. There are about a dozen where I live, so come Saturday, I shower, crack a coconut, and step out for some face time. It’s a ritual carried over from childhood. My late father was a Books devotee, and just as we inherit our Gods, we inherit the rituals too. My father and I used to browse on Sundays rather than Saturdays, and consumed idlis-and-madras-coffee rather than the bagels-and-coffee I now have, and we used to walk to the bookshops rather than drive, but these are minor differences. When I remember the spring in his step, the reckless disregard for what he could afford, and his delight in the rare find (“Solutions to the 1948 Cochin Board Chemistry Exams!”), I see the origins of my faith.
Lately though, I’ve begun to notice that faith is not enough. I still visit the temples, still stroll the aisles, still probe and prod various books, and still settle in the smelly sofas to sample my stash of possibles. But actually buy a book? God, no! In my last visit to the local B&N, I sampled Nussbaum’s From Disgust to Humanity and was seized with the urge to buy it. Did I? No. Jeff Vandermeer’s gorgeous Steampunk anthology? No. Heileman and Halperin’s Game Change? No. Michael Pollan’s Food Rules? No. Johnson and Kwak’s 13 Bankers? Thirteen times, no. Good books, even great books: still no.
The reason, obviously, is that it no longer makes economic sense to buy books in bookstores. Why the hell would I pay $19.25 for Goldratt’s The Choice when I can get a nice used copy for $7, including S&H, from Bookfinder? So what if it’s used? All books eventually become mulch anyway; used copies merely get there mulch faster. And when Kindle/Apple finally unclasp their DRM legs and allow readers to have their way with content, physical bookstores will make even less economic sense. In a world where you can get a book the minute it’s released (and when quantum clouds become a reality, perhaps even before it is written), Books is everywhere.
Compare this with the traditional model. A book is released. Hooray. A week or so later, it’s sent to distributors. The crates are unloaded, stacked, stashed and carved into smaller cartons to be trucked, along with similar items, to wholesalers/smaller-distributors (~1-2 months). This process repeats until a few copies finally end up in bookstores (~1-5 months). Two weeks to three months later, if the book doesn’t do well, it’ll be sent back, modesty compromised, back to the publisher. Who then pulps it. Camera pullback. The next crateload of books is seen leaving the publisher’s warehouse. Cycle of life, African drums. Brilliant.
It’s a suicidal business model. Johannes Gutenberg died broke, and publishers haven’t had much luck since. So why do they persist in the worship of such a ball-buster God? Eugene Schwartz, in a great numbers-rich article on book distribution, offers one answer:
One might ask what motivates people to keep this complex system going. After all, although a lot of cash may flow through, it usually takes its time and leaves behind relatively modest portions, if any. As to why we’re in this business and why we persist, Miller [one of the experts] explains, ‘To have a bookstore is part of the American Dream. It is a form of self-expression.’
Right. Like makeup, body piercings, and tattoos.
Truth is, physical bookstores have basically become brick & mortar display screens. They have exceptional resolution, cool 3-D features, terrific affordance, and are totally immersive. What you see is what you can get. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. What you get is what you see. Want that 1948 Chemistry solutions to the Cochin Board Exams? Asimov’s annotated guide to Don Juan? Well, if wishes were horses, then why aren’t you riding the net, Quixote? Bookstores may be one of those in-between inventions. Like Egyptian multiplication. We’re not giving up on multiplication any time soon, but there are better ways now.
If bookstores are to survive, they may need to charge for the service they are really selling: the atmosphere. Bookstores may need to become Lookstores. Talk to any Books worshiper, and you’ll hear the same shiny-eyed theme: “I love browsing in bookstores.” Exactly. Browsing. As in, grazing but not paying for the grass. Because grass is now everywhere, we cows will no longer buy grass from a grass-store. Bookstores might as well get used to it.
Keith Swenson thinks that in the future bookstores might become mini-printing presses; that would handle the problem of what-you-get-is-what-you-see. Maybe. I suppose you could buy books at a Lookstore, but it’ll be expensive, as all unit jobs must be. I see them more as lifestyle places. We’ll hang around lookstores for the same reason people hang around churches and art galleries. It’s an alternative to cock fighting. It’s classy. It’s superior. It’s fun. It’s a great place to take your kid, show them the ropes, stuff them with bagels and madras coffee, and acquaint them with all the troublemakers in history. Most were never able to move more than a few volumes, but that sufficed to move the world. Those who believe in Books take that on faith. And as faiths go, perhaps it’s not an ignoble one.
March 27, 2010
Sprout Inc has a cloud-based tool that can be used to build flash-based “rich internet applications.” A tie-up with Gigya allows these thingamajigs to be shared and tracked over the web. It’s a neat tool and a neat idea. People looking for lost pets, entrepreneurs selling T-shirts, artists promoting their work, social orgs trying to raise funds, and anyone and everyone with a message and a menu quickly began sprouting all over the place. Best of all, it was free. Later on it became less free. In fact, Sprout Inc began to charge the early adopters about nineteen free dollars per month. I had been one of the early adopters. I didn’t mind the monthly bleeding because the tool delivered value. I built a sprout to promote the IIT-K workshop in 2009. Then I built one to promote my novel The Beast With Nine Billion Feet. It can still be seen on my home page. But not for long.
A few weeks back, Sprout Inc sent me a Dear John letter:
“One of the toughest decisions that a start-up faces is where to focus its efforts and resources. Sprout Builder was our first product and has always been near and dear to our hearts. More importantly, we value the customers who have gotten us to where we are today. However…”
However, kiss our ass. Or words to that effect. Sprout Inc. has decided, it seems, to “focus on our enterprise product lines.” Individual accounts would now cost $3,000 per year. Opt out and everybody who’d helped spread your sprout would see an empty space on their pages. Sprout Inc called this “sunsetting the SproutBuilder.” Early adopters, poor artists, orphaned children, lost pets etc. were all to be turned out into the dying light. Night had fallen, the orcs were on their way, and so sad, so sad. It was all very sad, terribly sad, and no one was sadder than Sprout Inc. I’ve never seen Gmail cry, and believe me, it’s an unnerving sight.
Sprout Inc.’s decision shows every sign of a Mr. Gekko behind the scenes. There is a Mr. Gekko behind the scenes of course. Several of them, no doubt. By now, the original founder is probably nothing more than a living writing desk for the firm’s venture capitalists. VCs, unlike business people, are pragmatists. VCs typically don’t like tools; they like products. VCs typically don’t understand people, social media, long tails, the power of free and all that crap; they understand enterprises. And they definitely don’t care how a story began; they only care how it ends. Here they see it ending in an IPO and an interview with Maria Bartiromo of CNBC, or La Belle Pout Sans Mercy, as she’s known on Wall Street.
Sprout Inc could have done the classy thing and kept the old accounts alive. It doesn’t cost much to store a few flash files per user. What it would gained in good will would have more than offset the few gigabytes of storage. I imagine people would have been happy as long as they didn’t lose the work they had already created. Well, fcuk you too, Sprout.
At first I worried. I was raised by UNIX. Our tribe prefers not to pay for software. There was no way I could square Mr. Gekko’ new prices with my conscience. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. RIA tools, like SproutBuilder, are fast becoming a commodity. And with the release of Adobe’s AIR platform last year, Sprout Inc can soon expect to have nothing more than first-mover’s advantage. Already, there are plenty of alternatives. There’s SlideRocket. The company seems to think it’s in the slide-making business and it too is cloud-based, but there’s a standalone version and the you don’t have to make slides. Sliderocket also allows you to export your work, something Sprout Inc deliberately decided not to let their clients do. There’s Adobe’s Flash Catalyst. It is expensive (~$700), but then again, it’s not $3,000/year. Nor is it cloud-based. There’s Wix, designed, as far as I can tell, for and by clowns. But such a company will never go IPO, so users are probably be safe for another year before the org runs through its venture capital. And finally, there’s SwishMax, a sort of poorer cousin to Adobe. It’s a standalone tool, the learning curve is not too steep (~1 week, a few eeks), and it’s a lot more powerful than SproutBuilder. It took me about a week to replicate my widget in SwishMax, and the results are, well, here:
February 26, 2006
The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan [Vinay Dharwadker, editor] was published in 2004 as an Oxford India paperback. It was printed in Noida, Utter Pradesh, by Saurabh Printers Pvt. Ltd.
Each of the book’s 638 pages is cut from the usual high-quality Indian papyrus. Connoisseurs will recognize this stock: it’s pre-faded, pre-abused and conveniently transparent so that a person can read two pages simultaneously. Channa-wallas love its feel; they hate the paper cuts they get from glossy American magazines.
On the Oxford India website, the book is listed at Rs. 395/-. At today’s conversion rate, that works out to be about $8.90. Now, a new American paperback is usually priced at around $7.99. An Oxford India paperback is therefore quite a bit more expensive — by $0.91/Rs. 40 to be exact — than an American paperback. That’s Mystery #1.
Here’s Mystery #2. On Amazon, the price of the book magically transmogrifies into $30. That’s right. $30. When I first noticed it, it got me rather excited. Where did all that extra value come from? What’s in the book that American readers are willing to pay almost three times what Indian readers are willing to pay? I can’t make up my mind who’s conning who.
The digital economy has removed this disparity between Indian and American book markets. D.K. Agencies, an online bookstore based in India, lists the book at $40 (not including shipping)! A gain of $10!
But that’s not the mystery. The gain in value is easily explained. I’m guessing that the book is shipped from Noida, U.P. to a warehouse in Mawah, New Jersey and after its value has been magically pumped up by worshipful American readers, it’s then shipped back to India. Simple.
No, what I find mysterious is this: Why don’t the Indians send it back to Mahwah, N.J.? Rinse-repeat as the bottle says. As the book oscillates between India and the States, its value could keep rising, higher, ever higher, till it knocks Steve Wright, the Hindu God of Irony, right out of his heavenly perch.
Isaac Asimov, arguably the smartest all-rounder in the 20th century, wrote about economics:
I cannot understand it, and I cannot believe that anyone else understands it, either. People may say they understand it… but I think it is all a fake [cited in Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2, pp. 610, 1996].
Asimov’s comments were made in the context of falling resource prices in a supposedly resource-starved world. Our problem is roughly the reverse; increasing prices for a book explicitly designed to be within the reach of Indian pockets.
Of course, economics probably has nothing to do with it. Economics is as unrelated to book prices as virtue is to virginity. That some books must be inaccessibly priced is, no doubt, as unavoidable as the annual disappointment of a sweaty subset of males on prom night.
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