The book biz and Green Apple's future

A few month's ago, when Borders first announced the closing of a third of its stores, we wrote this. Now, with Borders completely liquidating, we are prompted to re-think (yet again) the future of bookselling and Green Apple Books.

In short, we feel the same way now as we did a few months ago. In fact, we may be more bullish. Here's why:

1. Our Google eBooks are starting to catch on. Readers really are buying eBooks for all devices (except the proprietary Kindle) from Green Apple, and returning to buy more. We'll continue to promote this new service, as we aim to put good books and readers together, no matter the format.
2. The Borders in the Stonestown mall is closing, so we have an opportunity to win some new customers. While their going-out-of-business sale may hurt us in the short term, being the lone big bookstore west of Stanyan Street can only help Green Apple.
3. Amazon will soon have to collect sales tax in California, and other states are following suit. It may take a few months, or a few lawsuits, but it'll happen. It's about time the playing field was levelled, and Amazon is being excoriated in the media for their tax-dodging ways. See this and this and this and this and so on.
4. Green Apple has a small expansion in the works. Nothing big, but we planto better maximize our return on the busiest used book buy counter in theBay Area.
5. Many behind-the-scenes improvements are shoring up Green Apple's finances, like:

• Dodd-Frank act should lower our debit fees;
• Our annual company-wide health plan renewal increase was in the single digits;
• Successful GroupOn and ScoutMob offers brought in new customers; and
• We're reducing operational costs, like phone & Internet service.

There's still and always much more to do: revamp our website to better reflect the store, get our used books inventoried for easier shopping and better buying control, and so on.

And we're still very concerned about the health of the bigger industry: without healthy publishers, Green Apple can't thrive.

As we said in February, it's ultimately up to our customers. If they want Green Apple to survive, they have to buy books (or eBooks, CDs, DVDs, LPs, greeting cards, journals) here. So far, they do. So we'll keep adapting, reading, buying, shelving, shelf-talkering, and making goofy videos.

Thanks for reading.

a Robin Allen photo, adapted

A Bolaño reading list (and an unexpected bargain)

Over at Conversational Reading, Scott Esposito offers a Roberto Bolaño Reading List, based on the late author's book raves and reviews included in his most recently translated work, a collection of essays called Between Parentheses.

Although the list is compelling, it is sadly not exhaustive, and misses out on one of the books Bolaño most admired, J. Rodolfo Wilcock's The Temple of Iconoclasts. But "admired" doesn't sufficiently cover the adulation Bolaño heaped upon The Temple of Iconoclasts. In fact, he called it

without a doubt one of the funniest, most joyful, irreverent, and most corrosive books of the twentieth century.

This is conjecture, but the notable absence of this book from the reading list may be due to Conversational Reading's partnership with Amazon.com (follow the link), which lists the sole new copy of Wilcock's book at a whopping $173.68 and of the nine used copies available, the cheapest will cost you $42.90.

However, there's hope.

If Bolaño's praise of The Temple of Iconoclasts has piqued your interest, but not enough to lead you to dish out (at least) $40, I've got a not-so-secret: we've stocked the book for over a year and, unlike our online competitor, we're selling it at its list price of--wait for it--$14.95.

Amazon vs. Macmillan

Say there are four companies in the world who make widgets. These widgets are basically of the same quality of make, the only difference is the companies that sell them. And let's say that one of those companies, Ajax Widgets, is run by a charismatic, visionary leader who, using aggressive sales tactics and undercutting the prices of their competitors, manages to claim a significantly larger share of the widget market than the other three companies. But capitalism being capitalism, that's not enough for Ajax- they want the whole pie. So they set out to crush their competition, either by selling widgets at a loss until the competing companies can't sell any widgets, or just using their deep pockets to buy up the competition. In the end, there is only one widget maker in the world. And any small entrepreneurial company foolish enough to try their hand in the widget market will be set up and destroyed with lawsuits and unfair pricing. And we know what happens next: with no competition, the price of widgets goes up. That's why the government regulates monopolies.


Well, I was planning on blogging about something else today until I saw this article in the Los Angeles Times. Seems Amazon has gotten into a squabble with one of the largest publishers in the country, and has stopped selling their books. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think Amazon is basically a criminal enterprise. They quite obviously want to use their market share, gained from years of selling at a loss while being propped up by venture capital and money from the sale of stocks, to become the only bookstore on the planet. And when that happens, I'm guessing the prices won't stay quite so cheap. And not just that. A company that is willing to stop selling an item that its own customers want just to make a point is a company that would make sure that a book it didn't want published, say an expose on Amazon, didn't get published. I'm just saying...

just another reason why

Not to throw kindling on a fire or anything, so stop me if you've heard this one...

Just google "kindle" and "1984" if you haven't.

The irony simply slays me.

The Prophet Eggers Speaks: "Print is not dead!"

Dave Eggers had this to say at a fancy Authors Guild event in New York about the state of print media (from the New Yorker):

"Nothing has changed! The written word—the love of it and the power of the written word—it hasn’t changed. It’s a matter of fostering it, fertilizing it, not giving up on it, and having faith.

Don’t get down. I actually have established an e-mail address, deggers@826national.org—if you want to take it down—if you are ever feeling down, if you are ever despairing, if you ever think publishing is dying or print is dying or books are dying or newspapers are dying (the next issue of McSweeney’s will be a newspaper—we’re going to prove that it can make it. It comes out in September). If you ever have any doubt, e-mail me, and I will buck you up and prove to you that you’re wrong."