If you walk into a Barnes & Noble bookstore these days, you are likely to be greeted by a nice kiosk, just inside the front doors. The kiosk is a display to promote Nook, new electronic readers sponsored by the bookseller. At Borders, there is a display that offers two models of Sony electronic readers. Amazon offers the hyper-successful Kindle, which may soon be surpassed in sales by Apple's iPad.
All of the readers do more than just read books, of course. One may read The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal each day, and I suppose lots of other publications as well. Some of the e-readers let you take notes with an online keyboard. The Nook even lets you loan a book to a friend for a week or two. The iPad is a tablet computer and so you can surf the net and do many other things.
So, if we buy all our books wirelessly and read them on electronic devices, what happens to bookstores? After all, I like the tactile feel of books, to say nothing of the drinks at the bookstore caf?s. Do you?
I read somewhere that e-books make far more profit than their print brethren, and that makes a lot of sense: There's no half-pound volume to ship to a bookstore and no inventory of books for each store to keep on hand. Shelves for books? Don't be silly. The books are electro-magnetic bits and pieces assembled magically in each e-reader.
It occurs to me that no bookstore employees are needed to answer questions or provide guidance. All that stuff can be thrown out the window. One can look at a vast array of books -- some devices have a million available -- and download them as needed on the e-reader itself.
Maybe we'll all -- even an old fuddy-duddy like me -- get used to reading electronic pages, and the bookstores will become caf?s and download centers. Maybe. (It's not only the tactile feel of books; I like the smell of new paper and ink and the beautiful confection created by paper, ink, printing press, cutters, glue and binder. To me, it's a great combination of words and design.)
Shooting oneself in the foot
I understand why Amazon, which, after all, does not have brick and mortar stores to worry about, got going with the Kindle. Anything it can do to take market share away from Borders, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million is, on its side of the ledger, good. Amazon still gets to sell lots of books, but when they are "Kindlized," it does not even have to inventory and ship them.
Clearly, Amazon made a sweetheart deal with book publishers. I wonder how long that arrangement will last. It shouldn't take long for publishers to realize that they don't need bookstores, if -- and it's beginning to look somewhat likely -- people can be weaned away from print. Eventually, they may not need Amazon. Even though Amazon owns Kindle, it's not like there are not other venues, especially since the iPad has appeared. One thing is for sure -- young people who grew up with computers seem to enjoy reading on computers. Me? I have trouble with it, but my kids -- 42, 40 and 32 -- have not a whit of difficulty. For them, no problemo. I suspect younger adults are even more adaptable.
The other thing is the caf?. All bookstores seem to have them, and I wonder how Amazon's going to provide us with a coffee or sugary beverage.
It seems to me that bookstores selling e-books to readers is something like offering free animal feed around 1910 -- bring your horse in for free food, and we'll give you a demonstration ride in a new automobile. If the horses had only known, right?
On the other hand, if bookstores did not get into the battle, someone else would sell the readers. It may simply be a part of the devolution of the American bookstore.
Libraries
What about libraries? Around Tulsa, the libraries -- and we have many -- seem to have more folks using computers than are prowling around the book aisles. Does this mean the library will devolve? If so, will it be able to loan electronic books? While libraries are great for some research, particularly local and regional, it would be tough for any library to compete with Google or Bing.
The end
It may take 20 years for the American bookstore to vanish in the sands of time and for libraries to change, but I hope not. Down the road, maybe bookstores and libraries will become caf?s with banks of large monitors, attached to ever-smaller computers, with lists of downloads and book descriptions and samples from various publishers. Maybe the caf?s can even duplicate the smell of paper and fresh printer's ink.
If you think about it, colleges and universities are slowly moving to electronic education, which ties in nicely to electronic books -- there's no real need to have a student on the campus, right? You can now earn a decent MBA online, and there's no difference, credential-wise, between online and on-campus. And, for online students, the college does not have to worry about foods, protests or sponsoring teams and government relations. It will be a brave new world, but not a very tactile one.
Broker's Bookcase
No One Would Listen -- A True Financial Thriller by Harry Markopolos (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010).
This is a good book, not a great one. Mostly, it suffers from poor editing -- about the worst I've seen from Wiley -- not the least of which is using (more than once) principle where principal is correct. Would any financial guy like Markopolos misuse that word so many times? Or did the editor use MS Word for the heavy lifting? And then there's the endless presentation of Thierry de la Villehuchet as being a man of honor, and noble to boot, both by birthright and inclination. I got the idea after the second or third iteration, and no editor worth his or her salt would have let so many descriptive repetitions creep in. But I carp.
The book reads well, and the subject matter -- how Markopolos figured out that Bernie Madoff was a crook -- makes for fascinating reading: "Madoff's unique structure gave him substantial advantages. As far as we knew at the time, the only entrance to Madoff was through an approved feeder fund. This meant that his actual investors couldn't ask him any questions, and they had to rely completely on their funds ..."
Nice, right? If you're going to be a crook, fix it up so that you are a man or woman of mystery and no one can ask questions -- that feeds into that investing mystique that attracts people like candy.
According to the author, Bernie the Crook (BTC) said he was hedging with short-term financing, using 30-day or shorter options. Markopolos figured that BTC would need from $3 billion to $65 billion, depending on the period in question, to effectively manage this type of hedge, requiring more short-term options than exited in the entire financial system.
Harry Markopolos writes that the New York Attorney General's office rigorously responds to information provided by whistleblowers, while the SEC seems to ignore them. The IRS, on the other hand, gets large sums from tax cheats due to whistleblowers and rewards them accordingly.
Despite its flaws, No One Would Listen is an important book to read.
This information is intended for financial professionals only, not the general public. This is not a solicitation to buy or sell any specific security. Mr. Hoe may have positions in the securities or other investments discussed. Evaluation copies of software and review copies of books are sometimes furnished by publishers without charge; however, Mr. Hoe only reviews books and programs he feels will be of value to LIS readers and avoids writing about books and programs he feels would be of little interest.
