Should Bookstores Charge for Browsing?

Torgo said:

and perhaps the shoe shops she cites have some other reason to ration demand, like limited availability of hot fashion items.

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Is this actually happening on any scale? So far, I've only found one Australian shoe shop doing this, and an American sports shoe place. It doesn't appear to be a widespread phenomenon.

Most stores understand that exposure creates demand, and demand creates income. You would have to have more demand than you could supply to throw any of that away.

Priene said:

Is this actually happening on any scale? So far, I've only found one Australian shoe shop doing this, and an American sports shoe place. It doesn't appear to be a widespread phenomenon.

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It's going to have to be really niche and linked to some reason to throttle demand, like limited availability or something. Not a high-street model of the future.

Well, I'm one of the customers that bookstores must hate. I do feel sort of bad about it.

Once or twice a month, I go to a bookstore (Chapters/Indigo) to browse. Then I go home and buy e-books, usually through Sony, or borrow e-books from the library. It's not like I never buy books at the bookstore. But it's pretty rare, and usually limited to gifts and travel books. I never ask for help unless I'm planning to buy. Occasionally I get a tea at the Starbucks in the bookstore.

I don't even find a great deal of books this way, but I like the experience of going to a bookstore. However, I wouldn't pay for it, and I don't see that model being successful.

TTCleveland said:

Seems like it would have the exact opposite effect, and make people more likely to buy ebooks.

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I totally agree with this. I do love browsing but I should probably visit the library more often anyway. If I had to pay B&N to look around, that would be it for me.

missesdash said:

They should put all the full books in the back and fill the shelves with "chapter previews" just like e-book retailers do.

Of course that might be more expensive *shrug*

I am sad to see bookstores go, but I don't think anything will save them at this point.

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I refuse to accept this. I'm looking for ways for brick and mortar shops to evolve into symbiosis with online business, and I believe that the development of social aspects of shopping, such as browsing and hanging out, along with offering specialty, book-related services such as print/binding on demand, will play into that.

I do think the idea of sample sections is worth experimenting with. Or maybe encourage online browsing in the cafe section with the immediate satisfaction of buying the books you finally want right there in the store.

regdog said:

Dumb idea. I've gone to bookstores wanting one book, browsed and left with an armload of books.

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That's my life story, too.

LJD said:

Well, I'm one of the customers that bookstores must hate. I do feel sort of bad about it.

Once or twice a month, I go to a bookstore (Chapters/Indigo) to browse. Then I go home and buy e-books, usually through Sony, or borrow e-books from the library. It's not like I never buy books at the bookstore. But it's pretty rare, and usually limited to gifts and travel books. I never ask for help unless I'm planning to buy. Occasionally I get a tea at the Starbucks in the bookstore.

I don't even find a great deal of books this way, but I like the experience of going to a bookstore. However, I wouldn't pay for it, and I don't see that model being successful.

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I do the exact opposite. I so much prefer buying books in person and getting my purchases immediately, that I use Amazon to browse and then go to my favorite shops to buy. While at the shops, I also browse and usually pick up one or more other titles on impulse.

BN used to have a weekly free e-book that would entice quite a few customers to make the drive to the actual store. You had to be on their wifi to download it. I'm not sure if they do this anymore, but this seems like a much better way to beef up sales than to charge to get in the door, particularly when you can walk into your local library for free.

I also think that e-book providers have shot themselves in the foot by not allowing widespread sharing. When I was 19, my bestie loaned me his copy of Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. Since that moment, I have purchased every single novel, children's book, or short story collection that Gaiman has published. I, then loaned a Gaiman book to another friend, who became a fan and purchased many books. The publishers and the author gained hundreds of dollars through these two acts of lending. In this world of e-book restrictions, Nook owners can lend ONE time and I'm not sure about other formats. Rubbish. Total rubbish.

Sarita said:

I also think that e-book providers have shot themselves in the foot by not allowing widespread sharing. When I was 19, my bestie loaned me his copy of Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. Since that moment, I have purchased every single novel, children's book, or short story collection that Gaiman has published. I, then loaned a Gaiman book to another friend, who became a fan and purchased many books. The publishers and the author gained hundreds of dollars through these two acts of lending. In this world of e-book restrictions, Nook owners can lend ONE time and I'm not sure about other formats. Rubbish. Total rubbish.

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Yes; I recently saw Hachette's boss arguing that we needed DRM not to prevent piracy but to 'deter casual sharing', which makes no sense to me on a practical level at all.

A friend lent me the first of Kathy Reich's Bones books and now I'm working my way through the series, buying them one by one on my kindle. Same happened with Phil Rickman's Merrily series - borrowed one, bought the rest which is... fourteen? books. Discouraging the lending born of enthusiasm for an author is nuts.

Torgo said:

Yes; I recently saw Hachette's boss arguing that we needed DRM not to prevent piracy but to 'deter casual sharing', which makes no sense to me on a practical level at all.

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Does this person actually read for pleasure? Have they ever been lent a book by a friend?
I suspect that they may not have had a long career in selling books, rather they were brought in from another corproate environment .

waylander said:

Does this person actually read for pleasure? Have they ever been lent a book by a friend?
I suspect that they may not have had a long career in selling books, rather they were brought in from another corproate environment .

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No, they're publishing through and through. Old school publishers are rarely tech-savvy, and often easily bamboozled by snake oil merchants.

Remind me not to submit anything to HarperCollins. It is a silly place.

ETA: and I've never seen any shoes stores that charge to try on shoes. Maybe she had gone to a bowling alley.

Priene said:

Is this actually happening on any scale? So far, I've only found one Australian shoe shop doing this, and an American sports shoe place. It doesn't appear to be a widespread phenomenon.

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I have the feeling that the kind of shoe store that would charge to try on shoes is a little out of my league, price-wise.

Maybe this is the wave of the future.

See, instead of thinking of it as a "store" where people might be expected to purchase books, imagine it as a "museum", charging admission for the experience of seeing a physical book. Then people can exit through the gift shop and buy souvenir copies of their favorite exhibits.

... with amazon.com, bookstores have become irrelevant.
Bookstores rarely have the books I want, anyway.
They cater to the mainstream far too much.
So I wouldn't really miss them.

The aren't irrelevant to me. I buy a book in a physical store about once a week.

... was only speaking from my own vantage point.
I'm not a typical reader, by any means.
The industry would probably go broke,
in no time flat, if they catered to me.

Ken said:

... with amazon.com, bookstores have become irrelevant.
Bookstores rarely have the books I want, anyway.
They cater to the mainstream far too much.
So I wouldn't really miss them.

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On the other hand, if it weren't for bookstores, how would anyone know what the mainstream was? I think people underestimate the extent of the cultural and economic structures that have grown up around the detail of the way books are bought and sold.

Amazon implies not only a different book trade, but a different literature. That's both interesting and scary.

I can understand bookstore owners getting frustrated if people use their shop as a catalogue and then go on line to buy it on amazon.

I work in a fashion store, and you wouldn't believe the number of people who try something on, take a picture with it for facebook, don't buy a single thing and usually leave a mess to boot.

But no store can ever make enough money by asking those people to pay for browsing to make up for the loss of customers that browse and buy and who won't come again if they have to pay for the former too.

I wish managers and CEO's would stop thinking they have re-invented warm water by finding something yet again for which they can charge customers.

Torgo said:

On the other hand, if it weren't for bookstores, how would anyone know what the mainstream was? I think people underestimate the extent of the cultural and economic structures that have grown up around the detail of the way books are bought and sold.

Amazon implies not only a different book trade, but a different literature. That's both interesting and scary.

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... true. You can get a sense of things by reviews and rankings, but that's not really comparable to the feel bookstores afford. Personally, I just love the range of selection on amazon. Many of the books and authors are no where to be found in bookstores. And that includes a lot of real gems.

missesdash said:

They should put all the full books in the back and fill the shelves with "chapter previews" just like e-book retailers do.

Of course that might be more expensive *shrug*

I am sad to see bookstores go, but I don't think anything will save them at this point.

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Interesting - with just chapter previews, there'd be a lot more titles on the shelves, but the spines would be really skinny. If books truly become print-on-demand, I could see something like this happening. Push a button that commits you to buying a book, and you can keep browsing while it gets printed and bound.

Celia Cyanide said:

I work in a DVD rental store (yes, they still exist) and we have a small subculture of people who come in with lists and browse and ask questions and then leave. They go home and add the movies to their netflix queue. We allow them to do it, but if we figure out what they're doing, we won't spend too much time talking to them and recommending movies. They're taking advantage of our staff's extensive movie knowledge, but they're still not shopping at our store.

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Oh! I can see where this could change recommendations:

You'd like to see a sci-fi flick? You should go for "Plan Nine from Outer Space," it's a true classic!

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Maybe after that they'll NEVER come back again...

Ken said:

... true. You can get a sense of things by reviews and rankings, but that's not really comparable to the feel bookstores afford. Personally, I just love the range of selection on amazon. Many of the books and authors are no where to be found in bookstores. And that includes a lot of real gems.

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Yeah. I mean, I don't really care that much about Waterstones - it won't really smite me to the heart if it goes - but I really miss the rest of the ecosystem. I used to haunt Charing Cross Road - the big bookshops like Foyles and Dillons and Blackwells, but really the second-hand and antiquarian ones. My absolute favourite was Murder One, which had mixed new and second-hand books in three genres, crime, SF and romance. What was great about it the new book selection was that it was curated essentially (well, 2/3) for me - my taste used to line up pretty well with what was on offer (chicken/egg?) But most of all, it was about the boxes of old paperbacks with lurid covers, many of which are on my shelves now. There's something very interesting about the way they were selected and displayed that I long to be able to replicate in some way digitally.

*thinks*

Excuse me for a moment.

You'd like to see a sci-fi flick? You should go for "Plan Nine from Outer Space," it's a true classic!

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It is a classic...just not the sort of classic most are looking for...

Bookstores could charge for entrance if they combine performance art with bookselling. Y'know, fire eaters, burlesque, hypnotism, knife-throwers...depending on what book needs promoting.

There's a simple test of the viability of charging to browse books.
If charging for browsing really worked, ie people bought books regardless and were okay with paying to browse books and look for staff recommendations and suggestions, Amazon would be doing it.
You'd have to tog in to see anything beyond their homepage, and if you didn't purchase anything by the end of the day/time you logged out, your account would be charged.
Simple, and a real killer for those of us who browse Amazon and shop live.