Computer books

[Paul King]

Much of what you say is rather interesting and worthwhile. 

Still, when large businesses are allowed to compete laissez-faire against 
smaller businesses, not only do smaller businesses lose, but the consumer loses 
as well. Really, even the larger businesses can be said to lose if you consider 
that their own quality of service suffers without competition. We all would 
like to say that competition between businesses is in all our interests and 
should be maintained, but this rule doesn't seem to apply to bookstores.

But I agree that we should also consider the dotcom implosion of 2000. That 
influenced everything, and was probably another factor in Canada Computer Books 
going out of business. 

Is there a chance that you will be able to re-sell you book to another 
publisher?

Paul

On 16 Jan 2005 at 19:40, Christopher Browne wrote:

> > You can argue that the big bookstores (which were carrying many of the
> > same titles at that time) put them out of business, but even so, it's
> > evidently not hugely profitable.
> 
> I'd suggest stepping back a little further.
> 
> Don't just blame the "big bookstores;" the problem is also that the
> _publishers_ haven't been producing much Good Stuff for the last few
> years.
> 
> Back in 2002, I watched Wrox Press _implode_ just as a book I had worked
> on should have started seeing royalties.  The problem was that they got
> _way_ overambitious on pushing books on topics of dubious merit at a
> time when the IT industry was imploding, thereby chopping away at
> potential market.
> 
> They wound up killing themselves by pushing way too many questionable
> titles through the inventory pipelines into the bookstores.  I did some
> technical reviewing, and saw stuff I considered absolute crud.  (I'm
> quite sure I was right, too.  Amazon.com reviews were somewhat more
> polite than I was...)
> 
> They may have been the worst offender, but looking at publisher
> catalogues, it has been rough for everyone.
> 
> The one publisher I see doing really interesting stuff now is APress,
> who are assortedly publishing some of the Lisp stuff that O'Reilly
> decided they didn't want to have anything to do with, as well as things
> like the book on zsh and Bash (which is rather good).  That "interesting
> stuff" isn't being stocked by Chapters, but I don't imagine it would
> have been by much of anyone else.  These titles _are_ available mail
> order through any of the big names.
> 
> I would not blame this all on Chapters; the diversity of titles has
> fallen both at the publisher's level and at retailers at large.  In the
> US, there's still competition what with Barnes & Noble and Borders, and
> in a recent visit, I verified that the computer section at Borders which
> was traditionally pretty good has fallen way down.  Still ahead of B&N,
> but way poorer than in say 1998.
> 
> Online selling provides an outlet for "obscure titles" that it doesn't
> make sense for the likes of Chapters, B&N, and Borders to push through
> their stocking processes.
> 
> For instance, with that zsh book, if 25 crates with 50 copies each sit
> in a warehouse in Illinois, to be "fulfilled" by Amazon, they only need
> _one_ inventory entry to handle returns if less than 1250 are sold,
> whereas if they sent 3 copies to each of 400 stores, there's WAY more
> paperwork and shipping to be done because it's almost certain that 3
> won't be the right number at most locations.
> --
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=========================================================
Paul King            http://alimentarus.net
"Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are captains 
of our fate and masters of our soul" -- Unknown


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