Computer books

[Christopher Browne]

> 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.

Rules "never seem to apply" when people don't want them to.

Large businesses have a Big Problem when they compete with smaller
business, namely that smaller businesses can make decisions in a WAY
more agile fashion.

Big businesses have hide-bound hierarchy that make it particularly
difficult to make technically-based decisions.  

Instead of saying "Here's some new condition that changes how we should
do things.  OK, no problem, policy changed!"

The big business has to get approvals coming from the top, and it can
take weeks to get them past the lawyers.

There are cases where large businesses can get compelling economies of
scale that overcome this lack of agility, and that may be the case for
bookstores.  But it's important not to forget that business cycles take
place for many reasons, not just one.

If, as seems to be the direction, Chapters turns increasingly into a
gift store, which, I should point out, would provide _greatly_ larger
markups to the store than they get on books, that will leave an opening
for some other player to enter the market.  Amazon.ca is kind of such a
player.

> 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.

I suspect that we'll see the book industry change further, likely
towards more "mail order" activity.

That is liable to go hand in hand with a "dumbing down" the retail store
market.  You can already see it somewhat with Cole's locations where
they have about 2 shelves per topic that hold the present set of
"bestsellers" and little else.  There's a US chain that I have seen in
airports which is little more than a kiosk where, the "fiction section"
is a set of about 25 "bestsellers," the nonfiction section consists of
the "hot" business books of the month

Were I seeing it now, one of the stacks would doubtless consist of the
~4 quasi-popular titles surrounding _The Da Vinci Code_.  There would be
something by Tom Clancy, something by Robert Ludlum (or perhaps a Robert
Ludlum(tm) book written by anonymous ghostwriters), an Anne Rice vampire
book, The Life of Pi, and about 20 others, because they can get 80% of
the sales of a "real" bookstore out of just selling those ones.

This is not a particularly positive sign for the publishing of important
works.  Importance is not the same as popularity.

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

Wiley bought the rights to many of the copyrights including my work;
they sent out an inquiry a few months back trying to figure out interest
in a reissuance.  I kind of suspect it won't happen, as the SOAP
protocol (what the book was about) turned out to be about as much of a
flash in the pan as I expected...
--
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I was just  wondering if the Chinese are busy trying  to deal with the
"Year Of The Dragon" bug.
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