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Comment by kasey_junk | Hacker News Reader

The book industry (much like many content industries) has always been hit driven. The issue this article is bringing up is the way they diversified that a little and found new hits was via old fashioned on the ground bookstores.

We now have pretty empirical proof that the algorithm driven sales via online and big retail sales channels make the industry more hit driven and less diverse.

The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback? After a 20 year decline the stores had stabilized in recent years but the pandemic wrecked them. Too soon to tell but I’m pessimistic for their future, which makes me worry about publishing long term.

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> The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback?

No. The tax break went on for too long, and that online bookstore became a global near-monopoly on all physical items the size of a coffee table or smaller. Before that, traditional bookstores had already been slammed by grocery-store sized bestseller warehouse chains - the more than a decade long state subsidy to internet retailers actually killed those.

Any stats to back that up?

I’m not the commentor and I’m skeptical of that claim too.

Here is the place where you wanna go to get information about the industry: https://www.bookweb.org. You might could dig enough to find answers to all the claims in this thread.

Even if everyone's prices were MSRP (which they aren't), why pay ~10% more for an item at a local store who has to pay sales tax when I can just order it and have it brought to my door for a lower price?

A lot of Amazon's growth (and really any internet retailer) was because of inefficiencies they worked out of the merchandising process, but a lot of it was stuff like not paying sales tax if they didn't have a physical presence in the state which gave them an unfair advantage IMO. That benefit is disappearing as state's are starting to realize the damage to their tax base (FL amazingly being one of those even though we've paid Amazon sales tax for a while since they have a large presence here), but the damage has been done already in a lot of areas.

Amazon has collected sales tax since South Dakota v. Wayfair.

This was in 2017-2018.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf

And in some states prior to that.

> but a lot of it was stuff like not paying sales tax if they didn't have a physical presence in the state

Amazon collects sales tax in every jurisdiction outside the USA, yet still had incredible growth. It's not really about prices ( a new book I want is £7 cheaper on ebay ) but convenience.

Which claim? The near-monopoly on all items was obvious hyperbole. The destruction of local bookstores by Books-A-Million, Borders, and Barnes and Noble is well-documented.

Big local stores that sold books at a discount hurt small indies. Those big local stores were driven out of business by the big chains. And those chains have largely been put out of business by Amazon.

I'm confident that you won't find any evidence to contradict that.

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/How-Amazon-factor-ki...

I don't think it is obvious hyperbole, most of the people I know seem to think Amazon is in control of most of retail. Even the US gov seems to think so too. I hate that my local book stores are dying. But they were way more expensive, it's only recently here in the UK that super markets could start discounting books (I think I read that right a few years back). Most of what Amazon gets accused of, is being anti competitive. I don't think they lack competition at all, I think their competitors just want protection from real competition and hence they lobby government.

Why just the size of a coffee table and smaller? I bought a massage chair with 2 day delivery from there. And a lot of my larger furniture.

I was trying to be conservative, but they also own Wayfair.

Amazon does not own Wayfair

Don't know where I got that idea from.

Yeah especially since Wayfair is a publicly traded company

I’m suspicious that unique content is something that consumers intrinsically value. While the first round of game of thrones is fun, the 5th clone gets pretty old.

The question is how do we algorithmically boost unique content without bringing along junk content.

This beats GoT

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1514753/

The book industry was not hit driven and it which was more profitable in the early 1960s when the book industry was owned by people who were good at publishing.

By the mid-1960's every petroleum and electronics conglomerate had capital that it couldn't put back in its own business, so they started buying other businesses, and publishers were a popular target.

Once the publishers were controlled by people who were motivated by money they tried to make more of it but in the process profitability dropped, sometimes below zero.

Here is a thesis that refutes that pretty common narrative https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

Particularly interesting to me is that a) American publishing early on consisted mostly of reprinting foreign hits due to lax copyright b) the 1920s golden age was largely accounted to by macroeconomic trends c) in the 40s publishers got by printing hits for the overseas military and d) even the “modern” publishing industry born in the 50s was subsidized by commercial hits.

You are attributing profitability to the industry being "owned by people who were good at publishing" rather than a large variety of things like a rapid and massive increase in the entertainment options available to the average person.

Most people do not read for pleasure often. Those who do will most often read hits. Those who read outside of that are a very small portion of the population.

Brick and mortar bookstores I’ve seen that have done well usually have something to keep patrons coming in the door regularly, like live events for the community or a cafe that sells coffee and snacks to consume while leafing through a book.

Or they diversify into other fields like stationery where people actually prefer buying them in person sometimes.

A related read to your question: https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/opening-smal...

> The question now is can brick and mortar stores comeback?

Some never stopped. Powell's (physical) bookstore in Portland is bigger than most city libraries I've been in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell%27s_Books

> but the pandemic wrecked them

Everything I've read indicates bookstores have done phenomenally well during the pandemic

From TFA:

> Bookstore sales fell nearly 30 percent in 2020, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

It wasn't totally clear to me if those were all physical purchases or not. However, it would be shocking if in-store sales weren't markedly down. I basically haven't been in a store casually to browse for over a year and I doubt that's unusual.

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