The Empty Shelves

Look I love reading, but I think a big part my love for reading is that it was how I was introduced to learning and knowledge. The way we fetishize learning through reading some somewhat troubling. The window in which printing was cheap enough that normal people could afford books — but other tech hadn’t been adopted yet — is honestly decades long. It just so happens to be during the decades that most of us came of age.

Reading is great, talking is great, games are great. Learning is great. Don’t worship one at the expense of the rest

People keep good childrens' books.

They pass them along within families.

Or just leave them in their nostalgia drawer.

The free books are crap because they are the crap that people want to get rid of...no fond memories of reading time (because they are crap).

Finally, if a good childrens' book winds up on the free shelf, someone grabs it sooner rather than later.

If you list your book on Ingram Spark (as I did), you have to choose a retail price and a discount for every country they sell in. You're given the printing cost, and it's quite possible, if you do it wrong, for your book to end up with a negative profit margin in some countries. From memory, the usual discount is 55% and (I guess) if you offer the retailer less, they just don't stock it.

Of course, that assumes they'd stock your book anyway. That's why this is just a meaningless game to me.

They warn you about negative profits, of course. You fix the problem by making the "retail price" even higher. Of course, you have no idea what the bookstore is actually selling it for.

It's interesting to hear that some big publishers get around that by taking a loss on the book. I suppose they do that to get shelf space. (Maybe someone who understands book publishing better than I do can explain it?)

I wouldn't be too discouraged by the selection of books available in a supermarket. The dynamics are always going to be odd.

Online book shops seem like a boon in this direction generally though. If you're buying a book for a child's gift (which is very very good thing) then picking one up from the supermarket seems the absolute minimum you can do and it's relatively easy to get a better option.

Though even in libraries, I'm kind of amazed by how many books are by celebrities these days. Hillary Clinton has some kind of spy thriller out. I'm assuming there's some fascinating Ghost-writer and/or economics of fame and free publicity back-story to this phenomenon.

Also the mention of colouring books reminded me that I couldn't find a decent, open collection of these when looking recently. It's in a weird area where the branded items are most sought after, which then smothers the market for non-branded equivalent, but I could easily see a Wikipedia like site becoming the standard.

Someone should definately create one and then get those on demand printers to deliver custom ones.

You could make it a subscription which seems vital to any business plan these days.

Sure, there’s a David Walliams section in every chain bookshop, and we own a dozen Julia Donaldson books. But I’m very lucky to have so many options.

In the UK they are basically about giving you the basics. Decent enough fruit and veg, meat, a microwave and toaster that'll just about work, cheap homeware, etc.

Good books are in bookstores, of which London has easily hundreds and most places have at least a Waterstones.