bricks and mortar

[aamcnamara]

Today, my morning class got out early, so I walked over to the bookstore just across the street from campus. I was looking for matociquala's Chill, though not really expecting to find it. I did not find it. I approached the friendly woman at the desk, who looked it up for me in their database and said, Oh yes, we just put in our last order for the week, but we can have it for you by the middle of next week. It's this much. What's your name? Telephone number?

Just like that, next week, after I have finished my papers and exams, I will have a copy of Chill waiting for me.

So here is my question. It might be a silly question, but I am wholly serious in asking it.

Why don't more people order books through their bookstores?

Okay, yes, Amazon is helpful for small presses, for obscure books, for things which are out of print. And I get that a lot of people in rural areas, in places where there aren't any independent bookstores, etc., don't exactly have this option. That is understandable.

But I am under the impression that, a lot of the time, that is not what Amazon is used for.

Get this, O children of the 21st century: I am putting money into a local independent bookstore. It is just as handy, maybe even more so under my particular circumstances, than ordering it from Amazon or Borders or Barnes & Noble.

And? I did not even have to pay shipping.

Dear people of previous generations: what exactly is it which is so handy about ordering online? Is it just novelty? Do warehouses run out of books a lot? Did I just hit upon a book which happened to be available? What are the factors which made everyone converge suddenly on this option?

The confusion of my generation thanks you.

Comments

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

If there were independent bookstores in this town, other than used bookstores, I would spend all my book dollars there. I did so when I lived in Southern California and the Covina Bookstore was my go to place.

But in the city of Columbus, Ohio, I don't have that option. There are no independents to buy from, it is either Barnes and Noble or Amazon. So when I buy books, most of the time, I wait until I go to a con with a decent dealer's room.

Dealer's rooms are where I get the majority of my books these days. The rest I order from Amazon because I can do it at 1 am in my pjs.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If I order through a bookstore, I have to go out to a bookstore to get it. If I order it online (whether it's from Amazon or Powell's or ABE or whoever), the book comes right to my house.

I'm not rural. But it would be a 20 minute drive up to True Colors (which used to be Amazon Bookstore) or Dreamhaven, 25 to Uncle Hugo's/Uncle Edgar's or Wild Rumpus. And I can't drive. With the vertigo, I can't even take the bus by myself, and taking a cab by myself has some major drawbacks/risks about getting from the cab to the inside of wherever I'm going, never mind costing money. And in at least three of the above locations, there are difficulties for me getting around inside the store--Uncle Hugo's, for example, is nearly unnavigable for those with vertigo due to the piles of back stock nobody wants all over the floor.

With free shipping offers and discounting offers and coupons and this and that, ordering online is often no more expensive in money. But it frees me from having to say to someone else, "Please run me on this errand." It is an independence factor for me.

Also--and I don't feel as firmly on this point--when an independent bookstore consistently doesn't stock anything I want, the impetus for me to support them goes way, way down. This is less a factor with the stores I've listed, each of whom has gotten some of my money in the last two years, than with other independents I've known. What is the value to me in having a brick-and-mortar bookstore that only carries the bestsellers and special interest books for interests I don't have? Why should I put the extra time into going out to the bookstore, telling them what I want, and returning to pick it up? (Or using the phone to order and then going to pick it up--I hate the phone.) Not just any independent will do.

It's not novelty to me--I've been ordering online my entire adult life. And I don't think you've hit upon the rare case where a book was in stock in a warehouse. I do think that "the independent bookstore was right across the street and was not an undue amount of effort compared to my schedule for the week, and I already had warm fuzzy feelings about this bookstore" may be a pretty unusual combination, though.

Also, I don't like other people. I mean, I loved my bookstore clerk at The Other Change of Hobbit, when we still lived out there and he was still employed there, before he got fired for haranguing people who bought the new Orson Scott Card book. But other than him, I have at best found it to be neutral to have to put my book requests through other live human beings and make sure they were looking under the right thing and spelling it correctly, and often it's worse than neutral for me.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I just picked up the three new SF mmpbs at the top of my to-read pile: three authors, three publishers, three subgenres.

Two of them had ads in the back.

None of the ads was an order form.

Go check the books from before the late '90s. Almost all the mmpbs have order forms in the back for getting those books directly from the publisher. If ordering books directly from an independent bookstore was easy for many/most people in the pre-Amazon days, I don't think you'd have seen as much of that because now that it is easy, the publishers have dispensed with it. There are ads, but not order forms. To my way of thinking, if the order forms were making them money, they'd have kept up with them, and the order forms would not have been making them money if it had been as easy as you're thinking to just go through a local bookstore.

I may be missing some factor for why people stopped ordering directly from the publisher, but I think it was their last resort. Certainly the person I know who did the most direct-ordering seems to have stopped when he moved to a location where he could actually get what he wanted in stores.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

"Go check the books from before the late '90s. Almost all the mmpbs have order forms in the back for getting those books directly from the publisher."

I'd totally forgotten those! :) I'm pretty sure I never used them though. I think the only books my fmaily ever ordered pre-internet were the Valu-Tales.

[keyan-bowes.livejournal.com]

I buy books at the local independent. I buy books at the local Borders. I buy books on Amazon. I even buy books at the $1 donation shelf in a local coffee-house. (Why don't more coffeehouses have more of those?) I buy way too many books.

What I get at bookshops is instant gratification. If I'm going to wait, it might as well come to my door, rather than needing another trip to the store. Also, on Amazon I can buy secondhand, from a whole bunch of little stores, and I can buy titles I literally cannot find elsewhere. And I can shop at 2 a.m. (which I sometimes do).

I would hate bookshops to close. But I have to admit Amazon really does offer a Better Mousetrap. And I'm afraid I'm one of the mice.

[comingin2day.livejournal.com]

it is easier to have it shipped to my house, I am short on time, and don't need the added expense for gas. time equals money in some circumstances.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

Well, as far as going to independent rather than any old brick and mortar - you have to know where they are. And as mrissa says, it helps if they generally stock what you are looking for.

The Odyssey is super close by to where you live and while it may not have Chill or a lot of other scifi/fantasy, it has a decent generalized selection. Whereas the only indie bookstore that I'm aware of (that is anywhere near me and isn't exclusively a used bookstore) is the Frugal Frigate, which is 1/2 hour drive away and specializes in children's books.

Also, I think other two big factors (in terms of ppl forming habits) are that, back before Amazon and stuff:

1) It wasn't as easy for the indie's to order stuff either. The internet stuff that makes it easier for us to order online also makes it easier for brick and mortar stores to place online orders. Their ability to get Chill to you so quickly is related to the reason why Amazon can as well. I think the one time I looked into ordering something through a brick and mortar back in the dark ages before the internets, the turnout was a month or longer. (but I'll also admit that's a vaguish memory) So, ppl never formed the habit of doing that, and then when the internets came along we formed the habit of skipping the brick and mortar altogether.

2) It was harder to browse for titles before the internets. A lot of what I use amazon for is research. (What are ppl saying about this cookie sheet? Does it brown the cookies well? Warp easily? Is it likely to come scratched?) There was a period of time where I came close to not reading any scifi/fantasy altogether because I'd exhausted most of the kid/teenlit scifi/fantasy* and pretty much the only recommendations I got were for stuff like Piers Anthony novels, which I got sick of pretty quickly. For whatever reason, no one around me had ever heard of Tamora Pierce, Terri Windling, etc., and I'm not even sure the bookstores around me stocked them (at least not the extent to which they do now) - and so I never heard about/read them either.

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

There is a very nice independent bookstore about 40 minutes away in Delaware. I've done readings and signings there, and I even have a story in a recent anthology they published to commemorate 30 years in business.

But I rarely shop there.

Partly, because it's 40 minutes away. Partly because, while the owner would give me a discount, it's smaller than what I would get ordering from Amazon.

Since it's in Delaware, there's no sales tax, which is also the case with Amazon (which is a plus).

But I also like the delight of going out my mailbox and finding books have arrived. Seriously. It's like it's my birthday a couple times each month.

Probably the biggest consideration is cost. I have X amount of money to spend, and there are more books than X will cover. So, taking advantage of the better prices stretches it a bit further, which usually means not shopping at the independents.

Mind you, I also buy quite a few used books, and there the internet (and places like Abebooks.com) is a godsend, allowing me to search consortia of independent bookstores.

So, when it comes to used books, I'm all over the independent sellers. But for the new stuff, not so much.

[stfg.livejournal.com]

I live in Norwalk, Ohio, a town of 15,000 people which is largely blue-collar. There is no bookstore in town. 2 1/2 years ago, a Borders got built in Sandusky, which is a 25 minute drive away. It replaced a Walden Books. Prior to that, the nearest decent-sized bookstore was a 50 minute drive to a Borders or Barnes and Noble in Cleveland, Toledo or Mansfield. There is a college bookstore in Oberlin that is owned by B&N about 30 minutes away, but it has a pretty limited SFF selection. The nearest independent bookstores I know of are Joseph Beth on the east side of Cleveland, about a 90 minute drive, and The Book Loft in Columbus, a 2 hour drive. Amazon has been a godsend.

[ktsparrow.livejournal.com]

I only shop local for my books. If I buy online, for the rare one's, it's through Powell's. Amazon is not good for authors or local communities. Powell's is a great hub in Portland, why not support it? Also, it's interesting how the built environment of the suburbs and some cities stops many people from having walking access to a bookstore. Interesting in the bad way.

[vcmw]

It depends on the bookstore. Several times I ordered nonfiction through the Common Good Books store rather than off the web.

In Chicago, the only new independent bookstore near me made a snobby point about not stocking romance novels. Since I read a lot of romance novels, it would never occur to me to make an effort to give that store my money for books they didn't stock. In general, I make the effort to go physically to places like Dreamhaven - they have new books I want and wouldn't think to order from independent presses.

Or when I lived in Manchester I would order books from Northshire Bookstore (which you would love, I think). I don't order books online very often (2 or 3 times a year), but when I do it's for one of two reasons: the book is a hardcover that won't be discounted in stores, is discounted deeply on Amazon, and would be otherwise out of my budget, or else the book is of a type that my local bookstore has deliberately chosen not to stock, and thus I have no desire to send them my money (and have already had conversations with the staff there about "why don't you stock X" and had them say "because we don't want to" so I know that ordering it won't change their mind).

I rarely order books because there are so many more books I want to read in stock than there are books I can afford anyway.