Micro-Indies: an online version of “Cheers”?
Joe Wikert is General Manager/Publisher at O’Reilly Media Group. Joe’s blog, Publishing 2020, is on my list of “mandatory reading.” Joe writes about the future of books and publishing, and because O’Reilly deals mainly in technical books, his take is often different than that of traditional trade publishers.
In a recent post titled “Revenge of the Independents,” Joe shares his vision of what the future of bookselling might look like. Riffing off a post from David Pleach’s blog , Joe asks:
…we’d all love to go to a store that’s the equivalent of “Cheers”, where everybody knows your name. You don’t get that feeling at a big brick-and-mortar store today, so could the indies make a come-back?
Wikert does not see huge expansion in retail storefronts, but rather posits an online future of what he calls “micro-indies.” He says:
Could I be lured away from Amazon’s low prices to a micro-indie site that has more of a personal feel, treats me like a human and not a credit card number, enables me to chat with fellow customers, chat about last night’s game, razz the other teams fans, etc.? Yeah, that formula could easily change my buying habits.
Some traditional brick and mortar stores have started to dip their toes in the microsite waters. For instance, The Bookloft of Great Barrington, MA has a microsite specializing in books about The Berkshires, at http://www.berkshirebooks.com. A site like this could be expanded to include blog posts from the travel/tourism community, reviews of not only books, but hotels and attractions, commentary from area naturalists and historians, and book recommendations from area residents.
Of course, Wikert’s view of the future of bookselling is just one version, but it’s worth reading and pondering. What do you think?
Note: I’ve edited this post to correct an error: O’Reilly Media Group is independent, and not a division of Wiley. My apologies to all.
David Leach says:
April 17th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Ann, I think you and Joe are doing an excellent job of unpacking my post on Tribal Buying. Your example of berkshirebooks.com with your additions is exactly where I see it going. However, I think when done well, the average person won’t recognize this kind of micro-indie site–or store–as a “book” store per se. It’s a wraparound resource store of some kind. Maybe I need to come up with a name for them–maybe something as simple as Tribal Stores.
BTW–If berkshirebooks.com added James Taylor’s complete catalog and could tell you how to get to his house (along with other local secrets), you’d have the kind of place where the “friends” you’ve made from other parts of the world (via the internet) would definitely stop by and say Hi.
Fran Toolan says:
April 17th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I see independent bookstores as mirrors of the tastes of their local community. But, for many, that “community” is only the “community of their best customers” – not their local geographic community. How much of an online presence an independent bookstore needs, and how they approach e-books and other technologies should reflect what their geographic community wants/needs.
Mark Bloomfield says:
April 17th, 2009 at 10:47 am
The third way – the ‘tribal stores’ or, if you will, communities of people with shared passions and interests will collect around those very topics for which they share a passion. There will be book lovers who may enjoy collections of books, but more frequently we’ll see books as part of a wider service/product offering to these self forming communities.
Richard Nash says:
April 17th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I just posted on David’s site, btu though I should repost here too (Hi, Anne!):
Two thoughts: the first is that independent publishers have been developing consumer level brands for a period of time. One I owned and ran for seven years, Soft Skull Press, was quite successful in that regard, I felt; ditto presses like Chelsea Green, Akashic Books, Melville House, Seven Stories, Small Beer… One of the bets things ever said about Soft Skull was in the comments section of a blog post at The Guardian a few years ago, the topic being, What Books Get You Laid. One commenter: “Anything by Soft Skull Press.” That’s a tribe, methinks.
Second thought. Some book publishing/selling is local/regional, as opposed to thematic. So booksellers can indeed become publishers, de facto community centers, who could cluster reading groups, writing groups, self-publishing services, events, etc. Some tribes can be geographically defined… [And, as Fran suggests, that can certainly have an online analog]
Bookavore says:
April 17th, 2009 at 11:10 am
I just discovered Publishing 2020 a few days ago and have had it open on my laptop to think about over and over. From the bookseller perspective, I’d like to see both happening at the same time. In other words, I think physical stores serve a valuable purpose in their communities, and I think for at least awhile longer now, people will continue to enjoy browsing in a real store. If you don’t follow book blogs or writers online, the sheer number of books available to buy can be very overwhelming. I’ve had many customers tell me that they appreciate that WORD is small and that we’ve made careful selections, because it makes it more fun to shop for books. But that experience is something we can put online, too, and that we’re working on.
So what I’d like to see, as a young bookseller who’d like to keep her career, is a world in which indies keep their physical locations, but expand their online visibility by just being who they are in person, online. One of the best arguments for the existence for Amazon is that it gets books to people who have no bookstores around them. I think a lot of those people might, if they had the experience, prefer to buy those books from a bookstore that has a distinct personality and selection. Basically, I think independent bookstores can succeed if they make their online presence a mirror of their physical presence. WORD has a lot of small presses (basically every press in Richard’s comment is well-shopped here), a lot of Murakami, a lot of strange cookbooks, a lot of board books, a lot of hand-printed stationery–and I don’t think the Greenpoint/Williamsburg/greater Brooklyn area is the only place where people who want our selection live. I think they’re everywhere, and if we can do a good job making our online presence like the store I’m sitting in right now, we will do well.
Hope this is coherent, the reason I haven’t posted about it on my blog yet is a lot of these thoughts are still bouncing around my brain and haven’t settled yet.