On Saving Indie Bookstores
Lisa Lutz wants to save the LA Mystery Bookstore. That’s cool. If they want to do this right though, they’ll have to rethink the value proposition.
These guys get put in the worst position. The big authors (who aren’t corporate identities) like to support them, but have to go to the big publishing houses to get compensate for their work, which is to the detriment of the indie stores they like. Small-time authors can’t generate the interest required to fund and run a storefront.
An independent bookstore can’t just be a smaller Borders/Barnes and Nobles. It’s not news that model can’t compete with Amazon’s tax-free long tail. So the value has to be provided in another way.
- Services. This varies from consumer: – speaking gigs, book groups etc – to producer: peer to peer editing, and even to publishing (via any number of the JIT printing services). The ratio of consumer to producer depends on how much of an author cooperative this is vs how much of a pet project to keep an artifact around.
- Niche. Curation is the key service here. Access to authors that haven’t made it yet, but have positive reputation among their peers. A particular genre (like mystery novels a la this particular instance). Books that don’t suck. Books that aren’t corporate but can compete. Accompanying film, music, education efforts.
In the simplest of terms, that’s what it’s going to take. A parallel publishing process that can outpace the system we have today. Anything else is just delaying the inevitable.
Sidenote: There’s a venture to be had that packages this value (these niche specific services in a box, from consumer group creation to editing, typesetting, etc) and takes it from indie store to indie store, connecting them when necessary. That’s going to be the publisher of tomorrow.
-Shlok
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