“Bricks and Mortar” Stores Seek Equality

Amazon and other online booksellers may lose one of it’s key “edges” as booksellers associations and lobbyists attempt to neutralize a tax advantage. For nearly a decade “land based” retailers have fought for equality in taxation, arguing that Amazon and other etailers can undercut them unfairly by not charging tax in states where they have no operations.

Amazon, who has successfully fought off such challenges, has recently hired the lobby firm Cauthern Forbes & Williams as the land-based retailers seem to have succeeded in taking a step towards perceived fairness with the Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act, legistlation which would require e-commerce companies to collect sales tax even in states where they have no presence.  

Audio Book Sales continue to grow with some interesting flips in statistics. Unlike printed books, the majority of audiobooks sold are fiction, at 58%, representing $505 million in sales in 2005 of the total $871 million. Audio Book listeners tend to favor physical stores and CDs with 63% buying in land stores, and 74% buying CDs.

Google’s ongoing debate with the Author’s Guild and other author’s groups has not slowed down Window’s Live Book Search. There can be no doubt Google Book Search, still dubbed a beta, has created controversy. Large author groups have been very vocal about perceived copyright infringement, and Google has been fairly sensitive to the issue, fighting back with a not-too-subtle PR push.

Clearly, Windows would not jump into the battle if Google’s powerful book excerpt search engine was not working. A quick survey of authors by Films and Books at two writer’s groups indicates more than 60% support for Google.

“This is not very different from a consumer browsing a chapter in a book store,” one author wrote, asking anonymity due to the controversial nature of the service.

Google and Microsoft both are quick to point out that copying and printing is disabled on their services. Author’s are fast to shoot back with “nothing prevents a screen grab.”

A test search by Films and Books on the Thomas Harris bestseller Silence of the Lambs, only turned up referencesin non fiction books to the novel, with no actual excerpts of the novel. Other bestseller pages were notably absent.

Amazon also provides a similar service on their site, conceptually designed to mimic in-store book shoppers who browse chapters.

Both services scan entire books and provide author-controlled access to between five and twenty percent of the book based on a keyword or title search. They often provide links to online sellers of these books.

Links

Google Book Search
Windows Live Book Search

 Pundits claim the new Sony Reader is “no ipod” (read as a “category killer”) or complain about lack of backlighting (might have something to do with Sony’s proprietary and wonderful virtual paper.) But however you feel about devices, paying money for devices or being forced to buy only one format of e-book, there can be no doubt the Sony Reader is the best device to date, and the one to which all others will be measured.

 With a handy size, five inches by seven, slightly smaller than a trade paperback, and weighting it at only nine ounces, this is a hand friendly device. The virtual paper, Sony calls it E-Ink, really does emulate a real paper book. Aside from the navigation difference, pushing buttons rather than flipping ages, you could easily lose yourself in a book and forget you are reading on a device.

 Will Sony’s marketing muscle and innovations be enough? For success, clearly, but as a killer of “real books,” clearly not. Many readers crave the experience and feel of real paper and a real book. But for travellers, technophiles and ipod fans, this is a delightful evolution. At $350, even with slightly lowered list prices for original book titles, this is never going to be pereived as a lower cost overall versus books. Support, warranties and the fear of another defunct reader with books no longer supported might  hold back some (especially past e-Rocket owners).

 The Sony Reader is the best Ebook, without any doubt. The question becomes more one of “do you read or do you e-read?” Or both. But, if you do “e-read” this is the classiest and best of breed.

Nonfiction
Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone
Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present
Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Fiction
Mark Z. Danielewski, Only Revolutions
Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country
Richard Powers, The Echo Maker
Dana Spiotta, Eat the Document
Jess Walter, The Zero