ENTRIES TAGGED "retailers"

TOC Recommended Reading

Transforming American Newspapers (Part 1) (Vin Crosby, Digital Deliverance) Contrary to myopia of many newspaper executives, advertisers aren't newspapers' primary customers. Although advertising revenues may be sunshine for newspaper executives, the roots of their business are readers. A newspaper with readers will attract advertisers but a newspaper without readers will not. Readers ultimately support and sustain the newspaper business. (Via…

BookTour and IndieBound Make Author Events Hyper-Local

BookTour, which provides author-generated pages and a listing of author tour events, has integrated their database with IndieBound. This is an interesting model, which obviously could expand in its breadth. From the BookTour blog: … the trouble is neighborhood bookstores are all different (that's what makes them great). That made it hard to dump all their data into our…

News Roundup: The Crowdsourced Cat Book, Infinite Permutations of the Digital Book, EBay vs. Amazon (Round 2)

The Crowdsourced Cat Book Amazing but True Cat Stories is a 38-page coffee table book born from the combined efforts of Mechanical Turk contributors. The creator/editor of the book, Björn Hartmann, describes the genesis of the project on his blog: The idea for this book was born in Terminal A at Washington Dulles, where I was stranded for some hours…

EBay Wants You to Buy It Now

EBay is moving into Amazon's territory. Citing reduced consumer interest in online auctions, eBay is refocusing on fixed-price "Buy It Now" products. From the New York Times: Among the changes being announced Wednesday [8/20/08] is a new pricing plan for sellers who offer fixed-price items in eBay's "Buy It Now" format. Starting in mid-September, sellers will pay only 35…

News Roundup: B&N Won't Buy Borders, Kindle Roadblocks and Sightings, Pirates Convince Game Developer to Drop DRM

Report: No Borders Bid for Barnes & Noble It looks like Barnes & Noble won't acquire Borders after all. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) says B&N is changing course from earlier this year and will not submit a bid for Borders. Kindle Projections, Roadblocks and Sightings Theresa Poletti from MarketWatch comments on the relative absence of Kindle sightings, particularly…

Report: No Borders Bid for Barnes & Noble

It looks like Barnes & Noble won't acquire Borders after all. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) says B&N is changing course from earlier this year and will not submit a bid for Borders. Related Stories: B&N Considering Borders Acquisition BN.com Redesign Nets Significant Traffic Increase Borders Goes Solo on New Web Site Amazon Growth Fuels Online's Book Market Share…

Reinventing the Book and Killing It are Separate Things

Columnist Richard Cohen is overestimating the threat of digital books.

A Broad View of Amazon's Influence

Neil Denny looks at Amazon's positive and negative influences on book publishing's constituencies. From The Bookseller: The web, if not Amazon, can't be uninvented: retailers and publishers need to find ways to make it work for them or they will face an increasingly difficult future. Related Stories: Publishers Beware: Amazon has you in their sights Which Game is the…

Mobile Barcode Scanners and Retail Stores on Collision Course

Ilya Vedrashko points out a near-term future scenario in which retail sites are going to have to entirely rethink what integration into online services means: The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and where the same product is…

Indiana's "Explicit" Law Struck Down

An Indiana law requiring retailers who sell explicit material to register with the state was struck down by a U.S. Federal Court on First Amendment grounds. From the Indianapolis Star: The law would have required anyone who intended to sell sexually explicit materials — which plaintiffs say could have included classic literature, as well as pornography — to register…