{"id":954,"date":"2006-05-15T06:40:44","date_gmt":"2006-05-15T11:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/indy-000\/"},"modified":"2006-05-15T06:40:44","modified_gmt":"2006-05-15T11:40:44","slug":"indy-000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/indy-000","title":{"rendered":"Indy 000?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I tried my hand at literary publishing — I’m in recovery — I received almost zero support from any of the major chains. Amazon, on the other hand, had a program in place for me to sell books through them and have the same potential for exposure as just about every other book (notwithstanding co-op payment to get on the front page of the site). It’s one of the reasons that I still use Amazon for most of my new book purchases.<\/p>\n

I’ll go to the Borders around the corner from my office, but it’s quite rare that I spend any money there; it’s more for general browsing. There’s a Barnes & Noble with a massive used book section a few miles away that I’ll trawl every few weeks or months, but that’s the extent of my chain-shopping, unless there’s some sort of immediate priority (like forgetting to get a Mother’s Day present).<\/p>\n

The closest worthwhile independent bookstore is the Montclair Book Center, but I don’t think I’ve been there for at least eight months. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are 1,200 books downstairs, most of which I haven’t read. I’ve been on a book-a-week pace for few months now, which means it’ll only take me around 40 years to finish reading everything, provided nothing new comes out.<\/p>\n

Anyway, over at Slate, Tyler Cowen has an article about the superfluousness of independent bookstores<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But with the advent of the Internet, the literary world has more room for independence — if not always in its old forms — than ever before. Amazon reader reviews, blogs such as Bookslut, and eBay — the world’s largest book auction market — all are flourishing and are doing so outside the reach of the major corporate booksellers. Print-on-demand technologies and self-publishing are booming. Along with Google and other search engines, they will allow niche titles to persist in our memories for a long time to come. This is the flip side of the same computerization that elevated Wal-Mart and Borders: Information technology brings more voices into book evaluation and supply.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, many virtues of the new order are relatively invisible. Consider the used-book market. It was much easier to find a good used bookstore 20 years ago. Yet it has never been easier to buy a good used book, with the aid of, among others, Abebooks, a superb central depot for used booksellers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Enjoy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I tried my hand at literary publishing — I’m in recovery — I received almost zero support from any of the major chains. Amazon, on the other hand, had a program in place for me to sell books through them and have the same potential for exposure as just about every other book (notwithstanding … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Indy 000?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-fo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1987,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/amazon-sightings","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":0},"title":"Amazon Sightings","author":"Gil","date":"April 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"As part of my morning web-trawl, I check Amazon to see if they have any good daily specials; I've found some neat buys that way. Today's is not one of them: I guess that's a step up from this odd attempt at selling Vista Service Pack 1: \"more fun\"? It\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dukey.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1265,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/impulse-power","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":1},"title":"Impulse Power","author":"Gil","date":"December 28, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I was driving down Rt. 17 yesterday, taking care of some errands, when a semi-interesting notion struck me. I passed the closed-down Tower Records and pulled into the lot of the Barnes & Noble in Paramus, figuring a meander through its extensive used book section would do me good. I'm\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/impulse-power#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":581,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/corporate-synergy","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":2},"title":"Corporate Synergy?","author":"Gil","date":"July 28, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This morning, I read a neat article about co-op advertising in bookstores (better known as \"pay for play\", which helps insure that deep-pocketed publishers get the most exposure for their books).Then, on a whim, I hit Amazon's \"most-preordered books in Literature and Fiction,\" when I came across this. Evidently, The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2211,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/f-you-you-whining-f-8508","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":3},"title":"F*** You, You Whining F***: 8\/5\/08","author":"Gil","date":"August 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Why are newspapers falling to pieces? There's a perfect storm of reasons, including the destruction of the diurnal newscycle, the obliteration of their local classified ad market by Craiglist and its ilk, and increases in paper and distribution costs. Then there's the fact that they publish crappy, irrelevant opinion articles.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "F*** You, You Whining F***"","block_context":{"text":"F*** You, You Whining F***","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/f-you-you-whining-f"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00134XEQE","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3998,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bea-0-fer","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":4},"title":"BEA 0-fer","author":"Gil","date":"June 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This NYTimes article on Book Expo America was pretty funny. On the one hand, e-books on the Amazon Kindle are ridiculed by Tina Brown for costing \"that paltry, pitiful sum\" of $9.99. On the other hand, Sherman Alexie is a complete douchebag: At a panel of authors speaking mainly to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6056,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/hard-drivin","url_meta":{"origin":954,"position":5},"title":"Hard Drivin’","author":"Gil","date":"July 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"After my wife read my previous post, in which I dithered about getting a new iMac, she said, \"If it'll help process photos better, then we should do it.\" Just because she was under the influence of headache medication didn't mean she wasn't right. I was ready to pull the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}