Sadly, another one bites the dust 

Rocky Mountain Low: Colorado Springs Indie to Close by Edward Nawotka

McKinzey-White Booksellers, the 19-year-old Colorado Springs bookstore, will close at the end of June. Twenty employees--six full timers, 14 part-timers--will be laid off.

Owner Karen Bauder blamed burgeoning competition from the chains and other retailers for the store's demise. She told PW Daily, "It was a downward cycle that began four years ago when B&N and Borders moved in and opened within three blocks of us. Then a Media Play opened across the street. Plus, a Wal-Mart behind us also sold books and Sam's Club opened down the street." She said that within a year of the chains opening, McKinzey-White lost 50% of its business and was never able to recover. "It sort of stunned me. I just couldn't win, there's just no way," she said. [read more]

Do yourself and your community a favor -- search out and support a local independent bookstore.

Are books too expensive? 

Who's Responsible For High Book Prices? by Dennis Loy Johnson

Why are book prices so high? Not just new hardcovers, which are mostly hovering -- for another five minutes or so -- just below $30. But have you noticed that even paperbacks, the thing that revolutionized the book business once-upon-a-time by virtue of being affordable, are now just as over-priced as everything else?

And prices climb so steadily you can see it happening from season to season. You don't have to read trade reports to know that there's a wide-spread belief in the book industry that "consumers" don't see much difference between, say, a $25.95 book and a $26.95 book, or even a $27.95 book of that matter. As if they didn't have us over a barrel. As if there was something we could do about it. (And as if there were any logic at all to a system that believes a dollar or two means nothing, but the difference between $26.95 and $27 will send people running out the door screaming.)

Then there are those ludicrous advances making the news more and more regularly -- just this past week, "Cold Mountain" author Charles Frazier got $8 million out of Random House for a one-page description of an idea he's got for a second novel. An 'idea.'

Is it any wonder books are so expensive? And is there any question whose fault it is? [read more]

What's it worth? 

Placing value on Information by Audrey Fenner

Society regards information as a commodity and the possession of it as an asset. Economists would like to account for information in the same way as physical assets, but no discipline has given us an accepted model for such treatment. Disciplines regard information differently, and it is more difficult to develop systems to measure information than physical commodities. The price system has been used to assign value to information, but does it provide the best means? Can librarians plan for the future, justifying increasing expenditures to their funding agencies, in the absence of a meaningful information measurement scheme? [read more]

Tough act to follow 

After Oprah by Laura Miller

Since Oprah Winfrey announced two weeks ago that she's ending her television book club, some new players have stepped up to the plate hoping to beat her record in swatting authors onto the bestseller lists. USA Today has announced the launch of a book discussion that will take place both in its Life section and on its Web site, and in June the "Today" show will begin a club in which popular authors will invite viewers to read the works of "undiscovered" writers.

Both media outlets have sizable audiences, but it's hard to imagine either one matching Winfrey's influence on book buyers. Her power to bump up a book's sales figures by as much as a million copies (at the peak of her club's popularity) tended to confuse observers about the nature of the club itself. Despite its use of the broadcast medium, the Oprah Book Club worked according to an old-fashioned principle. Publishing savants have long known that word of mouth is the most effective way to sell lots of books, especially when those books are novels. The people who spend their money on fiction are mostly women, and most of them tend to try out new books and authors on the recommendations of trusted friends or booksellers.

Winfrey's book club represented a kind of supercharged word of mouth: In her case, the mouth reached 7 million ears daily. ... [read more]