Been to a Wal-Mart lately? Oh, how those people have dumbed Americans down, especially in small towns and rural areas. The big, ugly boxes are crammed with junky videos, big-screen TVs, you name it, while, by comparison, the selection of books is minuscule.
Never mind Wal-Mart-sponsored literacy programs. I applaud past and present efforts and hope there will be future ones galore. But it’s the stores that count in the end: the usual operations, not just little do-gooder campaigns, which, regardless of the millions spent, are just a speck of the company’s profits.
Unless Wal-Mart shoppers go for the latest Oprah rec or Christian fiction or the usual thriller or romance novel, they may be out of luck. Forget about books on specialized topics that reflect your passions, not to mention Emma’s. And yet for many American in out-of-the-way towns, Wal-Mart may be the only “bookstore” within easy driving distance–with even the big chain stores miles away.
So what does this have to do with e-books and related technologies? Plenty. Not the editors, not the sales and marketing people of publishers but Wal-Mart will determine what millions of small-town Americans can buy locally. Living in fear of picketers, Wal-Mart won’t necessarily sell books on dangerous topics, a point just made by Rob Preece of Books for a Buck, one of the more interesting of the small e-book publishers. E, yes, can be a great Wal-Mart bypass.
POD as another Wal-Mart bypass
But what about P? Suppose indie bookstores in small towns could use print on demand technology to offer a wide variety of books from the giants and Rob-type small fry alike? A debate rages on the economics of decentralized POD, but my strong belief is that they’re going to get better, much better, just as the cost of the usual computer printers has shrunk. Both the private and nonprofit sectors could play important roles.
I’m especially thinking of a MacArthur-funded and ABA-approved experiment–check out the Web site here–intended to help small bookstores, not just the giants. The Caravan project offers Adobe, eReader and Microsoft e-book formats, plus three audio ones, and I hope that the new .epub standard will soon be among them (time to go back to the drawing board if it isn’t). What’s more, Carvan laudably is promoting use of print on demand technology.
In Part II, I’m going to share with you some ideas on how MacArthur,
