Not Quite Time to Panic...

Booksellers spend a lot of time moaning about how bad business is these days. I was talking with a friend at a bookfair last fall and he asked "Ever notice how business is the worst for the ones who seem to be spending all their time writing to bookselling lists complaining about how bad their business is?"

Hey, you Bookseller! Time for a Perspective Check. My wife is connected to the photography business. Digital photography has simply eliminated certain parts of it. Film sales? Poof! Gone. Sure, camera stores sell cameras, but for many of them the profit base was film sales -I mean c'mon, how many cameras can you sell someone? But they come back week after week to buy film and have it processed (which is where the BIG profit was). Not anymore. If selling and developing film was your profit base, well, you're 'fuck outta luck', as they say.

And how would you like to be a record store owner right about now? There's a job that will make you lay awake nights wondering if Burger King is hiring...

Even the record industry itself can't win for losing. A story this morning was what made me think of this subject- the Justice Department is opening an investigation into wheether the major record labels have illegally colluded to fix prices on song downloads. Talk about an industry that can't get out of its own way. I swear to God, if these guys came up with a formula to turn shit into bacon, they'd wake up the next morning to find that the entire country had gone Kosher.

Bookselling is a Garden of Delight compared to many other industries right about now. So get over it. Have a bagel. Read a book.

Folks still do, I hear.