Bye, bye HMV – now bring back the books
Arturo Bandini 07 January 2011 at 14:47
Agreed. No-one ha yet to successfully explain to me how a book may be improved by adding the need for it to have batteries.
Rosalino 07 January 2011 at 15:00
Don’t knock an e-reader until you try it. E-readers aren’t like your laptop which are designed for a multitude of tasks, they are designed for reading only and are far more user friendly and usable than you’d imagine. Anti-glare screens, lighter than a hard-back, and instant access to any new book you desire without leaving your front room. How is that different to Spotify? I have no interest in sitting in a Waterstones spending 4 quid on a cup of coffee, when I can download a whole new book for that price. Conversely though high street bookshops aren’t closing due to the growing popularity of e-readers, they’re closing because Amazon trumps them on price every time.
NDS 07 January 2011 at 15:32
Utter, utter rubbish. this has to be the nadir of the new Statesman’s attempt to join in with the cultural conversation.
Why has this hack framed their argument within the digital book/paper book discourse? To give the piece more weight? if anybody wants to know about the inherent value of a physical/paper/material books, then they just need to find Walter Benjamin’s piece on unpacking a book collection, which he wrote about 100 years ago. this whole topic is just boring now. Move on and focus on the real issues please.
Schools should be responsible for drawing people into literature (and more broadly reading), not corporate chains and their three 4 two deals. People who don’t recognise the value of literature aren’t going to be suddenly converted to the merits of Tolstoy after a single visit to Waterstones.
Waterstones should see the potential in the digital market and rapidly diversify. But this won’t save their high street stores (maybe a few larger ones in big cities). as pointed out above, people will just buy their books (both digital and paper) online for a fraction of the cost and ten times the convenience.
ybot 07 January 2011 at 15:36
E-readers may catch on for academic texts and “beach” books on holiday but people buy books, especially non-fiction and childrens, because after theyre read become part of the furniture on a shelf, Waterstones problem is they dont need so many stores and shouldnt try to compete with the supermarkets.
Sirena Bergman 07 January 2011 at 15:53
While the fact that more and more consumers are going online (ie Amazon) to buy paper versions of their books does not go un-noticed, this is a situation which affects all aspects of consumerism. what I found more interesting was the idea that people are substituting technology for the product, as opposed to using it to acquire the product. Having bookshops on the high street makes literature accessible and part of day-to-day life, whereas having to spend hundreds of pounds on an initial purchase (e-readers) will make people less likely to engage in literature if they do not already.
NDS 07 January 2011 at 16:21
Day-to-day life is nothing to do with what shops are available – accessibility is not simply a commercial concern! It’s that sort of thinking that makes people think the world is ticking along fine when they see the opening of a new supermarket up the road. the reality is they’re as ‘effed as they’ve ever been.
You could build a Waterstones outside the house of every single child in the country, but if ‘literature’ has been made to feel out of reach, then what would it make?
Do a bit of research on the literacy and reading levels in certain parts of the Midlands and North. Any lack of engagement with literature in such areas is not due to lack of high street options.
kenny jenkins 07 January 2011 at 16:28
We’re at the point where capitalism has nothing left to destroy but itself
brydoolittle 07 January 2011 at 17:01
I’m not an economist, but am I missing something???
HMV made massive losses last year, whereas Waterstones had a tiny dip of around 0.04%. Why punish the offshoot brand when it is outperforming it’s HMV daddy?
Dave 07 January 2011 at 17:18
I have to take issue with this:
“I don’t own a single CD and here’s why: they’re inconvenient, expensive, lifeless and ugly. if I’m going for a digital format Spotify does the job brilliantly. a few clicks of a keyboard and I’ve got an endless supply of songs at my disposal. if I want the warm fuzzy feeling of a record turning I play my vinyl.”
1)Inconvenient? All you do is pop it in the player! Buying a cd means you have an instant backup, and music can be transferred to an mp3 player or phone just as quickly as downloading it.
2)Expensive? You’ve obviously been looking in the wrong places.
3)Lifeless and ugly – that is just ridiculous.
4)Spotify is fun, but like most streaming services fails to make much money and will probably end up going out of business. although you don’t notice when playing out of tinny computer speakers or headphones the quality is crap, especially when playing out of a hi-fi, which would incidentally require you to connect your mobile/comp to an amplifier aswell.
5)Vinyl doesn’t sound too bad, though it’s expensive and there is a limited selection.
You say you consider yourself a music lover, and I have no right to say you’re not, but to claim that cds have no redeemable qualities whatsoever is ludicrous.
PS Music probably only makes up about half of what HMV sells nowadays.
raymond392 07 January 2011 at 17:50
I get the gist of the article but nobody has mentioned the job losses of over 40 stores there is no mention of redeployment.
allan siegel 07 January 2011 at 17:54
gee whiz, what planet are you on Sirena? To label yourself a Luddite would be a compliment since obviously your relationship to music has the dynamic range of that last casette you bought and one can’t imagine your taste in literature. Get a grip girl the planet has more to offer than your trips between between Spotify and Waterstones.
Sirena Bergman 08 January 2011 at 14:32
As much of a fan as I am of such retro rhetoric as “gee whiz”, I feel I should point out that my B*Witched days were at six years old. although simplifying my life to trips between Spotify and Waterstones seems pretty realistic, with the odd trip to a newsagents for the latest NS, that is!
Matt McAllister 09 January 2011 at 10:05
I feel it is really sad at the decline of real record shops, not the horrific media supermarkets that HMV (and previously Virgen etc) were. I am very lucky enough to still have a real record shop in my town (Europa Music, Friars Street, Stirling) which has a massive vinyl section. the sad thing is that the owner stopped stocking new release CDs and records about 10 years ago as he could not compete with HMV, Vrigin and our Price (God that makes me sound old!). I fear that services such as Spotify may force even more of these shops to disappear. I love the experience of flicking through the racks and finding that unexpected gem, an activity I have never found a digital alternative to.
Ryan Hope 09 January 2011 at 18:45
The loss of the opportunity to walk into a giant room filled with thousands of books which I can pick up and read before I buy will be a tragedy. as much as I enjoy buying off of Amazon and answering the door to the postman who has a lovely new stack for me to sign for, the absence of the high street bookstore is something I will miss.
CDs by the way are cheaper than MP3s from iTunes, and although storage can be a pain, you will never lose them, unlike MP3 collections which can be easily wiped out by spilling a coffee on your laptop… Spotify is rubbish because you never own a copy, you can only stream from the internet, this places many limits on what you can do with it. although at five quid a month or whatever it is, it’s an absolute bargain.
EhtchTee 10 January 2011 at 10:54
I hope books never go away, they are the ultimate in user friendliness. a box of technology should be subservient to it, and to be used for side-referencing, always.
But iBook? – a passing fad, please let it be so. Paper smells so much better than heated electronics humming away.
Anna Baddeley 10 January 2011 at 16:28
This is an astonishingly ignorant article.
“however tragic the demise of the small bookshops and libraries may be, the reality is that they don’t draw people to literature – Borders did”
Libraries don’t draw people to literature, but Borders did? what are you basing this statement on exactly?
And then you claim to mourn the demise of Waterstone’s when you admit you hold high street bookshops in “contempt”.
As for the false dichotomy between geeks and luddites: I don’t think I’m the only person who continues to read real books despite owning an e-reader. the iBooks application for the iPad is wonderful – free access to 15,000 out-of-print titles on Project Gutenberg.
EhtchTee 10 January 2011 at 16:42
Is Dylans still going down Gower Street from the University College of London? or has it become Tower Records Picadilly Circus too?
Pi**sed off 10 January 2011 at 21:34
Censorship is a frightning prospect with E-Reader technology, Ill stay with real books thank you very much.
Its amusing that everyone seems to know what is better for everyone else. Just because one person is willing to ignore faults does not mean the next will have the patience to do brush it off.
CDs are in fact crap, are over priced, are easily damaged and they are definately inferior to both digital and Vinyl format.
The compression bitrate of digital music destroys the depth of the piece and badly distorts the bass response, unlike Vinyl which is infinately superior in both response and depth of the piece offering far greater perceived quality. Vinyl is therefore an immersive experience instead of being simply some inane noise to listen to.
So the real question is are you or are you not fickle enough to just accept what you are given? or will you passionately retain what is your ideal of literary quality?
After all, a book is something that can be taken everywhere and will last forever, cant say the same of a screen.
The difference is very real and obvious to audiophiles.
EhtchTee 12 January 2011 at 09:26
oops, Dillons even, but is now Waterstones it seems,
waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/navigate.do?pPageI…
