For the past two weeks, BookSite's
Dick Harte has been sharing his thoughts regarding the many
opportunities available for booksellers online. We'll conclude the
series with a brief history lesson and a message of techno-grassroots
hope from Mr. Harte.
An early, text-based model of BookSite was born in 1994 as the online version of Rutherford's Book Shoppe, Delaware, Ohio. "The real creator of the online bookstore, Charlie Stack, wasn’t even a bookseller. He was an ISP who created the store to give his staff something to do during slack times. He was very helpful to me, and much of what I started on the Web was modeled after his text-based version. I found it strange he would help a potential competitor get started, but he said it was more important to get services into the marketplace to attract a large audience, and he was right. Amazon came in 1995 with a different attitude and three very important strategies: customer focus, barriers of entry and branding. They invested $2 billion in building their brand and customer base before making a dime. They scared away anyone who might consider making a profit and created an excellent, very expensive platform booksellers could not hope to duplicate on their own."
By 1996, however, Harte "had already invested heavily in the BookSite platform and had no intention of throwing it away. I decided on a strategy to overcome two barriers with one stroke by tweaking the platform to share the cost with other indies that had their own local established brand. Thus booksellers could avoid both the cost of the technology and that $100 per new customer by keeping focused on their established market."
Harte calls this time a period of implementation. "I was one of the first advertisers on Yahoo," he says, "and bought the word 'book' and its derivatives so my banner would show up at the top of any of those searches. Sales skyrocketed and I had a global clientele overnight, selling in 65 countries. My losses were skyrocketing as well."
As the Millennium, as well as the "Dark Ages of the Internet Bubble," approached, "The flim-flam folks had a field day," Harte says. "There was no economic or retail basis for decision making. Everything was geared to get a piece of the action, not take care of business. These were scary days for the independents, who were stuck with a set of economic rules built over the centuries (like make a profit), while having to compete with Amazon and BN.com, who were being rewarded by Wall Street for losing a dollar for every dollar of sales."
Then, around 2002, what he calls the "Google Enlightenment" era dawned and provided the catalyst for two important changes. "'The establishment' was starting to 'get it' and Google attracted tens of millions of normal folks to the Internet. Corporate America was investing heavily and wisely in the technology for marketing and advertising power but was still blind to the bottom-up culture that is part of the process. Google, on the other hand, saw it all, with communication channels evolving toward communities and one-on-one contact instead of mass marketing."
All of which led to the "unwired" era," according to Harte. "Call it what you may--Web 2.0, RSS, XML, Blogs, Pods, or social networking--it is coming (to some extent already here) with three attributes that bode well for savvy indies: mobility, miniaturization, and personalization. The iPhone epitomizes this wave. Indies can take their stores with them, customers can carry their favorite stores around in their pocket, and publishers can pass through their promotions all the way to the consumer.
"The store website is being replaced with hundreds or thousands of customer web pages containing selected content from the store (if we are lucky) and scores of other sources. The new unwired environment will continue to morph from e-newsletters, with websites being the invisible workhorse behind the scenes."
Now, Harte believes, "Everything is going in our direction. There are many tools available for booksellers looking to enhance their websites, including podcasts and blogs, but like the environment of 1994--when we were faced with the new and yet to be popular Web versus an established, large text-based platform, success will be determined by how we adapt to the future. All the tools are affordable, easier than most indies realize, support what indies do best--personalized service--and will be significantly more popular five years from now."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)
An early, text-based model of BookSite was born in 1994 as the online version of Rutherford's Book Shoppe, Delaware, Ohio. "The real creator of the online bookstore, Charlie Stack, wasn’t even a bookseller. He was an ISP who created the store to give his staff something to do during slack times. He was very helpful to me, and much of what I started on the Web was modeled after his text-based version. I found it strange he would help a potential competitor get started, but he said it was more important to get services into the marketplace to attract a large audience, and he was right. Amazon came in 1995 with a different attitude and three very important strategies: customer focus, barriers of entry and branding. They invested $2 billion in building their brand and customer base before making a dime. They scared away anyone who might consider making a profit and created an excellent, very expensive platform booksellers could not hope to duplicate on their own."
By 1996, however, Harte "had already invested heavily in the BookSite platform and had no intention of throwing it away. I decided on a strategy to overcome two barriers with one stroke by tweaking the platform to share the cost with other indies that had their own local established brand. Thus booksellers could avoid both the cost of the technology and that $100 per new customer by keeping focused on their established market."
Harte calls this time a period of implementation. "I was one of the first advertisers on Yahoo," he says, "and bought the word 'book' and its derivatives so my banner would show up at the top of any of those searches. Sales skyrocketed and I had a global clientele overnight, selling in 65 countries. My losses were skyrocketing as well."
As the Millennium, as well as the "Dark Ages of the Internet Bubble," approached, "The flim-flam folks had a field day," Harte says. "There was no economic or retail basis for decision making. Everything was geared to get a piece of the action, not take care of business. These were scary days for the independents, who were stuck with a set of economic rules built over the centuries (like make a profit), while having to compete with Amazon and BN.com, who were being rewarded by Wall Street for losing a dollar for every dollar of sales."
Then, around 2002, what he calls the "Google Enlightenment" era dawned and provided the catalyst for two important changes. "'The establishment' was starting to 'get it' and Google attracted tens of millions of normal folks to the Internet. Corporate America was investing heavily and wisely in the technology for marketing and advertising power but was still blind to the bottom-up culture that is part of the process. Google, on the other hand, saw it all, with communication channels evolving toward communities and one-on-one contact instead of mass marketing."
All of which led to the "unwired" era," according to Harte. "Call it what you may--Web 2.0, RSS, XML, Blogs, Pods, or social networking--it is coming (to some extent already here) with three attributes that bode well for savvy indies: mobility, miniaturization, and personalization. The iPhone epitomizes this wave. Indies can take their stores with them, customers can carry their favorite stores around in their pocket, and publishers can pass through their promotions all the way to the consumer.
"The store website is being replaced with hundreds or thousands of customer web pages containing selected content from the store (if we are lucky) and scores of other sources. The new unwired environment will continue to morph from e-newsletters, with websites being the invisible workhorse behind the scenes."
Now, Harte believes, "Everything is going in our direction. There are many tools available for booksellers looking to enhance their websites, including podcasts and blogs, but like the environment of 1994--when we were faced with the new and yet to be popular Web versus an established, large text-based platform, success will be determined by how we adapt to the future. All the tools are affordable, easier than most indies realize, support what indies do best--personalized service--and will be significantly more popular five years from now."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)