With both Barnes & Noble and Amazon building smaller bookstores, one might think the day of the big box bookstore is over. Matt Blind, formerly a bookseller with B&N, has...Continue reading
Author: Matt Blind
Hardwired for Stories
Pareidolia is the scientific term for our tendency to see faces in objects. Actually, pareidolia is more than that — it encompasses several phenomena, from seeing animals in cloud shapes...Continue reading
A Once-in-a-Century Opportunity to Re-invent Publishing, and Books
The working title for this article was, “These Days, Monopoly is Just a Board Game.” I started to argue that Amazon wasn’t and isn’t a monopoly, but then I also...Continue reading
New York Times Reports 17-Year-Old “News”
“Rising rents in Manhattan have forced out many retailers, from pizza joints to flower shops. But the rapidly escalating cost of doing business there is also driving out bookstores, threatening...Continue reading
The Fallacy, and the Truth, of “Big Publishing”
Editor’s note: this post is effectively part 2 of Matt Blind’s guest post on publishing and Amazon. You can find the first part over here. In the last 20 years,...Continue reading
Forbes: Please Hire Someone Who Understands Books, or Math, or Both.
Forbes just put up Amazon Vs. Book Publishers, By The Numbers – claiming at least on the face to “ignore the overheated rhetoric for the moment and focus on the...Continue reading
E- versus Print? Burgers and Steak
where’s the beef? actually, I suppose that should be “what’s the beef?” beef /b?f/ noun secondary, informal use: a complaint or grievance. synonyms: complaint, criticism, objection, cavil, quibble, grievance, grumble,...Continue reading
35 Years Ago: when one third of all hardcover books were sold in New York City alone.
“Once upon a time book retailing was about as exciting as watching haircuts. Hardcover books were often sold in musty downtown stores by fussy bibliophiles, and many readers turned to...Continue reading
Nook speculation at this early stage is dangerous, and likely useless
Full Disclosure: Barnes & Noble signs my paychecks, and I own trivial amounts of BKS through a company sponsored 401(k). But I am field management, in stores, and so not...Continue reading
Can we talk about reasonable copyrights?
Now, I’m all for author rights — I’m an author myself — but my personal take is that folks like J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer would make out just fine...Continue reading
Books Are Not Retail
Matt Blind runs a bookstore for one of the major chains here in the US. Occasionally he picks up a keyboard and gives us an inside view of bookselling. —...Continue reading
