- I don’t know what happens after Barnes & Noble sinks. It’s all well and good to say “Support indie stores!” but there are huge swaths of America where there aren’t any. B&N is the last thing standing between Amazon and a total monopoly of the publishing industry, and a monopoly is never a good thing. But the entire book world needs to be prepared, because it’s coming.
The zero-moment point came Monday, and in the crassest, cruelest, more heartless way possible.
Barnes & Noble has slit its own wrists. Now we just wait to bleed out.
Barnes & Noble needs to double down on becoming more than just a bookstore. They've already diversified their inventory by selling dvds, toys, and even their own electronics. Many also have cafes now. I think all this has helped kept them afloat thus far in the face of the behemoth that is Amazon. But are executives at Barnes & Nobles just delaying the inevitable, or are they actually committed to diversifying and competing?
What do you think about Trump's inclination towards taxing all online purchases?
I think that's just going to hurt small businesses with physical nexus in one state, who do some e-commerce in the rest of the country. Compliance costs will be burdensome, and the mega-competitors like Amazon and Walmart have already effectively made this change moot, by setting up same-day delivery fulfillment centers in every state.
I don’t think the existence of fulfillment centers in each state would be sufficient to avoid this tax. It wouldn’t make sense. Every other business in a state that caters to clientele in that state has to pay state taxes. In fact, from the article, state presence could require the payment of state taxes:
“ The Supreme Court ruling said states couldn’t require out-of-state retailers to collect sales taxes from consumers unless those retailers had a physical presence -- through branches, warehouses or employees -- where the consumers were located.”
So states can only require the collection of state taxes if there IS a physical presence
Or am I misreading something?
Amazon finally agreed to pay tax in California 6 months before they rolled out Amazon 1-day. In Washington it was three months. Most analysts, in fact, saw Amazon's sales tax agreements to be predictors of where they were rolling out 1-day next The law as it exists basically says "if you've got an employee there the state can make you collect sales tax" but the law as it exists requires states attorneys general to devote resources to pursuing out-of-state companies and it doesn't pencil out. Amazon knew that building fulfillment centers would give CA and WA the ammunition they needed to make it worthwhile so they capitulated. The fact that they're now paying it everywhere is an admission that they see things going that way and it was worth capitulating for first-responder advantage.
Starting a fulfillment center in every state doesn't let them avoid this, they're essentially surrendering. If they have to collect sales tax anyway, they may as well have nexus in all 50 states now. Once they do, they can offer better service like same day delivery, 1 hour delivery, and grocery delivery services.
- I think that's just going to hurt small businesses with physical nexus in one state, who do some e-commerce in the rest of the country.
Why would it? If you have a physical location already, you're passing through sales tax already. Compliance costs are a lookup table and a middleman; if Square promises to provide tax compliance to all merchant accounts, Paypal, Visa, Venmo and everyone else would have to do the same.
Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming have no income tax. Their infrastructure is paid for by sales tax. Their local brick'n'mortars are being punished by not only maintaining a retail location but by having to charge customers a premium; when I buy computer stuff yer damn skippy I buy Newegg rather than Amazon because it's 11% cheaper. Repeat times everything you buy.
If you're going to go down the road of citing online sales tax rates, consider choosing a reference that is kept up to date such as Avalara's tax rate data.
As far as buying from online merchants / marketplaces to avoid sales tax, those days are coming to a close as a result of the June, 2018 South Dakota v. Wayfair decision allowing states to tax remote sales.
- It’s all well and good to say “Support indie stores!” but there are huge swaths of America where there aren’t any.
Well, there goes my go to war cry.
On a more serious note, I wonder how difficult it would be to start a book collective, kind of like IGA, but with books instead of groceries. I tend to think those organizations sound really reasonable and I'm kind of surprised they're not more common (or maybe they are and I just don't notice them).
To what end?
Here's the basic problem: the reason to support the sale of books is to support authors. You want to incentivize the creation of information, opinion, fantasy, all the ideas that don't exist unless you can convince a creative individual to spend his time making that instead of everything else.
There are a few ways you can get that content in front of someone who wants to consume it.
- You can kill trees, put them in boxes, and ship them everywhere. If they don't sell, it's dead trees that get recycled. If they get resold, the authors get nothing out of that.
- You can send them to libraries. An author gets paid for one book per library.
- You can sell files. Now they're either gonna get copied all around or locked into a proprietary DRM.
On-demand publishing is something individual authors can do. Amazon is the biggest player there. An eBook collective could be done... but the Kindle ecosystem is dominant.
Audiobooks? Audible has become kleenex and it's an Amazon company. So from an individual standpoint if you want to reach customers, you're going to Amazon. From a large company standpoint, you're going to Amazon.
You can want Vimeo to win but that doesn't change the fact that you haven't even browsed there in months. Youtube? You've probably seen a dozen videos today.
- To what end?
To create and protect jobs from writers to printers to retailers, I guess. But then again, my opinion on the issue is probably pretty slanted. I really like books.
In the 10 or so counties that I routinely drive through there are ZERO bookstores. No indies, no bog box, NONE. Each county has at least one WalMart, and there are magazine racks and paperbacks in the grocery stores, but zero book stores.
Amazon did not kill the bookstore, nor did B&N. An apathetic non-reading public killed the bookstore. They can only exist in major cities where people like us, who read, live.
https://www.publishersweekly.com/images/data/ARTICLE_PHOTO/photo/000/040/40670-1.JPG
People haven't stopped reading. If anything, unit sales are up. We're not tracking a change in behavior, we're tracking a change in merchandising.
Kentucky has a fucked up County structure rooted in the far depths of time where everyone traveled on horseback. The state has more counties that all but Texas and Virginia. Some of the counties that I drive through daily are smaller than LA suburbs; I'm talking 200 square miles. Remember, Los Angeles County, CA has twice as many people as the whole state of Kentucky.
- They can only exist in major cities where people like us, who read, live.
There are seven independent new book stores in Kansas.