In Southern California, and I imagine in other places, B&N are in a partnership with Coffee vendors like Starbucks. The 2 business’s occupy the same space. B&N does indeed invite you to read while you are there. My guess is that patrons will purchase coffee and snacks while reading. Some people will feel guilty about reading and not buying and will buy to allieve the guilt. The same goes for those who come in for the coffe and snacks and end up reading.
In short, though they encourage you to do exactly as you are doing, they know that many will have an ethical dilema and will buy the durned magaznes.
There are three types of stealing.
Theft of property–taking something that isn’t yours.
Theft of intellectual property–making an illegal copy of another’s intellectual property, such as downloading software from warez sites, plagiarism, or copying books/magazines on a photocopier.
Theft of service–recieving a service for which you are legally obligated to pay, but don’t, such as sneaking into a movie theater.
The situation you describe fits none of these definitions. You have not left with the book, so it is not theft of property. You didn’t copy it, so it is not theft of intellectual property. A book is not a service, so you have not committed theft of service.
However, if you have damaged the property, (book or magazine) then you are guilty of a tort, which is causing damage to another’s property.
Bottom line, it ain’t stealing, but be careful to leave the books and magazines in salable condition, or you could be liable for the damage.
I understand why book stores do this, but I don’t like it. I really get upset when I see a pile of stripped paperbacks, knowing that they will likely wind up in a landfill, rather than being recycled. I used to scour the remaindered books tables pretty thoroughly, and often found new authors there. While I wasn’t willing to pay full price, I was willing to take a chance on a remaindered book. I think that if book stores would consider going back to having remainder tables, that they might come out ahead in the long run. I know that I bought more books by “discovered” authors that way.
Gosh, am I the only person who can read a book without damaging it?
IF you read a book at B&N and damage it, obviously you should offer to pay for it. I think pkbites knows how to read without drooling on the pages or breaking the spine.
My understanding is that a bookstore MUST pay for damaged books. I have that from at one publisher, anyway, and I’ll be pretty astonished if you can demonstrate otherwise. Bookstores aren’t entitled to damage goods and return them without compensation. Even if a publisher enters into a particularly stupid deal (and this would be an apallingly stupid deal to enter into) this is clearly the fault of the BOOKSTORE, not the patron like pkbites. If B&N takes the book, they’re responsible for its condition. If pkbites reads it without pouring his coffee on it he’s doing no wrong.
Given that book sales are apparently up since the explosion of big book superstores, I’d say overall the phenomenon helps more than it hurts.
Geez… I’m obviously missing something here if so many people are convinced that it is OK to read a book in a bookstore and not pay for it. I can’t see how that benefits me as a writer at all but I’m sure someone will be along to explain to me again that it’s a terrific jimdandy idea.
Rick were you in print before the superstores opened? Do you know much about how things changed since publishers had to deal with large conglomerates? Publishing has become a different ballgame and the coffee shop/sit and read a book phenomenon is part of that. I can’t think of another industry where one section can use another section’s property to profit in this way without risk.
My experience has not been an increase in sales since the super booksstores arrived. My experience has been that the publishers tried to negotiate royalty rates down because the super stores were trying to drive down the rates they paid for books.
And I didn’t accuse anyone here personally of scribbling on books or drooling on books. But I know if I am going to buy a book I want a nice clean copy without a bent spine which looks unread. Maybe I’m unusual in this - well I must be because I don’t sit in bookshops reading books, kidding myself I am somehow doing the writer a favour.
Regardless of whether it’s moral or not, I think this kind of behaviour, if widely practiced, is just going to hurt you in the long run.
If you read your favorite magazine at the bookstore (or, for that matter, the library) every month instead of getting a subscription or paying the newsstand price, the magazine’s circulation goes down by one copy per month. If enough people do this, the editors might have to cut back on content in favor of ads, up the price, decrease distribution, or even go out of business. On the other hand, if you purchase the magazine, you’re giving the publisher a financial incentive to continue to provide a product that you enjoy, and to create new products in a similar vein.
One person won’t make the difference, of course, but large numbers will. Obviously if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t bother to vote, you’re not going to subscribe to this theory.
There are at least three groups you can lump people into when speaking about folks going to a bookstore to find reading material. Those who are going to buy something they know about, those who are going to investigate something they have heard about (but don’t know if they want to spend the money on) and those just going to browse and see what they find.
Those from the first group will be uneffected by an atmosphere promoting their sitting and reading. They know what they want, they find it, they buy it. Done. No advantage/disadvantage to you as an author.
The second two groups are where this sort of atmosphere benefits you as an author.
[ul][li]In a book store that prohibits or is not condusive to sitting and reading, these people will likely base their decision to purchase your work on the cover art, and hopefully at least spend the time reading the hook on the inside or back of the book.In a book store that encourages sitting and reading, thse types of shoppers are more likely to spend enough time reading your book to find out how good an author you really are and base their decision to buy or not based on that.[/ul]If you are a good author, I think this has to benefit you. If we take a mythical 10 person example, the two who would have bought your book because of the cover art or summary are still buying your book, and if even one of the remaining 8 buy your book because they had time and comfort to really look it over, you gain a new purchaser/reader. The folks with the intended purpose of coming in to read and leave wouldn’t have purchased your book anyway.[/li]
Are you getting hurt financially because of the economic power these huge stores bring to bear on publishers and the effect that has on your royalties? Well, you say you are so, apparently yes.
Does this have anything to do with whether providing a comfortable reading environment in the store benefits or harms you as an author?
Is the guy who reads you in the bookstore stealing from you? No, no more so than the guy who reads you in the public library. The guy who reads you in the bookstore may be able to do so at greater hours and convenience than the guy in the library, but the fact is that the odds of his ever having bought your book - regardless of the dynamics of the bookselling industry at a particular moment in time - are a little below zero. You’re not losing a sale, because were you to charge him he wouldn’t buy in the first place.
You’re screwed, and you know it; but as you’ve demonstrated it’s the result of the book industry, not because a few people who would never have bought your books now have an additional outlet for their non-buying. (I mean, your royalty was the same for library copies as for sale copies, right?) So, suck it up and deal. The superstores and Wal-mart came in and grabbed power, and now the producers and publishers don’t have any. Complaining about people “stealing” from you does nothing about it. Moreover, the changes in the industry that make it comfy for folks to buy books may well have staved off even greater declines in bookbuying, which would hurt you even more. (It’s very difficult to prove a negative, so I’m putting this out more as a thought point than anything else.)
The cycle may change again, particularly if electronic publishing ever gets under way (I give it about ten years), in which case booksellers may count for very little and publishers only for slightly more. Of course, by that time book-reading may well have continued to dwindle as a leisure activity, but there’s always hope. In the meantime, you know the game in its current form. You can get out of it, or you can live with it. Them’s the breaks.
Or you can become another Steven King or Danielle Steele, who are larger than the industry. But that’s kind of like funding your pension in lotto tickets.
One time I was reading magazines in a Jewel-Osco and my (then) girlfriend left in a huff and walked the 6 blocks home alone in the dark because she was raised to think that reading magazines in the store was bad. We broke up not too long after that.
xtn johnson - it’s readers like you that make it all so worthwhile!
last time I got into a debate on copyright and libraries here, I was told that you guys in the USA don’t have Public Lending Right schemes. Here in Australia and in NZ (and in most countries in the civilised world ) an author gets paid for each book held in the public library. It’s paid out once a year and it can amount to significantly more than royalties. I’m still incredulous that the US doesn’t have a scheme like this. So, no the bookshop equals a free library scheme doesn’t work for me.
Well next time you are in a bookshop reading a book you like, buy the damned thing for the sake of the author!
How can you compare a book store to a public library? In a book store, none of the books are paid for. The author hasn’t seen any money for the copy you read while drinking a cup of Starbucks. However, in a library, at least the author/publisher was paid for that book.
Isn’t reading books in book stores with no intention of buying stealing intellectual property? Or something like that? Is it any different than sampling MP3s off the internet?
The book is there to be read, with the encouragement of the store. There’s no policy that says “no reading unless you’re going to buy it.” It’s not stealing if you’re allowed to do it.
Even if the bookselling system is set up so that the author doesn’t get paid for those books, it’s not the potential customer’s concern. The authors chose to participate in that system.
When you download copyrighted MP3s, you’re presumably doing it against the wishes of everyone involved - artists, record companies, and record stores. You’re also making a copy, rather than just experiencing it. (But does that make it stealing? Don’t get me started. ;))
A better analogy would be requesting songs on the radio with no intention of buying the album.
Mr 2001 writes “The authors chose to participate in that system”.
Well it is the only game in town so in a sense I guess we choose to participate in that system… But if we are talking real choice, it is a decision made by the bookshops to use the product produced by the publishers and authors. It’s not like the bookshop asked for input from the publishers or writers!
I’m trying to think of an analogy here - do you all think that it would be OK to go into an appliance store, get out the toasters from the box, and test run them? Have a nice cup of coffee while you do so? Sure you clean the crumbs up and you don’t mean to give the toaster that nice pre-used look and the store says it’s OK, they’ll just send back the really damaged ones to the supplier. If you think that is ridiculous, then why is it OK to read books and magazines without paying for them?
Like Some Guy I work in inventory for a large book distributor. I can address a few of the questions bouncing around here.
Remember we are talking about new retail product here. After a certain amount of handling:
The cover gets a little warped
Corners get dinged up from being bumped around the shelves.
Light colored covers get a little grubby and all will scuff eventually.
If we find a book that is scuffed/stained/creased into the damaged bin it goes
A huge percentage of books are already printed on recycled paper, apparently it dosent work to “re-recycle it” we tried hitting up a local recycling center on this.
Many of the books my company prints and or distributes are purchased outright by the publisher. We buy all rights for $5,000 for example and we print as many as we want. Author might make more money on a royalty program but they don’t lose anything this way if it dosen’t sell.
I was also under the impression that when bookstores got product they did pay for it, they just had the right to return unused copies in saleable condition. I look into this for a cite.
Also of note destroyed inventory can be written off of taxes, sometimes for more money than we could get discounting it.
I’ll be Mr. Cold Heart here.
If an author isn’t making any money from book sales, it surely isn’t because of a very few people reading in a bookstore instead of buying.
If a book is good, and properly marketed, the few read by these people aren’t going to make any difference. In fact, I really believe that “freeloaders” will increase sales byn talking about your book.
I don’t read an entire book in the store, but I never buy one without reading a few chapters first. I couldn’t read an entire novel at one sitting, and I doubt that most people could.
If I knew what books you folks wrote, I’d go read a chapter or two. If I liked it, I’d buy a copy.
BTW; When I finish a book, I leave it wherever I happen to be. Someone else picks it up and reads it for free. Is that stealing?
Peace,
mangeorge
A) I have never read an entire book cover to cover in a bookstore (and I imagine most other people haven’t either). Either I like it enough to buy it, or I decide quickly that it’s not worth my money. Furthermore, my husband and I are big re-readers and book-gifters and have bought plenty of replacement copies of books we already have, so even if I were to ever finish one in a store, I’d probably buy it anyway.
B) I often have to buy slightly damaged copies of books when there’s only one copy in the store. At first, this bummed me, but then I realized that it’s just going to get that way after reading it anyway, so who cares if it starts out a little worn.
The publisher offers books to bookstores knowing that the bookstore will allow them to be read. They don’t seem to mind. If it were not to their advantage to provide refunds for unsold books they wouldn’t do it. There was a thread here where it was pointed out that it was the publishers who started this policy, because a book sells better when there are many copies in the store. This way, bookstores are encouraged to buy liberally , and not have to deal with the risk of overbuying.
A publisher is not bound by law to provide refunds, but they do, because it’s in their best interest. They also freely deal with bookstores that they know will allow their books to be read. Basically, the consumer’s only obligation is to follow the rules of the bookstore, which are at least tacitly approved by the publisher. The publisher could always shrink wrap their books if they think it will lead to increased sales.
I think that the industry figures that consumers can be divided into four categories: those that will buy the book either way, those that would buy it only if they couldn’t read it for free, those that would buy it if free to peruse it in the store, and those that simply aren’t going to buy it no matter what. Basically, money is only lost on the people in the second category, who are outnumbered (in the thinking of the industry) by those in the third. Thus the industry, all of it, benefits from this policy.
There’s also added sales because of people spending longer in the store due to reading, and thus buying things they otherwise wouldn’t. In short, a book is more likely to be sold in a store that has this policy than one that doesn’t. Writers should be in favor of policies that give their books a higher chance of being sold, instead of thinking of all returned copies as royalties they were screwed out of. They’re not, they’re just part of the cost of getting books sold.
I’m not sure if this is too off topic, but I have another question about policies of B&N: They have a 14 day return policy, and because I can read a novel in about 2-3 days depending how good it is, I can buy a book and then read it and return it. Is this stealing? Once again, I’m just following the rules of the bookstore. I’ve never done this for a novel I wanted to read, but I’ve done it for a book I needed for a writing assignment (source), and didn’t want to keep the book, but didn’t have time to read the whole thing in the bookstore to see if it helped me. Was I wrong in following store policy?
