Whimsley

Mr. Amazon's Bookshop: First Visits

[The table of contents for Mr. Amazon's Bookshop is here]

Whimsley Hall is never a salubrious place, but in the days following Christmas it is truly disgusting. Mice chase spiders, earwigs and silverfish over the piles of discarded plates and glasses that are the inevitable aftermath of the annual party I throw for the villagers. The children have played their last game of Pin the Tail on the Vicar, and have vanished, thank God. I am sure some of the greedy little bastards steal my silverware; I know that the older children use Hide and Seek as an excuse to search through my erotica collection. And their parents are worse; they pretend to be friendly but I know they are only after the contents of my cellar, and to a one they seem to have a huge capacity for drink and other forms of debauchery. But they too are finally gone. People think I am fortunate, living in this picturesque and rambling manor, but the duties of the landed gentry are not easily shirked, and so year after year I spend the days between Christmas and New Year's sitting at my desk with aching head and foul breath. Usually I spend these days reading a book, but this year I do not have a single one that takes my fancy. The reason is simple: I refuse to buy my books from a certain popular bookshop in town. Small wonder that as I sit, my mind is wandering back to a similar post-Christmas event a few years ago...

I had decided, that day, to walk from Whimsley Hall down into the village. I hoped that the unseasonably fresh air would clean away my own hangover and would also get me away from the Hall while the servants cleaned away the bacchanalian refuse. I would willingly help them of course, but their nature is coarser than mine so it only makes sense to leave them to it.

I am a regular visitor to each of the village book shops and I wanted to pick up a novel or two. We had a lot of bookstores in Whimsley village until recently. One specialized in mysteries, one in politics, one in books about my hobby (Mr. Babbage's Books with a Difference (Engine)), and there were a couple of second hand stores as well. Then there's Words Worth the general bookstore and Heather's Big House O'Books, a big but crass place I avoid when I can, but with an undeniably good selection. And if I'm in a hurry for a page-turner I can always pick up a best seller at the supermarket (you didn't think we had a supermarket did you? Oh yes, we're up to date in Whimsley village). So we were well provided for. I really didn't think there was room for another book shop, but I had heard from Google - my butler and the source of a remarkable range of odd facts and fancies - of a new shop in town called Mr. Amazon's Bookshop and I decided, being the open-minded chap I am, to give it a try.

Google had told me that Mr. Amazon has the most amazing selection of books, so you can imagine how surprised I was when I walked in the door. Mr. Amazon is famous now, so you probably know what his shop looks like, but in case you haven't been there let me tell you. The door is unprepossessing. Once inside there's a bare wooden floor. No books, no shelves. It's always empty of people. There are a couple of posters on the wall, and a short, trim middle-aged man, dressed smartly but informally, sits straight-backed behind a high desk. That first day I shook my umbrella to hide my confusion and nearly turned to leave, but then I thought it would be rude just to walk out so I asked him a question.

"Excuse me, I seem to have stepped into the wrong place. I thought this was a book shop."

"It is," said the man behind the desk. "And a very fine one I'm proud to say."

Was the man mad? I squinted at him though my monocle but he looked calm enough. I gestured at the empty room and addressed him again.

"Well, most bookshops have - you know - books. You don't seem to have any at all! There's not a single shelf in sight!"

"On the contrary sir, we have the finest collection of books in the village. We are aware of all books, we just don't have shelves. Is there one you would like to see?"

"Not one in particular, I just thought I'd look around - see what you specialize in, you know. See what your collection's like. But, I've just realized I'm late for... something - got to be going. Toodle pip!"

I turned to leave, but he spoke before I got out of the door.

"We are aware of all books sir. Any book you like, we have it. Is there one you would like to see?"

His words were so peculiar I decided that the butler was playing a trick on me. He'd sent me here to see this batty little man as a joke. Obviously the proprietor was touched in the head. I just shook my head and exited.

I forgot all about Mr. Amazon's bookshop for a couple of months, and then an odd circumstance found me making a second visit. My plumber, a retired scholar, is a regular source of book recommendations. When I ask her how she can stand dealing with the contents of Whimsley Hall's bathrooms after studying Shakespeare's sonnets she just looks at me and shakes her head and says "it's a long time since you were at a university isn't it?" Anyway, she had told me about a new novel called Special Topics in Calamity Physics, which was apparently a hit in America and which both she and her husband had enjoyed. I'd been to a couple of the bookshops in the village but they both said they hadn't got it yet. Disappointed, I was on my way home when I realized I was walking right by Mr. Amazon's Bookshop. Truth to tell, I was surprised to see it still there. "Maybe it's actually got some books now", I thought as I walked in through the door. And I was confronted with the empty, hardwood-floored room and that funny little man sitting pertly behind his desk, just as before.

"Still no books I see?"

"On the contrary sir," he said. "We are aware of all books, we just don't have shelves. Is there one you would like to see?"

The man was obviously run by clockwork or mad as a hatter, but I thought I'd amuse myself a little.

"Well actually there is. I'm looking for Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. It's new and the other shops don't have it yet. Maybe you could point me to it?"

I confess I smiled a little as I turned theatrically around, as if scanning the shelves. But quick as a kingfisher the little man reached under his desk, brought out a book, and held it out in front of him. "Ah yes, a fine choice. Here it is. Two hundred and sixty four of our customers have told us about this book, and 149 gave it more than three stars out of five. Take a look."

I stepped forward and reached for the book, but he pulled it away.

"Sorry sir, you may not touch the books in our store, but feel free to read the back cover as I hold it. Or I'll be happy to open it for you to look inside."

I was surprised and a little offended, but at least he had the book.

"Never mind, I'll take it", I muttered, putting a few guineas on the desk. 

"Thank you sir. Good Day." And with that he put the book back beneath the desk.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" I said sharply. "My book?"

"No sir. We deliver our books. You will receive yours shortly. Good day. By the way, customers who bought Special Topics in Calamity Physics also bought The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart. Would you be interested?"

"I should think not! Just see to it that my book is delivered, that's all." And I stamped out furiously, cursing the difficulty of getting good service these days.

Mr. Amazon's Bookshop

An unfinished seasonal confection from Whimsley Hall, in a dozen or so episodes. This post will be updated with links to each installment as I post them. Expect roughly one per week, starting today.

And if you read on, remember the motto of the Whimsley family: "Pay little, expect less."

1. First Visits
2. The Appeal of Amazon
3. A Conversation with the Butler
4. What is a Book?
5. Doubts About Amazon   
6. The Differ 
7. Down with Gatekeepers!
8. Mr. Amazon's Shelves 
9. Kylie Returns
10. Another Conversation with Google
    
11. Recommending the Big Sellers
12. Where is Kylie?
13. The French Lieutenant's Bookshop?

I Am Part Of The Slow Movement. You Are Just Slow.

All this time I thought being unable to post frequently was a limitation, but now I find, thanks to the Sunday newspaper, that it is a virtue. In fact, I appear to be part of the slow blogging movement, which is why it took me two days from reading this to posting it.

http://toddsieling.com/slowblog/?page_id=10

 See the top right of this page, which has stayed that way since before the formation of this movement, for my credibility. 

I wonder what my aims are? No blogging at all? Maybe someone should start a Silent Blogging movement.

I am no longer a lazy slob. I am now a practitioner of stillness.

I am a Champion of Authenticity. You are in the Vanguard of Corruption.

Here is a quandary in three parts. I don't know how to think about it clearly, much less how to resolve it.

Part 1 is a letter in today's Globe and Mail from Charles Cook:

Imagine settling down in a nice theatre seat only to have Marge Simpson sit in front of you. Thirty years ago, my balcony afforded a good view of Lake Ontario and the Toronto Harbour. Gradual infill building has blocked it all but I proudly boast of what is left, a view of the CN Tower.

With a watchful eye on high-rise projects, I got wind of a new mega condo to be built between me and this Toronto icon. When (or now, if) it's completed, my iconic view will be gone. New condo buyers everywhere should not be influenced by artists' impressions of the view from an unbuilt living room. Marge Simpson may be their first guest.

The letter writer may suffer from Marge Simpson's towering blue hairdo in front of him, but he seems blind to the fact that he is a Marge Simpson in front of someone else. And the first condo building is probably more of an issue than the hundred and first. It's a vanguard of corruption.

Part 2 is the occasional appearance of groups called something like "Artists Against Gentrification" (for Detroit see here). It's a concept that is easy to mock. Seeking out cheap space in neighbourhoods that are not their own, yet which offer cultural novelty and distinctiveness, some artists like to think of themselves as champions of authentic neighbourhoods. Others cast them as the ground troops that come in first, paving the way for upscale developers.

But part 3 is more difficult for me to mock. The place I work is in a "Research and Technology Park" at the north end of the University of Waterloo (here). It's a recent development; it has a handful of new office buildings surrounded by empty fields and untended scrubland. Sometimes I walk to work through this scrub and it's amazing what you see. We have foxes, deer sometimes. The other day a hawk flew across the path ten feet in front of me at knee hight, driving a flock of pigeons into the air. There's sometimes a blue heron in a gravel pond, and a groundhog I see regularly as it watches the construction of a new building from just outside its hole.

All this wildlife in the middle of town would vanish, of course, if the R&T park gets more tenants, or if the scrubby landscape is manicured to look more attractive. I would miss it and something valuable would be lost.

Yet of course I'm only aware of these gems because I work in the first building to be built in the park. I'd like to think I'm a champion of authenticity, but I guess I'm just in the vanguard of corruption.

The quandary is obvious. There are parts of the world ("authentic" parts) that have value because they are different from their blander surroundings. And yet the value of those parts is largely invisible, and so they are vulnerable to the economic forces that would brush them aside. Preserving these authentic parts of the world requires that we know about them, and that requires someone from the outside to go in and tell us about them. So is that person then selfishly trying to preserve a private playground or nobly trying to preserve a valuable but vulnerable niche?

It's the problem with eco-tourism that the more it seeks to create awareness of the wilderness the more it damages that wilderness. From quaint pottery shops in  Burnsall and Grassington, to hippies in Goa, to Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, how do we distinguish the genuine champion from the tourist? And how do we preserve what needs to be preserved without pandering to the demands of those who want to just keep a new find all to themselves in the name of authenticity.

I can think of no general principle to tell one from the other. But if anyone has pointers to ways of thinking about authenticity I'd like to hear them.

Apple's Lemons

iPhone application developer Craig Hockenberry writes an open letter to Steve Jobs here, featured in Fortune magazine here, pointing out very reasonably that the 10,000 iPhone applications are experiencing a race to the bottom in terms of price. Charles Teague has put together some great graphs describing the state of the AppStore here.

What Craig H sees is this:

developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to get favorable placement in iTunes. This proliferation of 99¢ “ringtone apps” is affecting our product development.

and here is how:

Raising your price to help cover ... costs makes it hard to get to the top of the charts. (You’re competing against a lot of other titles in the lower price tier.) You also have to come to terms with the fact that you’re only going to be featured for a short time, so you have to make the bulk of your revenue during this period.

This is why we’re going for simple and cheap instead of complex and expensive. Not our preferred choice, but the one that’s fiscally responsible.

The root cause of the low price is a classic market for lemons. Here is Craig H again:

I’ve been thinking about what’s causing this rush to the 99¢ price point. From what I can tell, it’s because people are buying our products sight unseen. I see customers complaining about how “expensive” a $4.99 app is and that it should cost less. (Do they do the same thing when they walk into Starbucks?) The only justification I can find for these attitudes is that you only have a screenshot to evaluate the quality of a product. A buck is easy to waste on an app that looks great in iTunes but works poorly once you install it.

Our products are a joy to use: as you well know, customers are willing to pay a premium for a quality products. This quality comes at a cost—which we’re willing to incur. The issue is then getting people to see that our $2.99 product really is worth three times the price of a 99¢ piece of crapware.

This is, of course, the dilemma of the Internet. Publication is easy, even when Apple maintains the right to take your app off their store. This does not mean everyone benefits from the audience that "being published" used to bring with it. It just means that the roadblock to finding an audience is shifted further down the road - getting attention for your product. And asymmetric information is a major barrier in your way. How do you distinguish your shiny needle from the haystack in which it sits?

So where, he asks, are complex, high quality applications for the iPhone going to come from?

I can think of two ways forward for mobile apps in the absence of people being prepared to pay actual money.

One is that open source community-built applications will come along. But that's less likely on a brand new platform than it is on existing platforms where a broad agreement can be reached on what an application needs to do.

A second is that the successful applications (beyond Koi Pond) will be entry-points to some valuable service hosted elsewhere, for which someone can charge a subscription price. I'd bet on this second one. But applications for their own sake on mobile devices, it seems, will not be going far.