Thursday, March 25, 2010
Worrying about our democracy and our literacy
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Todays column was prompted by my need to escape the current despair over politics. Our hero for all seasons, President Obama, who has to fix the world economics, the Mideast problems, create a Palestinian accord, suppress Taliban, still the nuclear threats, and above all get the employment back on track, has been caught in the healthcare trap. Now the first phase of healthcare has been resolved, but the ugliness continues. The seniors have been frightened, and the young resort to cynicism. This democracy is seriously threatened.
Meanwhile, another competition, the e-book phenomenon, is causing turmoil in the world of hardcover books. As is, the newsprint world is tumbling, and even the august NY Times, the source of much of the story below, is selling its Boston Globe franchise, and has acquired a Mexican billionaire partner.
Now, the e-books. Adventurous Amazon, with its Kindle, generated a viable handheld reading machine, and is selling its copied books at $10 and returning the publisher and author 70%. Now Apples e-book, iPad tablet, will provide e-books at $12.99 to 414.99, with the same percentage return. There are three more reader and e-book competitors in the marketplace with each others product being variously readable or non-readable on the varieties of machines. Meanwhile Google has copied certain university library holdings, available on internet, apparently also out of copyright and free for access. The confusion in the marketplace is immense, and the rules vary, as to use, retention, loaning, and particularly, in their application in the free municipal library functions.
All this is brought into a sharper focus as we read that Barnes and Noble , our neighborhood stalwart , with headquarters and several giant stores right here in T&V country, is having management restructuring, apparently to facilitate changes into this new world. It brings up memories.
I have a particular affection for B&N, the creator of literate and cultural oases, where books can be browsed at leisure and purchased at discounts, providing a civilized counterbalance to the prevailing world of crude TV and media escapes.
Way back in the 1970s, when there was an Antiquarian Book Row between 4th Avenue and Broadway, in the then cheap rent district below 14th Street, a new competitor with a different style opened on SW corner of Fifth Avenue and 17th Street. It was owned by Barnes & Noble, named for a long nearly defunct old-time book dealership, and featured almost-new current books for 49 cents, stamped as sold by USPS, apparently acquired in an auction of book shipments destroyed by the new package handling equipment then installed by the Post Office. We the aficionados of Fourth Ave flocked there, picking up boxes and boxes of excellent items. I caught books by Henry Miller and Grove Press, poets, the Beats, and even a thick 2nd volume of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (with a magnifying glass) for $5, which accounts for my half-baked erudition of Shakespeares lingo.
The store manager was Steve Riggio, a young fellow who knew cash register and would get fusty when I left books on wait for longer than a day but accepted my lame excuses. His brother Len, the owner, would come by occasionally to inspect the days take and help lock up.These were the young guys who built the B&N empire of 723 retail stores and 639 college outlets, with a huge real estate component, a legend in those days, before Microsoft, Oracle, and internet book retailer Amazon startups. That was in the years when Fred Bass was expanding Strand Bookstore, Biblo & Tannen and Paragon found new directions in reprinting classics and copyright-free books, and the traditional antiquarian dealers were closing or moving to the country, under the pressure of rising rents.
I met Leonard Riggio in conjunction with 14th Street Union Square LDC-BID function, introduced by Rob Walsh, now Commissioner of NYC Small Business Development, but learned about him from another local hero, the controversial publisher, talk show regular and baccarat expert Lyle Stuart, who got his own start in 1953 by suing Walter Winchell and collecting $40,000. The arrogant Daily Mirror columnist got Lyle irritated enough to write a Secret History of Walter Winchell and have it published by the notorious book pirate Samuel Roth. Winchell allegedly sent three thugs after Lyle (good jacket copy) and ranted excessively, hence the fine. Ah the old days! But I digress.
Leonard Riggio, son of a cabdriver, got his part-time book dealing start while studying at NYU. In 1965 he opened The Student Book Service to compete with the college store, and in 1971 had enough stature to buy the ailing old-timer Barnes and Noble. He rejuvenated the business, buying up stores and real estate nationally. B&N went public in 1992 and currently has 723 retail bookstores and 639 college outlets, and has a publishing subsidiary. Brother Stephen Riggio became the CEO in 2002, and now is ceding the position to an internet-bred executive William Lynch, to handle the new era. Lynch has brought in Fictionwide, an e-book retailer, and introduced Nook, B&Ns version of e-reader. Store sales have fallen 5.2%, while internet income rose 32%. Apparently there is investor pressure, and supermarket billionaire Ronald P Burkle wants to increase his 20% share to 37%. All these threats to the world of hardcover books and free libraries bid bad weather to our highly literate and book-conscious T&V country.
Locally, Riggio has been a sharer of wealth all along, with the family foundation benefing schools, literacy, arts, childrens defense and, recently, Katrina survivors in New Orleans, by building some 20 new residences.
Wally Dobelis thanks NY Times and internet sources.
Todays column was prompted by my need to escape the current despair over politics. Our hero for all seasons, President Obama, who has to fix the world economics, the Mideast problems, create a Palestinian accord, suppress Taliban, still the nuclear threats, and above all get the employment back on track, has been caught in the healthcare trap. Now the first phase of healthcare has been resolved, but the ugliness continues. The seniors have been frightened, and the young resort to cynicism. This democracy is seriously threatened.
Meanwhile, another competition, the e-book phenomenon, is causing turmoil in the world of hardcover books. As is, the newsprint world is tumbling, and even the august NY Times, the source of much of the story below, is selling its Boston Globe franchise, and has acquired a Mexican billionaire partner.
Now, the e-books. Adventurous Amazon, with its Kindle, generated a viable handheld reading machine, and is selling its copied books at $10 and returning the publisher and author 70%. Now Apples e-book, iPad tablet, will provide e-books at $12.99 to 414.99, with the same percentage return. There are three more reader and e-book competitors in the marketplace with each others product being variously readable or non-readable on the varieties of machines. Meanwhile Google has copied certain university library holdings, available on internet, apparently also out of copyright and free for access. The confusion in the marketplace is immense, and the rules vary, as to use, retention, loaning, and particularly, in their application in the free municipal library functions.
All this is brought into a sharper focus as we read that Barnes and Noble , our neighborhood stalwart , with headquarters and several giant stores right here in T&V country, is having management restructuring, apparently to facilitate changes into this new world. It brings up memories.
I have a particular affection for B&N, the creator of literate and cultural oases, where books can be browsed at leisure and purchased at discounts, providing a civilized counterbalance to the prevailing world of crude TV and media escapes.
Way back in the 1970s, when there was an Antiquarian Book Row between 4th Avenue and Broadway, in the then cheap rent district below 14th Street, a new competitor with a different style opened on SW corner of Fifth Avenue and 17th Street. It was owned by Barnes & Noble, named for a long nearly defunct old-time book dealership, and featured almost-new current books for 49 cents, stamped as sold by USPS, apparently acquired in an auction of book shipments destroyed by the new package handling equipment then installed by the Post Office. We the aficionados of Fourth Ave flocked there, picking up boxes and boxes of excellent items. I caught books by Henry Miller and Grove Press, poets, the Beats, and even a thick 2nd volume of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (with a magnifying glass) for $5, which accounts for my half-baked erudition of Shakespeares lingo.
The store manager was Steve Riggio, a young fellow who knew cash register and would get fusty when I left books on wait for longer than a day but accepted my lame excuses. His brother Len, the owner, would come by occasionally to inspect the days take and help lock up.These were the young guys who built the B&N empire of 723 retail stores and 639 college outlets, with a huge real estate component, a legend in those days, before Microsoft, Oracle, and internet book retailer Amazon startups. That was in the years when Fred Bass was expanding Strand Bookstore, Biblo & Tannen and Paragon found new directions in reprinting classics and copyright-free books, and the traditional antiquarian dealers were closing or moving to the country, under the pressure of rising rents.
I met Leonard Riggio in conjunction with 14th Street Union Square LDC-BID function, introduced by Rob Walsh, now Commissioner of NYC Small Business Development, but learned about him from another local hero, the controversial publisher, talk show regular and baccarat expert Lyle Stuart, who got his own start in 1953 by suing Walter Winchell and collecting $40,000. The arrogant Daily Mirror columnist got Lyle irritated enough to write a Secret History of Walter Winchell and have it published by the notorious book pirate Samuel Roth. Winchell allegedly sent three thugs after Lyle (good jacket copy) and ranted excessively, hence the fine. Ah the old days! But I digress.
Leonard Riggio, son of a cabdriver, got his part-time book dealing start while studying at NYU. In 1965 he opened The Student Book Service to compete with the college store, and in 1971 had enough stature to buy the ailing old-timer Barnes and Noble. He rejuvenated the business, buying up stores and real estate nationally. B&N went public in 1992 and currently has 723 retail bookstores and 639 college outlets, and has a publishing subsidiary. Brother Stephen Riggio became the CEO in 2002, and now is ceding the position to an internet-bred executive William Lynch, to handle the new era. Lynch has brought in Fictionwide, an e-book retailer, and introduced Nook, B&Ns version of e-reader. Store sales have fallen 5.2%, while internet income rose 32%. Apparently there is investor pressure, and supermarket billionaire Ronald P Burkle wants to increase his 20% share to 37%. All these threats to the world of hardcover books and free libraries bid bad weather to our highly literate and book-conscious T&V country.
Locally, Riggio has been a sharer of wealth all along, with the family foundation benefing schools, literacy, arts, childrens defense and, recently, Katrina survivors in New Orleans, by building some 20 new residences.
Wally Dobelis thanks NY Times and internet sources.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:42 AM 
