Will consumers reward going green? Examining the case of the book industry

This is the subject of an article I wrote for the Independent, the magazine of the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). The article was published last April and was added now to the public archive of the magazine.

The challenge the article is talking about is of course not unique to the book industry, but nevertheless due to the unique characteristics of books (not two books are the same), it makes this challenge even more difficult.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

Do most book consumers care about the environment? Definitely. Do they prefer buying books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper because of that? It depends.

Eco-conscious book consumers need to deal with the same issues that green consumers in general deal with, but they also have special dilemmas. Imagine, for example, a book reader who would love to read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and who finds out that this great book is not printed on eco-friendly paper. Will the reader decide not to buy it and wait to get a copy in the local library? I doubt it.

A book is not a vegetable, a toothpaste, or a car. Book buyers can’t just choose a “green” book over a “regular” one and still get their needs met, only with some green added value. Each and every book is a unique product with distinctive features, which makes greening book purchases more difficult than greening almost anything else.

You can read the whole article on the Independent's website. I hope you will find it interesting!

Yours,
Raz@Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books

RIP Borders - The bookstore chain is closing its doors

Now it's official - Borders Group announced on Monday that it will close all of its stores and sell the company to a group of liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources. It means that almost 11,000 employees will lose their jobs and the chain's 400 remaining stores will close their doors by the end of September.

This is a very sad day to any book lover, no matter if you're a Borders customer or not. The fact is that this isn't just an isolated case, but an indicator to the change in the industry, where brick and mortar stores can't find an adequate reply to the online competition as well as to the growing demand for ebooks and are losing customers until they can no longer stay in business.

NPR report explained the problem:

"Indeed, outside a Borders bookstore in Arlington, Va., shoppers say they rarely buy books the old-fashioned way."I'll go to Borders to find a book, and then I'll to go to Amazon to buy it, generally," customer Jennifer Geier says. With so many people going online to buy books, Borders lost out. The last time it turned a profit was 2006. "

According to NPR the case of B&N is different, but we believe it's actually no different than Borders, at least in the sense that B&N hasn't find yet the way to transform its brick and mortar stores back into an asset. If they won't find the way to do it, they will be left with BN.com and the Nook, but without stores. They still have time to figure it out, but they need to remember their time is running.

Borders stores will begin closing as early as Friday. The New Yorker gives a good advice to spend your gift cards this week. (Please buy books, rather than calendars, lattes, or Moleskine notebooks.) It adds that liquidation will continue through the summer and is likely to be complete by September.

For more news and updates on Borders post bankruptcy visit our website at http://www.ecolibris.net/borders.asp.

You can also find more resources on the future of bookstores on our website at www.ecolibris.net/bookstores_future.asp

Yours,
Raz@Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books

Borders is moving towards liquidation - is this the end for the bookstore chain?

Today is an important day for Borders. According to Boston.com, a US bankruptcy court in New York has given Borders today as a deadline to find another bid or its assets will be sold at auction on Tuesday. In other words, the company might be moving towards liquidation which might be the end of for it as a book retailer unless some sort of miracle will happen today.

You can find more details on the latest development on Bloomberg's report (Borders to Seek Court Approval for Liquidators’ Bid Over Offer From Najafi) and the WSJ video report below.



We'll keep you posted with further developments and bring you further analysis later on this week.

For more news and updates on Borders post bankruptcy visit our website at http://www.ecolibris.net/borders.asp.

You can also find more resources on the future of bookstores on our website at www.ecolibris.net/bookstores_future.asp

Yours,
Raz@Eco-Libris
Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books

10 best green ebooks for the summer!

We're back with another ten recommendations on green ebooks, and today we have a special list of 10 green ebooks for summer time! It means lighter green books which are more suitable for an outdoor vacation, the beach, or just a lazy evening on your sofa.

The links of these ebooks are to Amazon.com and I apologize in advance to all the Nook, iPad, Kobo and Sony Reader owners. I hope you can easily find an ebook you'll like on other ebookstores. This is also the place to disclose that we're taking part in Amazon's affiliate program and therefore will receive a small percentage of every purchase made using these links.

We hope you don't mind! You can find all the lists published so far on our recommended green ebooks webpage (see examples at the bottom of this post).

Without further ado, here's this week's list of 10 recommended green e-books for the summer:

1. My Footprint by Jeff Garlin - Gallery (April 3, 2010)

2. The Moneyless Man by Mark Boyle - Oneworld Publications (September 1, 2011)

3. Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne - Penguin (September 28, 2010)

4. GrassRoutes Northern California Wine Country: Green Road Trips by Serena Bartlett - Sasquatch Books (July 1, 2009)

5. Boiling Point by K.L. Dionne - Jove (December 28, 2010)

6. Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America by Nick Rosen - Penguin (July 27, 2010)

7. The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball - Scribner (October 12, 2010)

8. The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey - Anchor (September 14, 2010)

9. The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (P.S.) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell - Harper Collins (June 1, 2010)

10. Eco-Resorts: Planning and Design for the Tropics by Zbigniew Bromberek - Architectural Press (February 25, 2009)

More recommended green ebooks lists:

Best green ebooks for Father's Day

Best ebooks for green entrepreneurs

Best green marketing ebooks

Best green business ebooks

Best eco-chic and eco-beauty ebooks

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a Tree for Every Book You Read!

My Name is Grace by Lorraine Oman Hanover has joined the 100 trees project!

Don't you like to read about interesting life journeys? I sure do! So how about one from innocent to outcast, wartime Glasgow to Canada’s 1970s counterculture? Grace’s diary lives long after she is gone, and provides a roadmap to redemption for more than one troubled woman.

And this new book, 'My Name is Grace' by Lorraine Oman Hanover has just joined the "100 Trees Project"!

This joint program was launched by Infinity Publishing, a leading self-publishing company together with Eco-Libris to promote environmental sustainability among its authors. Through the program, authors that publish with Infinity are able to plant 100 trees for the title they publish. These authors also have the option to add a special "100 trees planted for this book" logo to their book's design, as a way to showcase their commitment to environmental sustainability.

What's this book is about?
“Some people call me amazing Grace, and some people call me a dis-Grace.” When she slurs those words in a northern Alberta bar, Grace is worlds away from the girl who began a diary on the eve of World War II. Against the backdrop of a Scottish tenement community, her writings portray a journey from innocent to outcast — from devotion to family, to burning every bridge for a dissolute pilot. In 1971, runaway Jude Klein finds Grace’s diary. Unloved and debilitated by drugs, Jude will discover through Grace’s story a roadmap to her own redemption.

About the author: A native of Scotland, Lorraine Oman Hanover emigrated first to Canada, then to the United States. Scotland would have receded into the mists of childhood memory, she says, if not for her mother’s tales of wartime Glasgow. In My Name is Grace, Lorraine set out to capture such a voice and explore how it could steady the spirit of a questing, troubled soul.

My Name is Grace is available for sale on Infinity's website.

Other books on the "100 Trees Project":

The Last Original Idea: A Cynic's View to Internet Marketing by Alan K'necht and Geri Rockstein

Buffalo on the Ridge by Deanna Meyer

What Love Is...A-Z by by Elle Febbo

Raven Wings and 13 More Twisted Tales

Ishift- Innovation Shift

Good Management is Not Firefighting

Play on Words

This is Your Brain on God

DRIVEN! Remembrance, Reflection, & Revelation

X-POSED: The Painful Truth Behind Yoga & Pilates

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Eco-Libris is collaborating with Moon Willow Press on Infernal Drums by Anthony Wright

Moon Willow Press is a small independent publisher helping to sustain arboreal ecosystems while celebrating the written word. It is also partnering with Eco-Libris to plant trees for its published books and we're happy to announce on a new book Moon Willow Press is publishing and planting trees for with Eco-Libris - Infernal Drums by Anthony Wright.

This new literary road novel is not just a great book, but also an example of Moon Willow Press' commitment to the environment. It presents impressive environmental savings:2 fully grown trees; 1,114 gallons of water; 68 pounds of solid waste; and 231 pounds of greenhouse gases were saved, as MWP printed on chlorine free paper made with 100% post-consumer waste (except for the cover, printed on FSC-certified paper). In addition, 186 trees will be planted for this book with Eco-Libris!

Here are more details about Infernal Drums:

Anthony Wright, also author of the short story collection Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales, presents powerful storytelling with a sense of compassion for people, the environment, and indigenous customs and beliefs. His perceptive description of native peoples, places, and beliefs mingles with modern-day explorers and flirts with magical realism. Wright has been compared to Burroughs, Bowles, Dostoyevsky, Kerouac, and even to some degree Joyce as he searches out the sacred and profane of contemporary society.

Infernal Drums explores the spiritual awakening of protagonist Jonah Everman, who regards himself as a writer who drifts, but is really a drifter who writes. Journeying to Mexico, he runs afoul of the law and pays out big to avoid jail. He then heads to the capital where he finds a few kindred spirits, newspaper work, and trouble in spades. Forging an unholy alliance with occult forces, Jonah’s moral destruction seems assured. Or is it?

Infernal Drums takes the reader on a guided tour into the festering underworld of the drug war torn Mexico recent headlines have taught us all to fear. Anthony Wright knows his way around this seedy battlefield. -William Hjortsberg, author/screenwriter of Falling Angel (Angel Heart) and Legend

The book is available in paperback, Kindle format and other multiple e-reader formats at Smashwords.

For more information on Moon Willow Press visit their website - http://www.moonwillowpress.com

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

My article today on Triple Pundit - this one is not for Cosmo Kramer..

Here's an update on a new article I published today on Triple Pundit on a new viral video about employee engagement, which refers to the banking sector and specifically to bank employees that unlike Kramer didn't think from early age they MUST become a banker..

The article is entitled "How to Engage Bank Employees that Lack Passion for the Job" Here's the first paragraph of the article:

"Kramer: I was never able to become a banker. Newman: Banker! So you’re killing yourself because your dreams of becoming a banker have gone unfulfilled. You-you-you-you can’t live without being a banker. Kramer: Yeah, yeah. If I can’t be banker, I don’t wanna live. Newman: You must be banker. Kramer: MUST be banker. "(Seinfeld, The Ticket – episode no. 4, season 4)

Not all the employees in the banking sector are like Cosmo Kramer. Many of them work in banks for various reasons other than a burning desire to become bankers, which might present a challenge when it comes to employee engagement. But does it actually matter what motivates people to work in a bank in the first place? Does it make a difference if it is a bank we’re talking about or Google, for example, where its founders claim that talented people are attracted to the company because it empowers them to change the world?

To read the full article go to http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/07/engage-employees-nine-five-job-trusted-company/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!