Is Nick Sherry right about the death of bookstores within five years?

Nick Sherry, the Australian minister for small businesses started an uproar after predicting that "in five years, other than a few speciality bookshops in capital cities, you will not see a bookstore. They will cease to exist because of what's happening with internet-based, web-based distribution."

His comments, as the Guardian reported, followed the collapse of Australia's largest bookseller, Angus & Robertson, and Australian high street chain Borders earlier this year. Still, Sherry got many book lovers and bookstore owners angry, but is there a chance he might be right, and as much as we hate to hear it, this is the future we're heading to?

I write here extensively about the challenges of brick and mortar bookstores and about the fact that both large retailers (B&N, Borders) and indies haven't found yet the right strategy to bring customers back to the stores. So you might guess I wasn't surprised to hear Sherry's remark. Still I was curious to see what arguments were made against his prediction as I thought they might be a good indicator whether he has a point or not.

So let's look at some of the arguments made against Sherry's prediction:

1. Joel Becker, chief executive of the Australian Booksellers Association, said he was "gobsmacked" at the "extraordinarily unhelpful" remarks, and had written to the minister asking him to explain himself. "It's an industry that's obviously going through changes, and we're responding to those changes by working out ways for even the smallest bookstores to go online and sell ebooks; we've been doing it so far without any support from the government," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

2. Jon Page, president of the ABA and a bookseller at Sydney's Pages and Pages, insisted on Twitter that "we are not a dead or dying industry". There is "still a place for an independent that services their local community", said Page, telling the SMH that Sherry had shown "a distinct lack of understanding about the Australian book industry".

3. Daniel Jordan, managing director of Collins Booksellers, also dismissed the comment, stating: “To assume that bricks-and-mortar retailing won’t exist in five years is just plain wrong.”

4. Shadow Small Business Minister Bruce Billson also slammed Sherry’s comment, describing the minister as a “prophet of doom”. “Senator Sherry’s defeatist and demoralising commentary adds insult to the injury of his lack of support for retailing as small business adapts and innovates to respond to market trends and difficult trading conditions,” Billson said in a statement.

5. Page has had the same response in his Mosman store, and says it started in February when RedGroup Retail, the parent company of Borders and Angus and Robertson, called in administrators. ''Ever since the collapse of the RedGroup, customers have been coming into my bookshop asking if I am going to close, too,'' he told me yesterday. ''The minister's comments have been very damaging because they have reinforced in some customers' minds the idea that bookshops are on the way out.''

My impression from all these arguments and comments is that they don't really challenge Sherry's assumptions. They don't show in any way how the future of bookstores can be different from the one Sherry predicts and how bookstores can fight back online stores and be relevant to e-book consumers. His prediction might be unpleasant and even wrong in terms of timeframe, but it still important to be aware of this possibility, especially given the fact that we see so many bookstores closing and as we see from Borders' case, even the large retailers are not immune.

Bottom line: Let's not shoot the messenger. It won't help the future of bookstores even a bit.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

10 best green ebooks for Father's Day!

We're back again with our weekly ten recommendations on green ebooks, and today we have a special list of book recommendations for Father's Day, which is celebrated today in the U.S.

Yes, if you haven't bought your father anything yet and he has an e-reader and would enjoy a good book on a green topic, a green ebook can be a great option! The list is including ebooks on a varied list of green topics, which we think will suit different types of dads. We hope your dad is one of them and that you will find this list helpful!

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 Father's Day:

1. No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes Abo by Colin Beavan - Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 1, 2010)

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

3. Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben - Times Books (April 13, 2010)

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

5. Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life by Ed Begley Jr. - Crown (March 25, 2008)

6. Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth by Robin White and Ray Anderson - St. Martin's Press (April 1, 2010)

7. The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (Process Self-reliance Series) by Kelly Coyne - Process (June 1, 2008)

8. Sustainable Value by Chris Laszlo - Greenleaf Publishing (March 7, 2011)

9. Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman - Picador (April 1, 2010)

10. Boiling Point by Karen Dionne - Jove (December 28, 2010)

More recommended green ebooks lists:

Best ebooks for green entrepreneurs

Best green marketing ebooks

Best green business ebooks

See you next week!

Happy Father's Day,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

The book "DRIVEN! Remembrance, Reflection, & Revelation" has joined the 100 trees project!

We're happy to update you that the book "DRIVEN! Remembrance, Reflection, & Revelation", John Elliott Churchville’s autobiographical account of key aspects of his life, his reflection on these, and his revelation of a future where social justice is global normative behavior, 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?
Driven! is John Elliott Churchville’s autobiographical account of key aspects of his life. He begins with an abbreviated memoir that highlights critical moments from his past, and examines the overarching themes that have been central to his personal development. He then reflects on important elements of those moments as they have impacted his present world-view. Finally, he shares the biblical Revelation, as well as his own, for the future. His thoughts are not of doom and gloom. Rather, they forecast a world where oppression is a faded memory and social justice is the international behavior understood and practiced by everyone.

About the author: John Elliott Churchville, Ph.D., is Senior Pastor at Liberation Fellowship Church of Jesus, Chairman/CEO of Liberation Fellowship Community Development Corporation, President of the Greater Germantown Business Association, a principal in the Churchville Triad Group, LLC (a leadership training consulting firm), and a practicing attorney admitted to the Pennsylvania and federal bars. He is an environmental justice advocate, HIV prevention and treatment activist, and sustainable community development thought leader.

In addition, Dr. Churchville is leading an effort to convert an abandoned nationally certified historic building into a multi-use, LEED-certified community facility using best practices in historic preservation and energy-efficient design.

DRIVEN! Remembrance, Reflection, & Revelation 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

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

My article on Triple Pundit on the elimination of the automatic delivery of white pages in California

I'd like to update you on a new article I published today on Triple Pundit entitled "California Stops Automatic Delivery of White Pages. Will Yellow Pages be Next?":

Here's the first paragraph of the article:

Last Thursday California joined a unique book club, which already includes 16 other states. This book club doesn’t celebrate the release of new books, but actually promotes the disappearance of one. This is still a celebration because we’re talking about a book that is redundant and wasteful, and yet about 6 million Californians receive a new copy of it every year without being asked if they want or need it. If you haven’t guessed yet, we’re talking about the White Pages.

To read the full article go to http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/06/california-stops-automatic-delivery-white-pages-will-yellow-pages-be-next/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

Another victory for Greenpeace - Mattel instructs its suppliers to stop sourcing pulp from APP!

Environmental Leader reported earlier today that "Mattel has pledged to create a sustainable procurement policy and directed suppliers to put a freeze on purchases from Asia Pulp & Paper, following Greenpeace protests over the origin of its packaging."

Mattel wrote on its Facebook page: "We know deforestation is an important issue. It is to us as well. Today we announced the development of a Sustainable Procurement Policy for all of Mattel’s product lines. This policy will require packaging suppliers to commit to sustainable forestry management practices."

Mattel also referred on this page directly to APP:

"Today Mattel launched an investigation into deforestation allegations. While Mattel does not contract directly with Sinar Mas/APP, we have directed our packaging suppliers to stop sourcing pulp from them as we investigate the allegations."

This announcement added Mattel to a growing list of companies that stopped making business with APP, either directly or indirectly following Greenpeace campaigns against APP in the past. These companies include Carrefour , Tesco, Kraft, Nestlé and Unilever. When I asked Ian Lifshitz, Sustainability & Public Outreach Manager at APP, about it in an interview we conducted with him last year, he replied:

APP is a brand umbrella for paper products manufactured by several pulp and paper companies in Indonesia and China. APP operates independently from PT. SMART Tbk's palm oil with different entities, management and shareholders.

Despite the circulating rumours started by the GP report, overall volume of APP products to customers has not been impacted upon. Most our associates know that these rumours are unfounded.

Greenpeace by the way doesn't see in Mattel's announcement the end of story - they wrote on their blog that "Mattel’s latest statement, released on Friday in the US, suggests that the company now recognises it has a deforestation problem. However, it isn’t out of the woods yet and the company must provide more details and clear timelines to show that they are serious about dealing with these issues."

APP's response? According to Environmental Leader, APP responded to the Greenpeace allegations, saying in part, “Greenpeace’s allegation that it found mixed tropical hardwood fibers in some products that we might have produced is meaningless. Indonesia’s pulpwood land concessions, legally provided by the Government of Indonesia, include some degraded forests, which are required by law to be developed into plantations…"

We'll keep you posted with any further developments in this story.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

Why Amazon rejected a shareholder decision to disclose how it deals with climate change?

Last Tuesday Amazon's shareholders rejected on their annual meeting a resolution calling the company to prepare and publish a report describing how Amazon.com is assessing the impact of climate change on the corporation.

This resolution was This resolution was filed by Calvert Investments, one of the largest sustainable and responsible investment companies in the U.S. and we also helped in the preparation of this resolution.

Why Calvert filed this resolution? Because as a shareholder it sees climate change in terms of risks and opportunities that Amazon can’t and shouldn’t ignore any longer. Rebecca Henson, sustainability analyst at Calvert, explained it to Seattle Times:

"We own this company and want it to do well, so we wouldn't want any poor performance to come from the release of a document. We just think it's something that would be beneficial and could save money in the long run."

Amazon's shareholders rejected the measure mainly because Amazon was opposing it. Why Amazon opposed it? Well, according to Seattle Times "Amazon opposed the measure, saying that preparing a climate-change report would not be "an efficient use of time and resources."

I think this is a poor reply and definitely not the one you can and should expect from Amazon. We're talking about a company that in the same shareholder meeting reported on $34.2 billion sales and $2.5 billion free cash flow.

Now, how much it costs to prepare the report Calvert was asking for? If Amazon would use the format offered by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which is used by 70 percent of S&P 500 companies that unlike Amazon disclose their emissions, then it would be about $80,000 (65% of the companies surveyed by CDP are spending up to £50,000 on reporting greenhouse gas emissions). Let's say for the sake of arguments that it would be $100,000 because Amazon is a large company.

$100,000 are 0.004% of Amazon's free cash flow. In other words it is such a marginal expense, Amazon wouldn't even notice it. Actually, according to the CDP, most companies believe the benefits of reporting outweigh the costs, so there's a good chance it won't even be an expense at the end, but a profitable investment.

It's not just Calvert and I that are positive that climate change represents material risks and opportunities that should be assessed and considered accordingly. A growing number of investors understand that climate change is influencing every business and ignoring it equals poor management of their money.

Only yesterday climate change investor groups published a report on global investor practices relating to climate change, and according to their press release "the majority consider climate change a material investment risk/opportunity and incorporate climate change risk assessments into their existing investments; public policy a key driver of investment decisions". This report is based on survey responses from 44 asset owners and 46 asset managers with collective assets totalling more than $12trillion.

Unfortunately the majority of the shareholders of Amazon doesn't see it this way and chose last Tuesday to follow the company's position against a measure that even doesn't propose to take action, but only to prepare a climate change assessment.

For a company involved in the manufacturing and sale of the Kindle, providing web services, relying on data centers and using shipping it just doesn't make sense. Not to mention the fact that Amazon is a company that is proud in making decisions based on “long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions”. We hope that Jeff Bezos and Amazon will understand it eventually, not just for the sake of the environment, but also for the sake of the company's future success.

More related articles:

Why Amazon Needs to Come Clean About its Carbon Footprint - Triple Pundit

Why Amazon is so hush hush about the Kindle's sales figures and footprint?

Dear Jeff Bezos, please make Kindle the greenest e-reader

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

10 best ebooks on sustainable food!

We're back again with our weekly ten recommendations on green ebooks!

This week I prepared a list of book recommendations on one of my favorite topics - sustainable food .

This list is based on my personal preferences - some of them are relatively old, but I still find them relevant and valuable.

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 on sustainable food:

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

2. Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All by Oran Hesterman - PublicAffairs (May 31, 2011)

3. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan - Penguin (January 1, 2008)

4. The Seasons on Henry's Farm: A Year of Food and Life on a Sustainable Farm by Terra Brockman and Deborah Madison - Agate Surrey (April 28, 2010)

5.Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It by Karl Weber and Participant Media - PublicAffairs (May 5, 2009)

6. Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter - Penguin (June 11, 2009)

7. The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food by Ben Hewitt - Rodale (March 16, 2010)

8. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered by Woody Tasch - Chelsea Green Publishing (November 12, 2008)

9. Food Matters by Mark Bittman - Simon & Schuster (December 30, 2008)

10. Farmer Jane by Temra Costa - Gibbs-Smith (July 29, 2010)

More recommended green ebooks lists:

Best ebooks for green entrepreneurs

Best green marketing ebooks

Best green business ebooks

See you next week!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!