Borders’ bankruptcy is seen as a victory for e-books and the beginning of the end for brick-and-mortar booksellers, but it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how to build a better bookstore.

QR Codes

Every book on every shelf should have a QR code. I want to scan that QR code and give the bookstore an affiliation fee or buy it from your company’s online bookstore.

Stop dividing Brick-and-mortar and online sales into separate silos. You need to make online sales and not just for your own device. If someone wants to go into Barnes and Nobles and buy something for their Kindle, give them the sale, because otherwise you are just not going to get anything.

Image via Wikipedia

eBook Readers with cameras

See above. QR codes allow you to build an online dimension into your bookstore. Readers should be able to take advantage using the device they use to read. Cameras are cheap and you don’t need much processing power to read a QR code. Stick it on the back and let them fly.

Let me use a computer!

This drives me crazy. Why is it that in half of these stores only employees are allowed to search the store via keyboard? Why can’t I get on that computer and find the book I want?

I understand that brick-and-mortar bookstores make a lot of money from people browsing and seeing another book they wanted, but some just want to get in and out, give that to them if you want to provide a decent alternative to Amazon.

Even better, offer a free mobile application that lets me walk into a store and automatically access that store’s database on shelving and stock. You want to make more sales, put the “If you like this book, get these others” bit on that application. Make sure it tells you exactly where in the store to get them too.

Alter reality

While you are at it with the QR codes, give me the ability to find out more about the book. One camera snap should allow me to access videos, author interviews, reviews and more.

Build a Rotten Tomatoes for books

I want to see a conglomeration of reviews for each book. Really. Has no one done this yet?

Make register transactions social transactions

Provide a service for your customers that can automatically publish their purchase to Twitter, Facebook and GoodReads.

Be a book-trading hub

Barnes and Nobles supports lending books to friends, but only digital ones. Why? Provide a local book club or two with a meeting time and space. Support book trading by providing geo-aware postings for your customers.

Allow customers to give you books to give away for free. Don’t bother trying to become a used book trader, just have a bin of sticker-ed books that people give to you to give away. At the end of every month, donate what’s left in the bin. Besides good will, it gives people a reason to step through the door.

Specialize

Who buys music in a book store? I mean it may make for the rare top-of-mind purchase, but for the most part you can just move to digital distribution by the methods above. Stop the wasteful and profit-killing attempts to stock music and just concentrate on the book-selling thing.

Related articles

• Borders files for bankruptcy, plans to keep operating but close 30 percent of its stores (engadget.com)
• Kassia Krozser on “Bookstores now, more than ever” (teleread.com)

Related posts:

1. Friday synthesis post: Soundscapes and Bookstores
2. eBooks’ greatest obstacle is that they function like books
3. The Browser Future of Interactive Fiction

I’ve been looking into Kindle application development. Considering how many Kindles are out there, there is a huge potential market for a few good applications on the device.

There are some serious limitations to keep in mind when theorizing a Kindle app, specifically two big ones. The black and white, low-refresh, nature of an eInk display is the first one. Apps should be visually slow. The second one is that, at least from the information I’ve found, Amazon holds the creator of any application responsible for data-charges that the application makes on any users’ device. The charges are at 15 cents/megabyte.

Yeah, you read that correctly. If you build a Kindle application it better not poll the internet very often or you have to factor in serious pricing issues. You either need to build an application with infinite amounts of use in its cost or you need to figure out some way to regularly make money off of your application. The only two ways I can think of to make that work is some sort of subscription scheme or advertising.

So with that in mind, let’s brainstorm some applications. I’ve got a few in mind and if you want to contribute, feel free to add ideas into the comments.

The Aggregator

The idea would be to build a Feedly or FlipBook style mix of sources (or even a set of stories from a single source beyond a standard subscription) that you could browse in a summarized multi-story format. The more user input used to create the page, the better of course. This might work better as a website people can visit, because otherwise you’d be responsible for some pretty tremendous data charges, even if you restricted users to a once a day rate. Also, it would have to compete with the mobile Google Reader site, which works decently on the Kindle.

You could mix in some ads to cover costs, but the issue is that the more successful the application, the higher the price would be to deliver content.

I’d love to have this as a configurable application, but in the end, the data costs seem to restrictive. Perhaps it would be easier to set up online? I can imagine that building a custom site with FeedWordPress might do it. A website formatted to act as a Kindle magazine. Something to work on. I’ll put that on a to-do list. A big to do would be to make each summery block act as a link, so Kindle users’ don’t get frustrated with navigation.

What’s the resolution on a Kindle browsing the web anyway?

The Interactive Fiction

The Kindle seems like the optimal platform for Interactive Fiction, especially if it gives you options instead of requiring typing of commands. I know that this might be a cheap pass for IF aficionados, but it would appeal to a larger market and besides, the Kindle’s keyboard is sometimes a bit odd to use.

There are already a few implementations of Kindle IF out there:

• The most interesting IF I’ve found is Dusk World, a graphic novel-infused adventure IF (via). I haven’t played it yet, but it seems to mix option-based gameplay with some nice imagery for a branched story. The reviews on Amazon are good and I’ll probably try it out. I think it’s a good casual interactive fiction and a very good idea. I’d love to see more, and perhaps something more visual for navigation, the ability to click on objects (linked areas of an image?).
• There is an excellent web-based implementation of the classic IF tales at KindleQuest. Well worth checking out if you’d like to replay Zork.
• There are also two standard choose-your-own-adventure-type tales: Choice of the Dragon and Choice of Broadsides. Both seem to also incorporate some RPG elements, but I’m not sure.

I think that Dusk World is probably the most interesting IF application on the Kindle, but there are a lot of possibilities. I wonder what sort of options might be available for non-text navigation. The point is fun while still within the realm of reading, as opposed to just straight up gaming. I’d think that IFs would be more appealing to the Kindle’s user base than checkers.

The Notebook

If you are using the Kindle as a reference on the job or in the classroom, having some sort of note-taking feature outside of annotation would be a logical next step. Despite that, the options I’ve found seem pretty unappealing. Not to mention that, because of the data fees, there’s no way to sync your work to somewhere on the web.

I’ve tried Google docs and it just did not seem to work. The Flash offering at Acrobat.com obviously doesn’t work either.

Once again, I think this is a nice opportunity for a web-based application formatted for the Kindle. Something that plugs into gDocs or another platform.

That being said, I do have one solution, which I use regularly. I run a WordPress blog with the P2 theme and though it isn’t exactly well formatted for use on the Kindle, once you zoom in and start typing away, it goes pretty smoothly. I use the site to regularly take notes.

It’s too bad that there are not better options out there. I know that a lot of authors seek a tool for writing that allows them to escape a distraction-prone computer and the Kindle would be a good candidate.

The Smart Map

The Kindle 3G runs on a wireless network, so I assume that geo-location is possible. It would be great (considering it works anywhere in the world and has a huge battery life) to see where you are on a map. Just think about being lost in Paris and having a whole week worth of battery power to figure out where to go.

However, I’m pretty sure the data use would be enormous. Unless people were willing to pay a subscription fee, this goes into the realm of the fantastic.

A Decent Music Player

You can load MP3s on your Kindle and listen to them. It’s a very cool feature and great for podcasts or music. The only problem is that there is no way to navigate. You can play or pause a track and you can skip to the next track. That’s it. It would be great if there was some sort of player application that would give you greater control.

Games

Oh yeah, and of course there are your standard games. Some of the Kindle games seem better then others. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t find this an interesting use of the platform.

That’s all I can think of now. What application would you want for your Kindle?

Related posts:

1. Announcing P2 for Kindle! A WordPress theme for notes and collaboration
2. The Browser Future of Interactive Fiction
3. Why the Kindle is my Swiss Army knife

Anne Toole of Writers Cabal left an interesting comment on Monday’s post talking about Reader Response criticism. She noted that “in other words, even linear narrative is inherently interactive.”

Anne is absolutely right (and brings up a point I hadn’t thought of); the way we read can greatly change how we understand or interpret a narrative. What we get from a book with, say, a close reading technique (as described in books like Reading Like a Writer, an excellent book which I have had for a while but only just had the opportunity to start) is far different from a casual reader might understand. The same applies to education levels. What you know changes what you read. In John Mullan’s How Novels Work he identifies components of modern novels and their origins in past classics. His interpretation of a particular novel is based in his comprehensive knowledge of older novels and is completely different from how I would see it. Of course, I know that I can point to a few of my own works that would be interpreted differently depending on the reader’s knowledge of other novels.

In a way, two people can see entirely different stories from a single work. If you need any empirical proof, all you have to do is take a look at the many interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays. Even when trying to stay as close to the bard’s original intentions as possible, groups can perform in radically different ways, based on how the director has interacted with the text, and in what way they have interpreted it.

This is absolutely true when it comes to “classic” written literature. But Anne’s comment got me thinking (enough to turn this into a post), how does this apply to game theory–particularly narrative game theory?

When it comes to game narrative, there are two extremes. On one side is the absolute linier narrative, as displayed in many (especially early) Interactive Fiction games. The other side is the free-form sandbox-type game, where narrative elements may come in different orders and may end or react in a number of different ways. (Of course, there are those games without narrative at all, say some arcade games.)

However, one could argue that in the most linier of IF games, of which many are, the ability for the reader (or player) to interact with the text through interpretation (as reader response criticism posits) is distinctly and purposefully limited. With little more then a few lines of text for each area and very specific commands, an incorrect interpretation will result in an incorrect response and an eventual (if not immediate) loss. The usual interactivity between the reader’s mind and the text is negated, because in order for the text to work, the reader has to think in a very precise and exact way.

In effect, this means that linier IF and adventure games, most of which work on similar principles, rely on a set group of players who think exactly the same way. In a sense, some of these games may be less interactive then sitting down and reading a book because the usual collaboration between mind and medium is curtailed. On the other hand, they do require an active imagination, otherwise you are just looking at text. Considering the spatial elements of many of the puzzles you need to be able to visualize a great deal from what is normally very little. Though anyone who enjoys reading does the same with a book.

On the other hand, the reader response is essential to driving a narrative forward in MMORP, sandbox-, or open-type games. This type of interaction with the player and world narrative is codified into some games, allowing players to work with groups who share their point of view and goals in the game world. The actual textual content in a game like World of Warcraft (quests and the like) is pretty bland, it is the interpretation of these quests and how you move to complete them that adds any spice to the gameplay. The grind is counterbalanced by the player creating their own narrative and content within a social (and in some cases economic) structure. Part of a game-creator’s responsibility is insuring that the back-story, content and mechanics are available to shore up and encourage these player-created narratives, much in the same way a good book can make you think.

Then, to bring The Human Brain Cloud back to the discussion, any ‘player’ entering words or clicking through the bubble chart is automatically creating their own narrative and participating in the type of interpretive feedback that is native to literature (if we accept reader response as a valid form of criticism, which I do). The human mind is, in this case, imposing a structure onto something that in many ways lacks such structure.

When it comes to the works in the Electronic Literature Collection, all of the ones I looked at pass the test. Of the three I reviewed: Martha absolutely passes, it creates its own narrative as well as an interpretive narrative (in that, the interpretation of the work is its own narrative: Martha is going crazy, attacked by angels, under attack by hackers, or her husband, or whatever). As does Alice, whose mystery leaves much in the mind of the participant; it even went so far as to make one of my classmates carsick. Even Deviant has that particular interactive quality of interpretation.

If interactivity is classified as “Communicating or collaborating: involving the communication or collaboration of people or things” [Encarta Dictionary] then even the strangest of narratives can’t really fail at creating it. The reader is always, in a way, collaborating with the author to create a consensual world (or, to call back the phrase, a fictional dream).

I suppose that the next question in this line of reasoning is: does interactivity then always bestow narrative?

Related posts:

1. Are Graphics and Other Next Gen Technologies at Fault for Imagination Loss?
2. Electronic Literature Collection Vol. 1 [Assignment]
3. Decompressed Storytelling and Sandbox Games