Are ebooks good enough already? Could an entire industry be working to solve the wrong problem?

Are ebooks good enough already?

Could an entire industry be working to solve the wrong problem?

by crechtsteiner

Re-post from: http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/09/are-ebooks-good-enough-already.html?imm_mid=095dd5&cmp=em-toc-newsletters-sept25-elist

In reading Horace Dediu’s (@Asymco) piece on the possibility of the iPhone being good enough, an interesting question formed…

Is it possible that ebooks are already good enough?

Are we currently experiencing the best possible forms for the enjoyment of a written work?

It’s a viable question because, if you look closely at your reading habit and preferences, what would you really need or want to change that is materially different from what you’re capable of doing today?

As more technological innovation hits ebooks (and storytelling, sharing, news, etc.), more readers are complaining in unison not about the lack of robust multimedia or interactive elements but about the need for improved basics: cross-device portability, page formatting, font sizing & clarity, bookmarking, sharing, etc.

Improvements aren’t being sought in the quality / type of the content’s presentation. Improvements are being asked for relative to the consumption experience.

It’s possible we’re looking at the ideal form for an ebook and we’re taking it for granted.

What if the time spent and money invested in building “new” ways for stories to be presented was, instead, spent on / invested in helping storytellers gather information and formulate ideas to create more high-quality stories?

Could an entire industry be working to solve the wrong problem?

Thank you for the prompt, Mr. Dediu.

[Ed. note: You'll also want to read Jenn Webb's earlier interview with Horace Dediu here.]

t

A new chapter for ebooks

Re-post from: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120817-a-new-chapter-for-ebooks/1

 Tom Chatfield

“It’s the smell, I’ll miss.”

“It’s the texture of the page, for me.”

“It’s that reassuring weight they’ll never replace”. 

In the ongoing debates about the rise of the ebook, you generally don’t have to wait long until someone invokes the physical attributes of mouldering bookshelves as the missing ingredient from electronic texts.

Yet you don’t have to make a fetish of physicality to notice that there are several ways in which the business of owning and reading an electronic book remains inferior to doing the same with a paper copy. And, ironically enough, the most significant of these involves something at which digital media allegedly excel: sharing.

When I lend a friend one of the physical books off my shelves, I’m not just giving them access to a virgin chunk of text, as I would be if I sent them a copy of an electronic file. I’m passing on a physical object that – in my case at least – is likely to come equipped with annotations, underlinings, tea stains, and a well-thumbed sense of what caught my attention. In some cases, it will also boast several previous owners’ worth of these. And when I get it back, a little more history will come back too.

At the moment, while the internet boasts near-endless opportunities on blogs, message boards and social networks for discussing and discovering books of all kinds, there’s almost no integration between these communities and books themselves; a circumstance whose difficulties are compounded by the prevalence of so-called DRM, or Digital Rights Management, among most mainstream publishers.

To get a quick and dirty sense of Digital Rights Management, consider the difference between owning a book, and merely owning the right to read a book under certain circumstances – say on a limited number of devices or for a limited period of time. The first is what traditional print publishing offers. The second is the DRM model – one intended to protect publishers and authors against piracy. Except, as has been found time and time again, these digital locks also prevent readers from doing what they want with the books they have bought. Not to mention giving them a convenient excuse to seek out DRM-free pirated copies of books that were supposed to have been prevented by DRM in the first place.

From music to film, other industries have already passed through their own versions of the DRM dilemma when it comes to digital media – and debate and divisions continue to range, with music on iTunes DRM-free since 2009, but much online video and most video games still locked into specific rights systems.

‘Unread and unreadable’

Books are playing a rapid game of digital catch-up here – and, given the proclivities of many of DRM’s most vocal opponents, it’s perhaps no surprise that this month it was the world’s biggest science fiction publisher, Tor Books, that became the first imprint among publishing’s “big six” players to start offering all of its digital books without any rights restrictions.

It marks, as Tor author and digital campaigner Cory Doctorow put it, “a seismic event in the history of the publishing industry”. To me, though, what it also suggests is the tantalizing possibility of helping digital reading preserve all the advantages of its weightless, infinitely capacious medium while regaining some of the rich possibilities of physical books – and specifically those communities of lending, discussion, sharing and recommendation that are the traditional lifeblood of reading.

DRM is far from the only issue here. But the potential opening up of ebook formats by mainstream publishers brings with it the possibility of a new opening up of the apparatus surrounding reading as a digital experience. From universally shared annotations and highlights to the passing on of personal reading histories and personalised editions, the opportunities for integrating everyday digital reading with genuinely open communal tools are legion. Perhaps above all, though, what such openness most tantalisingly promises is a shift in emphasis within digital books away from a handful of digital “ecosystems” and back towards readers, writers and publishers.

If this sounds slightly utopian, well, that’s because it is. It shouldn’t stretch credibility too far, though, to note that belief in the very notion of “books” enduring as a 21st Century form requires more than gathering together a certain number of words. If they are to maintain vigour and impact within the brutally Darwinian internet world, both textual aspirations of permanence and a corresponding density of cultural engagement are urgently required: the mutually invigorating embrace, in other words, of authors and audiences.

One of the adages of digital media has long been that relationships matter more than mere purchases: between creators and consumers, but also within those communities of consumers who have an increasingly vocal impact on the creative process.

In this context, it’s always been one of the stranger current features of eBooks that digital and print formats are locked in such mortal combat, given not only that the same people buy both, but that the bulk of this buying is done by self-proclaimed book lovers who would relish the opportunity to connect texts’ physical and virtual incarnations. Whether it’s discounted physical copies for owners of digital books, digital editions bundled with physical purchases, or some other arrangement, pitting old against new is a poor reflection of what readers and writers alike actually want.

As the author Charlie Stross argued earlier this year, the most dismal fate any ebook can face is to become not only unread but unreadable: to become nothing more than a chunk of locked-down data “trapped inside a rapidly ageing, obsolescent slab of plastic and glass.”

Books need readers if they are to justify their existence. If books are to do more than simply exist, though – if they are to thrive – they also need communities of readers equipped to continue doing everything that has fuelled the best of written culture throughout the history of modern publishing: sharing, preserving, curating, re-reading.

It’s a time of twisting possibilities and profound uncertainty. Yet publishers face a simple enough choice: either they commit to creating technologies within which books are able to meet their audience’s best expectations – or someone else will build the future elsewhere.

Do you agree with Tom? If you’d like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

UK Publisher Triples Sales by Bundling

Re-post from: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/53529-uk-publisher-triples-sales-by-bundling.html

Aug 13, 2012

The Clonefiles initiative was a small experiment, involving a single imprint of Osprey Group, Angry Robot, and one indie bookstore, Mostly Books in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England. The store tested bundling by offering a free electronic edition of every one of Angry Robot's print novels it sold and promoted the venture with a window display. But the initiative could have big implications. According to reports in the Futurebook blog of The Bookseller, Clonefiles has already been so successful since it began on July 4, tripling sales of those titles, that Angry Robot is planning to roll it out to more stores.

 

Mostly Books owner Mark Thornton told Futurebook that the initiative has been a game-changer. “It has allowed us to engage with customers and break the ‘ereader taboo’ with people coming into the shop,” he said. “At Mostly Books, we assume that everyone coming into our shop has an ereader. Clonefiles allows us to start a conversation with them, and it is amazing how customers have responded. From a slightly-embarrassed ‘let’s all pretend eReaders don’t exist’ awkwardness, customers have opened up to us about their eReading experience—and in the process are actually telling us what we need to offer to stay relevant—and survive.”

Given the number of independent booksellers in the U.S., who have advocated bundling print books with e-books for several years now, Clonefiles could have an immediate impact on this side of the Pond as well. In the UK experiment, purchasers simply gave the bookstore their e-mail address and were then sent a DRM-free electronic edition. No heavy tech knowledge required. 

Making E-books Is Harder Than It Looks

Andrew Zack President, The Zack Company, Inc., and Author Coach LLC

re-post from:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-zack/making-ebooks-is-harder-t_b_1610953.html?utm_hp_ref=books

As the Department of Justice faces off with the major publishers and Apple, I want to offer up a simple statement that likely contradicts what most readers believe: Making e-books is harder than it looks.

As a literary agent, I fell victim to the same false conclusions I think most readers do, that e-books are easily produced from paper books. But that's not quite true. For older books, publishers didn't own the typesetting file (the typesetter did) and those files were not usually maintained forever. So publishers often have to physically take an old book and have it scanned and then converted using OCR -- optical character recognition -- which is far from perfect. So publishers -- good ones at least -- then have the resulting file professionally proofread for scanning errors. And in a perfect world, they also ask the author to proof it again.

Then there's the question of rights. For older books, the publisher may not have the right to use the cover art in an e-book. Granted, these would have to be much older books, as most publishers started asking for display rights a longer time ago than the Kindle has been around. These display rights are generally interpreted as allowing publishers to display the cover online or on the screen of an eBook reader. But if the publisher doesn't have those rights, it must acquire them or create a new cover. And new covers cost money.

Then there's the question of originals. Originals are books that are first appearing in eBook form and are not reprints of previously published books. And here the argument that eBooks should be cheaper and easier to produce than paper books really fails. To produce a quality eBook takes just as long and costs just as much as producing a quality paper book. Yes, you save some money on paper, printing, and binding. And you save some money on warehousing and shipping. But you incur other costs. But first let's look at the commonalities.

Both paper books and e-books require a huge investment in time and effort by the author. There is no difference there. Both require developmental editorial work. Someone has to remind the author that he's writing for an audience and not just him or herself. Both require copyediting and proofreading. Both require cover art and design. And both require a publicity and marketing effort. In all those areas, there is absolutely no difference between an original eBook and an original printed book. And when published by a traditional publisher, that process costs many thousands of dollars and all before even one copy is sold.

But e-books come with their own unique expenses in software and infrastructure or hosting. Adobe software, used to create e-books, doesn't come free. In fact, one copy of InDesign is $699. Add in Photoshop and other software required to create and edit e-book files and you'll easily be spending thousands just on the software.

Then, of course, you have to host the e-books somewhere so they can be sold. Large publishers may be able to buy servers and maintain them themselves (more tens of thousands of dollars), but many publishers and small publishers in particular use third-party hosts with experience in ecommerce and pay four- or five-figure set-up fees and then a piece of every eBook sold (twenty percent to twenty-five percent is not uncommon) via that host. Now this does not include Amazon or Barnes & Noble or other sellers. This is just for sales directly by the publisher using a third-party hosting service.

So when folks talk about how cheap e-books should be compared to paper books because there are so many cost savings, I have to shake my head in disagreement.

Recently, I became a publisher when my company, Author Coach, LLC, began publishing e-books from out-of-print titles (we also have a few originals in production) as Endpapers Press. As a small press, I'm mostly viewed in the "self-publishing" category by Amazon, B&N, etc., since I don't have hundreds of titles. Amazon keeps a bit over 30 percent of every book, because it also charges a "delivery fee" above and beyond the percentage it makes. B&N keeps about 35 percent. Google kept 48 percent on my last report.

The vast majority of publishers are paying 25 percent of the net amount received as a royalty to authors. What this means is that if you, the reader, buy an e-book from Amazon for $6.99, the publisher receives about $4.89 and from this the author receives $1.22. Let's compare that to printed books. Standard print royalties are actually based on list price. On a $6.99 paperback, the author will receive between 4 percent and 8 percent of the list price, depending on the rate negotiated when the contract was done. That's 28 cents at the low end and 56 cents on the high end. So authors are benefiting from e-books, but the e-book of a $6.99 paperback is more likely to be $4.99, as publishers recognize that readers expect eBooks to be cheaper. But they don't recognize the real deal they are getting, I think. Because the paper, printing, and binding cost of a paperback is less than one dollar, but the publisher is knocking off two dollars for the eBook. At $4.99, the author makes about 87 cents per book. Still better for the author than what he makes on the printed book, but also still a very small sum compared to what the publisher and even Amazon make. Amazon makes about $1.50 on that $4.99 eBook. The publisher makes about $2.62. So who is getting rich here? No one, really. And are readers being overcharged for e-books? No.

However, have readers been led to believe that eBooks should cost less than they do? And far less than printed books? Yes.

Two forces are at work here. On one side was Amazon's sale of e-books at prices less than it was paying publishers for those e-books. This was a classic "loss leader" to help build the market for the Kindle. Publishers responded by adopting the agency model, which required Amazon to honor the publishers' stated prices. But readers already had it in their heads that the eBook of a $25 hardcover book should be $9.99. With the introduction of the agency model, that e-book might now be a one-half to two-thirds the price of the hardcover. Still a significant discount, but also higher than $9.99. And this frustrates some readers and clearly led the DOJ to think that something must be done!
The other force at work is the self-publishing market. Amazon's CreateSpace and KDP, as well as Ingram's Lightning Source, and Barnes & Noble's PubIt! program all allow authors to self-publish at a reasonable cost. And while there are guidelines on pricing, Amazon, for example, pays the maximum royalty to authors who price their eBooks in the $2.99 to $9.99 range and requires that the eBook price be lower than the lowest-priced printed edition's price by 20% (see Amazon's terms and conditions here). This has led a lot of first-time self-publishing authors to price their books at $2.99 or $3.99 in hopes of attracting more readers. In fact, I'd venture that there are far more new books coming out down in that range than in the $14.99 to $18.99 range, where the eBooks of many new hardcovers may be priced.

So, where does this leave us? Well, for starters, it would seem that arguments that agency pricing has resulted in higher prices of e-books are lacking substance. Certainly some publishers' e-books may now have higher prices but not e-books in general. And just as publishers have always run promotions for print books, there are plenty of opportunities to grab up eBooks at lower prices or for free. And, last but not least, this entire brouhaha has led at least one publisher -- Tor Books -- to decide to open a DRM-free bookstore online. "DRM-free" means no Digital Rights Management, so the e-book will not be tied to any specific reading platform. Got an iPad and an iPhone, read the book on both. Got a Nook and a Sony Reader, read the book on both. Many readers want the option. Some will argue DRM-free will lead to greater piracy and publishers will have to increase prices to police the web more aggressively to shut down pirates, but others will argue that books are already fairly inexpensive, so pirating them electronically isn't really worth the trouble. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, the next time you pick up your eBook reader, keep in mind that just because the book doesn't weigh four pounds doesn't mean that the author didn't sweat blood and cry real tears writing that book, that an editor didn't stay up late in the night providing notes to that author to make the book better, and that copyeditors and proofreaders and other production people didn't put the same effort into that eBook as they would a printed book. And each of those individuals deserves to make a living from their hard labor. So buy e-books, pay a fair price, and enjoy!

Microsoft unveils Surface tablet to rival iPad

Microsoft's Surface tablet, unveiled by CEO Steve Ballmer at a press event, was designed in secret over the past several years.

Re-post from:http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/18/technology/microsoft-windows-tablet/index.htm
 

LOS ANGELES (CNNMoney) -- Upending one of the world's most successful business strategies over the past three decades, Microsoft has developed a Windows tablet computer of its own design.
The company on Monday unveiled the Surface, a PC tablet that runs a yet-to-be released version of its Windows operating system called Windows 8. The device is the first commercial PC that Microsoft has directly designed and sold.

The tablet features many of the now-standard tablet specs, including a 10.6 inch high-definition touchscreen and front and rear facing cameras, which all fit into a 9.3 millimeter, 1.5-pound frame.
But Surface also brings some new innovations to the tablet space. The device's cover, for instance, flips down to become a full keyboard. It features a rigid case built from magnesium, a pen that clicks into the tablet and a built-in kickstand. (Click here for our hands-on demo of the Surface.)
Microsoft is recycling -- or extending -- a brand name it has used before. The first "Microsoft Surface" device, which began shipping in in 2008, was a giant touchscreen computer aimed at retailers and other commercial customers.

Microsoft's Surface tablet will first be available on a version of Windows 8 called Windows RT. That operating system will run on microchips designed by ARM (ARMH), which are inside 95% of the world's smartphones and tablets. Another version of Surface will be designed for the fuller Windows 8 operating system, which will run on Intel chips.

Microsoft didn't give specifics, but the company said the Windows RT version will be available sometime this fall in 32- and 64-gigabyte versions and will be priced "comparably" to other tablets on the market. Apple's most basic version of the iPad retails for $499.

The full Windows 8 version will be available three months later in 64- and 128-GB versions. Microsoft plans to set its price point in the same zone as ultrabooks, which typically run around $1,000.
Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) said it will not be the exclusive manufacturer of Windows tablets.
Still, it's a radical shift for the world's largest software company.

Microsoft's licensing of Windows to PC manufacturers has been one of the most profitable businesses in technology history. The software giant's Windows division posted sales of $4.6 billion last quarter, $3 billion of which was pure profit. Microsoft's 33% profit margin was the sixth largest on the latest Fortune 500 list.
It's a strategy that is both lucrative and dominant. Windows is the operating system running on more than 90% of the world's computers and two-thirds of the planet's Internet-connected gadgets.

A move to shake up a model that successful would usually be considered a mistake. But these aren't ordinary times.

Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPad has been luring away Windows customers for two years. PC sales have flat-lined as consumers look to buy a more elegant, portable and simpler device for their everyday computing needs. Windows sales have fallen in five of the past six quarters.
Though Microsoft's "open" strategy, which lets consumers buy Windows on a wide range of devices, has been a winning tactic for decades, Apple's "we make the whole widget" plan has been far more successful over the past several years.

Apple's iPad revenue has surpassed Microsoft's Windows revenue for the past three quarters. Apple's stock market value eclipsed Microsoft's in May 2010, and the company -- the world's most valuable -- is now worth more than twice as much as its one-time archrival.

As a result, Microsoft is taking a page from Apple's handbook.
"Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen made a big bet -- a bet on software -- but it was always clear that we had to push hardware in ways that sometimes manufacturers hadn't envisioned," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at Monday's event. "We believe that any intersection between human and machine can be made better when all aspects, hardware and software, are working together."

It's not the only one looking to mirror Apple's strategy. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) last month completed a blockbuster $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, expanding its role as the designer of the Android operating system to also become a smartphone maker.

That's a hard path. Hewlett-Packard's (HPQ, Fortune 500) TouchPad tablet lasted all of a month on the market. Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry PlayBook tablet also never took off, despite a steep price cut.

Microsoft also has a very mixed track record when it comes to making gadgets.
The software giant has actually been in the hardware business for 30 years, making mostly mice and keyboards. But in 2001, the company expanded into the video game sphere, losing billions on its Xbox console before it just recently took over the top spot on the market. Its Kinect accessory, which makes controllerless gaming possible, has been a great success story.

But the Zune MP3 player never gained much traction, and Microsoft announced earlier this month that it would kill off the brand completely. It retired the Zune hardware last fall.

eBooks Top Hardcover Revenues in Q1 of 2012

By Jason Boog on June 15, 2012 11:12 AM

re-post from http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/ebooks-top-hardcover-revenues-in-q1_b53090

Net sales revenue from eBooks have surpassed hardcover books in the first quarter of 2012.

According to the March Association of American Publishers (AAP) net sales revenue report (collecting data from 1,189 publishers), adult eBook sales were $282.3 million while adult hardcover sales counted $229.6 million during the first quarter of 2012. During the same period last year, hardcover accounted for $335 million in sales while eBooks logged $220.4 million.

Here’s more from the report (Q1 2012 chart embedded above): “In Q1 2012, net sales revenue for eBooks was higher than that for Hardcover; this represents a switch of  positions in the category vs Q1 2011.  In both quarters, however, Trade Paperback remained a clear #1 in net sales revenue despite some erosion. While eBooks continue to show growth, downloaded audiobooks also keep accelerating vs last year – as some experts have said, tied to ongoing popularity and acquisition of smartphones and mobile devices.”

At the same time, the YA/Children’s category saw hardcover growth. Hardcover revenue in this category was $187.7 million for Q1, up nearly 67 percent. eBook sales in the same category skyrocketed almost 233 percent to $64.3 million.

B&N: DOJ e-book suit endangers consumers, bookstores and copyrighted expression

By Laura Hazard Owen Jun. 7, 2012, 9:01am 

re-post from : http://paidcontent.org/2012/06/07/barnes-and-noble-doj/

In a complaint sent to the Department of Justice this morning, Barnes & Noble says that the DOJ’s proposed settlement with HarperCollins, Hachette and Simon & Schuster for allegedly colluding to fix e-book prices “represents an unprecedented effort” to become “a regulator of a nascent technology that it little understands” — and “the national economy, our nation’s culture, and the future of copyrighted expression” are at stake. In fact, B&N argues, e-book and hardcover prices have fallen under agency pricing.”

“You’re going to end up having choice control from a server farm in Washington state,” Barnes & Noble’s general counsel Gene DeFelice told me, referring to Amazon.

“In essence, the proposed settlement substitutes one alleged cartel for a new cartel on the industry, albeit one run by the [DOJ],” B&N says. The bookstore chain’s complaint joins others sent to the DOJ during the settlement commenting period, which ends on June 25.

The proposed settlement, B&N says in a brief filed by its in-house counsel and law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, “warrants an exacting review because of its potential impact on the national economy and culture, including the future of copyrighted expression and bookselling in general, not only electronic books.” And “many millions of Americans, as well as all levels of the distribution chain for books (from authors to publishers to distributors, and especially brick-and-mortar stores), stand to be affected by this case’s resolution.”

B&N argues that the proposed settlement is a government action “analogous to a cartel imposing a detailed business model on publishers.” It would transform the DOJ “into a regulator” and would “injure innocent third parties, including Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores, authors, and non-defendant publishers; hurt competition in an emerging industry; and ultimately harm consumers.”

The punishment doesn’t fit the crime

B&N says “the Government has responded to purported price-fixing by implementing government controls of the market, rather than punishing the alleged colluders.” B&N argues that the course of action outlined by the settlement doesn’t fit with the DOJ’s accusations, writing, “if the aim here is to end collusion, the proposed settlement should enjoin collusion and punish the purported colluders” rather than requiring them “to terminate their current agency agreements and then forbidding those same parties from entering legal agency agreements” for two years. The proposed settlement “punishes only third parties and consumers” and “seeks to substitute regulation for market forces.”

“The national economy, our nation’s culture, and the future of copyrighted expression”

The Tunney Act “requires a court to reject a proposed final judgment that is not in the ‘public interest,’” the brief says, and “requires that the Government present some factual basis for the proposed settlement remedies.” The DOJ has failed to do so, B&N alleges, and so it “is asking is that this Court not, through the adoption of the regulatory provisions of the proposed settlement, prevent Barnes & Noble from agreeing with individual publishers on a business model that is the product of bilateral good faith negotiations that both parties agree are in their best interests.

Pre-agency, “Barnes & Noble was losing substantial money”

Barnes & Noble says that before publishers enacted agency pricing, it could not compete against Amazon: “[a]s a result of Amazon’s pricing (which priced most bestselling books sold by Barnes & Noble below Barnes & Noble’s, and Amazon’s, direct costs), Barnes & Noble was losing substantial money in an effort to compete with Amazon’s pricing, and was unable to gain significant market share.”

E-book prices and hardcover prices fell

Under agency, “publishers have engaged in vigorous competition on price, which, contrary to the superficial pricing analysis in the complaints before the Court, has resulted in lower e-book prices,” B&N says, presenting a chart that shows “average e-book price (weighed by units sold)” between August 2009 and February 2012. Barnes & Noble previously shared this data with the DOJ but is revealing it to the public for the first time.

Furthermore, Barnes & Noble says that “hardback retail prices” have also declined under agency.

Under agency, “innovation has flourished.” Without it, competition dies

“Agency has encouraged new participants to invest in e-books,” B&N says, noting it “has introduced multiple versions” of the Nook” and launched “a self-publishing platform, PubIt!; and lending and Read-in-Store programs.” Competition “led to Amazon responding with improved e-readers of its own.”

The proposed settlement would “harm Barnes & Noble and other brick-and-mortar e-book distributors by leaving them where they were two years ago:  a dominant player will set uncompetitive prices that all other potential competitors must meet to compete,” B&N says. “Unable to compete with below-cost pricing, e-book distributors will drop from the e-book space,” and consumers will be left with “limited choice in where they buy their books: online retailers such as Amazon or large, multipurpose brick-and-mortar stores such as Costco, Wal-Mart, and Target, which offer only mass-market selections.”