I don't know how it is industry-wide in terms of computers, but these days they're quite prevalent. I think it's a combination of having bookstore owners who may predate common computer usage, and something that's less to do with bookstores on their own and more to do with people-at-work in general: updating and upgrading changes the system.
For a great example, look at the most recent version of the MSIE browser -- it's a radical redesign from the previous versions. It's freaking annoying, not because it doesn't work (it does, adequately, from what I can tell), and not because it's not a decent design. It's because it's different. There's really so very little that's truly changed in bookselling from a hundred years ago to now: log the sale, note the tax, give change, pack book, wave to customer, order replacement book, log intake, put on shelf, wait for next customer.
But software designers don't just want functional, they want what they call 'features' but what I call 'stuff we thought would look cool but is going to make it ten times harder for you to figure out where crap is'. They're just bugs that went to college, if you ask me. So in an industry like retail where the fundamentals haven't changed all that much, I think people get recalcitrant -- and perhaps these days, moreso, because even the fancy software isn't actually increasing sales, I'd bet. It's not making you more efficient; it's making you relearn the same crap, like the new MSIE does: you've spent X time always going to the upper-left to hit this icon and it's NOT THERE ANYMORE.
(It doesn't matter if it didn't make sense where it was before; you learned that's where it was, and that's what you got used to. Improving things to be more logical sounds good on paper but in practice... just freaking leave it alone.)
If I were dispensing advice to booksellers today, I'd start by suggesting that as long as they do have a computer in-house, that a) here's a CD-rom with all the current titles, set up like a quasi-html program so people can browse in controlled environment. Then b) if someone wants a title, here is nifty small application that lets them select the desired title, and transfer it via USB to the person's Sony Reader or Kindle or whatever. When/if more readers start asking (like me) for PDF versions to read on our computer sans handhelds, then booksellers would likely respond, looking for ways to do that, like burning mini-CDs or whatever.
But to throw it all on a shopkeeper as one fait-accompli, man, no, that'd be a surefire disaster. You can change things, but it's got to be incremental. I think that's part of what some of the bigger businesses forget sometimes: they see the bottom line so much that they change like crazy and end up with inefficient, pissed-off employees -- while the smaller stores get reactionary and won't change at all, seeing how badly the big stores are handling their change. No one meets in the middle.
*cough*
Sorry, sometimes I get a little carried away. Heh.
no subject
Date: 31 Jan 2009 03:47 am (UTC)For a great example, look at the most recent version of the MSIE browser -- it's a radical redesign from the previous versions. It's freaking annoying, not because it doesn't work (it does, adequately, from what I can tell), and not because it's not a decent design. It's because it's different. There's really so very little that's truly changed in bookselling from a hundred years ago to now: log the sale, note the tax, give change, pack book, wave to customer, order replacement book, log intake, put on shelf, wait for next customer.
But software designers don't just want functional, they want what they call 'features' but what I call 'stuff we thought would look cool but is going to make it ten times harder for you to figure out where crap is'. They're just bugs that went to college, if you ask me. So in an industry like retail where the fundamentals haven't changed all that much, I think people get recalcitrant -- and perhaps these days, moreso, because even the fancy software isn't actually increasing sales, I'd bet. It's not making you more efficient; it's making you relearn the same crap, like the new MSIE does: you've spent X time always going to the upper-left to hit this icon and it's NOT THERE ANYMORE.
(It doesn't matter if it didn't make sense where it was before; you learned that's where it was, and that's what you got used to. Improving things to be more logical sounds good on paper but in practice... just freaking leave it alone.)
If I were dispensing advice to booksellers today, I'd start by suggesting that as long as they do have a computer in-house, that a) here's a CD-rom with all the current titles, set up like a quasi-html program so people can browse in controlled environment. Then b) if someone wants a title, here is nifty small application that lets them select the desired title, and transfer it via USB to the person's Sony Reader or Kindle or whatever. When/if more readers start asking (like me) for PDF versions to read on our computer sans handhelds, then booksellers would likely respond, looking for ways to do that, like burning mini-CDs or whatever.
But to throw it all on a shopkeeper as one fait-accompli, man, no, that'd be a surefire disaster. You can change things, but it's got to be incremental. I think that's part of what some of the bigger businesses forget sometimes: they see the bottom line so much that they change like crazy and end up with inefficient, pissed-off employees -- while the smaller stores get reactionary and won't change at all, seeing how badly the big stores are handling their change. No one meets in the middle.
*cough*
Sorry, sometimes I get a little carried away. Heh.