Re: “SFBC shutting down”

On 1/3/2025 4:57 PM, Ahasuerus wrote:

On 1/3/2025 5:19 PM, Garrett Wollman wrote:

In article <vl9mo7$3fsk$1@dont-email.me>,
Lynn McGuire  <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
>

I am surprised SFBC lasted this long.  I have not ordered a book from it
since the early 1970s.  I think that “Dune” was the last book I bought
from it.

>
I wrote a blog post more than a decade ago about how the book-club
business model no longer made any sense, and I am quite surprised that
it took the private-equity investors so long to come to the same
conclusion.

 Certain business models can take a long time to be phased out. For example, telegram services are still not quite dead (see this list of companies -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Worldwide_use_of_telegrams_by_country). AT&T shut down its 411 service just 2 years ago -- see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2022-11-08/at-t-to-end-411-directory-saying-farewell-to- telephone-operator-era
 I wonder how paper books will fare over the next 50 years.

I would say that over half of dead tree books that I buy from Big River are POD (print on demand).  I suspect that MMPB is going away and will be replaced with POD trade paperbacks for the novelty of them.
The real question is, is POD going away ?  The POD machines are reputedly high maintenance and not totally automated, yet.  From what I can tell, Big River has over a dozen POD machines across the USA which cost well over a million USA Dollars each.
Lynn