Bookstore in a Box

With the advent of electronic book readers a few years back, there was a lot of talk that e-books would eventually do to paper books what the iTunes system is doing to physical copies of records and CDs – someday everyone would just have a discrete electronic device that would have access to a huge library of electronic books in the space of a single volume. So far that hasn’t happened, thanks in part to the relatively high cost of both the reader devices and the e-books themselves, and in part to the reliability of actual hard-copy books. In a world where you have to worry about backing up almost everything repeatedly, it’s nice to own books in a format that never needs batteries and ignores magnets…

Now there’s a new device coming out that may give the old-fashioned book a new lease on life. A story featured on the Guardian UK Online site details a new technology called an Espresso Book Machine which is making its London debut this week. Essentially, it’s a high-speed automated printing system that can print, bind and cover a book in just a few minutes, connected up to a database of text files that currently includes about 500,000 books. If the company that makes it is successful in expanding their text library to the 1,000,000-plus books they’re currently talking about, that would give them the equivalent of over 26 MILES of bookshelves, or roughly 50 conventional bookstores worth, in the space needed for a large photocopier…

To me, that isn’t even the most mind-blowing aspect of the technology, however. Instead, let me call to your attention that not only can this device sell you any one of a million or so books, anytime you like, but unless the machine runs out of paper this (effectively) infinitely-large bookstore will NEVER RUN OUT OF A SINGLE TITLE…

Sorry for shouting, but anybody who has ever worked in Retail (or supply) can tell you that this is the single hardest aspect of running any retail outlet, and most other kinds of business, in fact. It’s certainly my single biggest pet peeve with conventional bookstores, which tend to have hundreds or thousands of feet worth of cheesy, ghostwritten celebrity vehicles and romance novels, but generally don’t carry even the classics in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Detective Fiction or any one of a number of other subjects I’d want to purchase – and when they do, are always out of whatever I wanted…

Then there’s the Independent Publisher effect. Until now, the main things preventing self-publishing from becoming a viable industry have been marketing and distribution; a lone author (or even a small publishing company) generally can’t afford to advertise their offerings to enough people to make any difference, and there’s no way for them to convince bookstores to give up the shelf space for their books. But with unlimited shelf space, and the ability to generate buzz over the Internet, this gizmo could do for obscure authors what the Radiohead Gambit did for musical acts…

It remains to be seen if these machines can turn things around for the brick-and-mortar bookstore, of course. As amazing as this device is, it’s still not as convenient as having books delivered right to your door by Amazon, and it’s expensive enough that most small booksellers won’t be able to afford one, which means it’s mainly going to be good for the big retail chains. But for the moment, it looks as if the humble book may be getting a new lease on life…

Pirates vs. Lawyers

Okay, I know the ongoing Internet meme is “Pirates vs. Ninjas,” but the fact is that if there are any ninjas running around in the 21st Century you’re really not likely to find out anything of substance about them in a business blog. Pirates versus lawyers, however, was probably inevitable from the moment an American-flagged vessel was taken and any member of the crew subjected to any inconvenience, let alone harm…

To the surprise of, apparently, absolutely no one, a member of the crew from the Maersk Alabama is suing both the shipping line and the company that provided the crew for subjecting him to an unsafe work environment, not having armed security aboard, not sending the ship on a safer route to its destination, and so on. I call it to your attention not to mock either the companies or the crew, but to point out that this is another one of those cases that is more complicated than it looks…

On the one hand, pirate attacks off the Horn of Africa are not exactly a new occurrence. In fact, the Alabama herself was attacked on at least two prior occasions on the same voyage before the pirates managed to board her successfully. This has prompted several nations to being regular anti-piracy patrols through that part of the shipping lanes, and some companies (notably the Italian cruise line mentioned a few posts ago) to start putting armed security guards aboard their ships. So it’s no stretch to imagine that both companies already knew the situation was a hazard and did nothing about it because of cost considerations. On the other hand, the fact that the crew had been holding safety meetings “every month for the last three years” (according to the crewman bringing the lawsuit) to discuss the situation suggests that they already knew they were going into harm’s way…

So who’s right here? Should the company have made greater efforts to protect the crew of the Alabama before they sent her back into pirate-infested waters? Should the crew have realized that the company was sending them into harm’s way and either demanded hazard pay or just quit and gotten safer jobs? Do we criticize the companies for trying to make more money by not going around the Somali coast and/or paying for armed guards, or do we call the crew on knowing the job was risky and then complaining when the risks actually came home to roost? More to the point, what would you do if it was your company – or a job that you otherwise liked and wanted to keep?

It sounds like some poor jury in Texas is in for a rough time of it. Personally, I’m just grateful that the closest we have to either pirates or lawyers on my current gig is the Law School across the street. And if there are any ninjas lurking around the Upper Midwest these days, I really don’t want to know about them…

The Obvious Approach

Like most of you, I’ve been watching the Somali pirate saga developing, and wondering what could be done about it. Getting the Somali government to do anything about these relatively low-tech ocean-going thieves is probably futile, since the pirates are held in higher regard than any of the countries demanding their suppression, both by what passes for an official government in Somalia, and also by the Somali people themselves. Generally, these efforts have resulted in the “government” agencies siding with the pirates…

Unfortunately, so far at least, simply avoiding the area would still be more expensive than paying the increase insurance premiums (and occasionally ransom) in order to get your ships back. And frankly, asking the shipping companies to make less money because of the principle of the thing ignores the reality of business: shipping companies exist to make money, not hold firmly to their principles. The only way the situation is going to change is either for the various navy units (ours and those of other nations who are fed up with these criminals) to hunt down the pirates or for someone to come up with a lower-cost solution to the problem…

I was therefore very glad to read about an Italian cruise line that appears to have found just such an answer. In a story being reported by The Associated Press, it would appear that a group of Somali pirates attempted to attack one of the line’s passenger ships on Saturday, only to be driven off by gunfire and water cannon fire from the ship’s Israeli security personnel, who had in fact been hired for just such a contingency. While the security force was limited to handguns and fire hoses, it’s difficult to climb a ladder while someone is shooting at you (or blasting at you with a hose), and the pirates eventually gave up…

It remains to be seen if this will work out on a larger scale, however. Putting extra personnel on a cargo ship isn’t likely to be cost-effective (there are too many ships), and the various shipping companies have to worry about violating local gun laws when their ships make port. Still, I can’t help wishing that we could put small Marine detachments aboard every U.S.-flagged ship that passes through the area for a year or so. Or even every 10th or 12th one. With orders to kill any pirate who comes into range and sink their miserable little boats, too. I suspect that as soon as word got around, no one would be attacking anything flying a U.S. flag…

Alternately, I suppose, various countries could just contract the work out to the Israelis, who would probably be happy for both the positive foreign exchange and the public relations benefits. It has the potential for huge savings, improved international relations, and safer high seas travel, with the Somali pirates as the only losers, even potentially. And it would certainly be cheaper than the 60-ship international naval task force the experts are saying would be necessary to actually patrol the sea lanes in that part of the world…

Of course, the fact that the cruise line hired Israeli security personnel because “they are the best trained” is an excellent example of how a brand name works – in this case, the “brand” being an entire nation of people who have earned their reputation for being tough customers who don’t put up with much. But that’s a post for another day…

Rules vs. Image

Back in Elementary School, most of us learned the old saw about not judging a book by its cover, and before the end of Middle School, most of us had suffered at least one embarrassing lesson on the subject. But for some reason this doesn’t keep people from assuming that all lawyers are dishonest, all doctors are arrogant pricks who like playing god, all politicians are amoral mercenaries without a moral conviction anywhere in their soul, all police officers like to “put the boot in” once in a while, or that all bloggers talk too much…

All right; I’ll give you that last one. But this syndrome probably does account for the outrage coming out of Knoxville, TN over a disallowed insurance payout because of a pre-existing condition. Everyone who hears the story is just assuming that the insurance company is just screwing the policy holder out of money by invoking a little-known, seldom-used clause somewhere in the fine print. Which they are, of course; what makes this case special is that the policy in question is a life insurance policy…

There’s a story being reported ABC News Online about a man who died after being gunned down by “unknown assailants” under circumstances the police consider indicative of illegal activity. The insurance company is claiming that since they require disclosure of a customer’s medical condition before they will write a policy, and the dead man failed to disclose that he had hepatitis C, he was in breach of their contact and the policy is void. The widow is suing, claiming that neither the deceased nor she knew about his illness, and the company is just trying to screw them out of the money by invoking the “pre-existing condition” claim…

What makes this story remarkable is that we’re hearing about it at all. Normally, this would be an extremely dull civil case, in which the insurance company attempts to produce evidence that the policy holder did, in fact, know he had hepatitis C before signing the paperwork swearing that he didn’t, and is thus committing fraud (and perjury) by doing so. The policy holder’s estate would attempt to prove that he didn’t know any such thing, although this is difficult (since you can’t prove a negative) and they’d probably have to settle (or drop the matter) if the insurance company could prove its case. Particularly if Tennessee turns out to be one of the states in which you are responsible for whatever you contact to do (or not do), regardless of whether you understand the contract…

In this case, however, we have all of the makings of a sensational news story: a poor widow, a man being shot in the back, and an evil large company refusing to pay off on a life insurance claim because of hepatitis C when that’s clearly not what killed the victim. Never mind that the man had “a lengthy criminal record that included drug trafficking, burglary, vandalism and public drunkenness” according to public records. Never mind that the policy was still in its conditional phase, and the company was perfectly within its rights to cancel if they had reason to believe that the policy holder was lying to them. Never mind that the contract between the man and the company required him to certify not that he believed himself to be healthy, but that (under penalty of perjury as well as the cancellation of the policy) he actually WAS healthy…

The facts of the case are that the insurance company would have cancelled the policy the moment they found out about the hepatitis C, that the policy holder wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on after making claims about his health that were not true, and no one would have bothered reporting on it – if it happened any time before the AIG scandal and all of the other events that have made the insurance industry into one of the most hated sectors in American commerce…