This is something I never saw coming. You’d figure that most people with a new iPad would be downloading adult fiction books, perhaps nonfiction spur-of-the-moment purchases. But children’s books? For picture books, I guess with the iPad’s color display, the illustrations might be rendered just as well, if not better than the printed books.
Apple sold more than 300,000 iPads—and users downloaded more than one million apps and more than 250,000 ebooks from the iBookstore. Parents immediately started snapping up picture book apps from Apple's online store. In fact, children's stories held six of the top 10 paid iPad book-app sales spots as of press time.
via The iPad Meets the Children’s Book – 2010-04-08 20:54:00 | Publishers Weekly.
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In order to start my own shoppe (a used bookstore with a few new titles each season), I had to wait until I didn’t require a ‘living wage.’ Even then, I got chest pains when I borrowed the $130,000 for mortgage, and start-up money (and enough to float me the upward to three YEARS) before I began to see any profits (and why something like 75% of businesses fail in the first couple of years and more in the first five). I never took money out for myself (although the write-off make it possible to survive), and I started seeing money the end of the first year, and actually got a minor-league ‘paycheck’ (most of us call it a draw on the business, rather than a true paycheck because when you have to pay bills first, on the list, you, the owner, are last (this means employees get paid first, very frustrating).
A dream is exactly that. I had the dream for thirty years (maybe from the first day I walked into the used book department of a larger bookstore!), but actually living the dream is another thing.
Good luck to her, but the reality in this economy is that even when you could broach a lender for start-up funds in days gone by, a high-risk business, which is what most people who start gift/book/and even small restaurants are, are SOOO high risk, banks won’t front the money that is almost certain to be lost.
What I would recommend for this woman is to ’sub-let’ space in an established business. Maybe a struggling business like a gift shoppe, or maybe a small cafe, and get to live the dream…on a much smaller scale (using their own ‘living wage’ paycheck to front the start-up and up to the five years it will take to ‘build a name.’)
I now have a name, and I get ten times the customers I had in the beginning months (don’t ask, but things happen in business that keep you from the estimated growth you planned on. Mine was urban construction THREE times in the ten years we’ve had our operation).
IF it were not for online, I would be gone. And unlike the online sellers who have no brick and mortar, I put almost every last cent back into the business to keep this battle ship afloat (in this economy it is definitely a battle to remain in business).
“I,” too would do only online and pocket more of the profits, but alas, in this economy I can’t sell the building I bought (so I’d never have to pack and move the books and shelving, as several of my compatriots in the business have had to do more than ONCE in the ten years I have been here). So, I’m stuck paddling, as the book business evolves (with Kindle and the iPad).
I don’t regret my enterprise, but what this young woman needs to know, when you work for yourself, the old joke is you only work half-time. Whatever 12 hours a day you want!
IF I had it to do over again knowing what I know now, I am not sure I would have an open store. However, I do love books, and I do love my job!
Debbie
Hi Steve, I take it you are not familiar with the Leap Pad? About in 2000, this came out, an electronic gizmo with picture book the child touches the pen to the words and it reads aloud. Not quite a Kindle for kids but half way there. Parents bought them by the boatload (unit $50 about) plus each book was $15. I feel it tapered in interest due to the lack of variety. There were some focused more on learning concepts (colors, counting etc.). Geared toward K-3 grades.
They also made one for even younger kids 1-2 years old “My First Leap Pad”.
Myself and other parents spend hundreds of dollars on these things.
There is also a website with books from around the world where for free you can view picture books in full color on the screen and turn the page just like a book. Sorry forget the site.