After Gutenberg.

Two big news stories in publishing this week will alter the landscape for authors, publishers and book retailers. The first: Google’s announcement that by year’s end it will kill the platform that allows Independent book retailers to sell eBooks through the Google store.

Story two: the news that the Justice Department is taking on Apple for possible price collusion with publishers. Happening concurrently, the two events have a combined impact on the book world; one that will only make things harder for publishers and independent retailers .

Independent retailers, the “Indy” book stores, play an important but little-heralded retailing role. While Indys do not account for many eBook sales, less than 1% of total 2010 eBook revenues, they provide a critical service to authors, publishers, readers and book designers. The Indy book stores are in effect the display case for every author’s book…and a showcase for a publishers’ wares. For local authors, they further provide a venue for book talks. For Book TV, they provide locations for shooting TV interviews with local writers.

The coming loss of the Google sales platform will be bad enough for Indy stores. But the Justice Department’s action will untie the agency pricing model. That in turn will only make Amazon even more monopolistic and cutthroat. Brick and mortar retailers already can not compete on the slim margins that Amazon can live on. Even Amazon itself – with its world-wide distribution centers and warehouses “manned” by robots – is barely breaking even. Imagine how hard it is for the Indy book stores to make a buck.

So what? Why not let a more efficient company like Amazon get bigger and lower our book prices? Isn’t that good for book readers? Who cares if the Independent book stores go under?

What’s ignored is the important function the brick and mortar book stores provide.  What happens when the major publishers have fewer stores that readers can visit and discover new books? Can a reader’s experience at a virtual bookstore provide as much opportunity to discover new books as, say, even a Barnes & Noble? I’m not so sure.

Look, I’m a techie so I’m not waxing nostalgic about the good old book store days. I love the fast-paced changes in digital publishing. But it’s important that publishers and authors recognize the impact of what’s about to happen as a result of Google’s and the DOJ’s actions. Authors and publishers are losing the important opportunity to showcase product.

As a book consumer and an author, I love to shop Amazon. But at the same I love to browse the shelves at local bookstores and so I try to buy from them too. Without the local bookstore, authors lose an important outlet for getting discovered and for selling their books.

Is it enough to say we can depend on metadata and keywords for marketing – when our towns have too few book stores left?

Typical fees are $5 to $10 a person to attend book events for stores that adopt the new practice, though many wave the ticket price if attendees buy a book.

According to several book store owners, the new practice was instituted in response to consumers who think of a book store as a library, not a business, and who browse with the intent of buying later from on line competitors.

Brick and mortar book retailers also say that the explosion of eBook sales, purchased on-line, is another reason stores need to charge for events. Some Indy book stores are fighting back by charging for author events, arguing that book stores are a business, not a showroom for on-line competitors.

Ecommerce book retailers often enjoy the additional competitive benefit of not having to charge sales tax for book sales, although Amazon especially, is battling several states that want to change this and impose a tax on Amazon sales to residents of their state.

The New York Times article notes that some stores obtain as much as 10 percent of store revenue from book events, holding as many as 200 a year. According to the Times, both retailers and readers polled are divided on the new practice. The largest chain retailer, Barnes & Noble, has so far declined to charge for book events.