E-Bookmarks Killing Traditional Bookmark Industry
It’s the eleventh hour for physical bookmarking devices, experts predict. Bookmark sales have been on a steep decline for the last four decades; industry insiders say, “...sad middle-aged ladies who buy Kindles for reading BDSM erotica will be the last nail in the bookmark coffin.”
Mondy Chalmers, a bookmark making veteran, feels hopeless. “We used to think the biggest threat to our profits were using old reciepts or just dog-earring the pages--we couldn’t have been more wrong.”
Chalmers is the owner of a silk screen machine used primarily for printing bookmarks for over 25 years.
Freelance bookmaker, Jim Paybe is worried about his fiscal stability. “It used to be a honest living, laminating pieces of cardstock then designing an interesting patterns or cats to fit. Just add a decorative tassel, and you’d make a dependable couple thousand bucks every couple months. Now, you can’t even break even.”
“Now, everybody’s just a hobbiest,” said Paybe.
Physical bookmark specialty stores have already died without (almost) anyone noticing. Former store-owner, Todd Dodson explained, “We had to close Save-Your-Place the first and only combination specialty bookmark store, line and que insurance agency, and Born-Again Christian ministry, in all of America! While plenty of folks said we closed because we had our hands in too many baskets, they are wrong. Really, it was the banking crisis! Also, e-books!” [ed note: Save-Your-Place actually closed in 2003, well before the e-reader boom or the banking crisis].
“Things will never be like they used to.” Dodson cried. “I got into the game during the Garfield Golden Age. It seemed like America would never get enough of that snarky, homosexual cat...Nermal! Why!?” Dodson declined to answer any more questions and asked us to leave his car.
But it's not all bad news because thankfully bookmark preservation lives on thanks to e-bookmarks. E-bookmarks are hip, flashy, customizable, and utilize GIF technology--unlike their physical media counterparts.
Amazon.com is currently testing, “...ways to develop e-bookmarks that suggests purchasable content-places in other content-texts, similar to content-places found in your top-rated content-place from the texts you’ve already read and rated.” Certain to improve content reading experiences.
And e-bookmarks are being embraced by collectors.
“Oh yeah, I love [e-bookmarks].The best part about them is, I can keep my collection with me where ever I go. Now, when I tell people I collect bookmarks, I show them exactly what I mean--unless they walk away, I guess,” said Josh Sneed.
Sneed later corrected, via fax, that he thought he was being interviewed about “bookmarking” pages of GIF collections on the internet--not devices used to mark a reader’s progress in an e-book, adding “I don’t even read e-books. I just love GIFs.”
Interviewed bookstore employees don’t remember the last time they sold a bookmark, suspecting physical bookmark's high price, often inexplicably costing more than five dollars.
Tiffany Stirf, book-sales professional for over 13 years explained, “I’ve worked at Boarders, Books-a-Million, Barnes & Nobel--all in support of my self-published, erotic-poetry...[and] I never sold anyone a bookmark. I sometimes noticed they’d go missing from their rack, but I assumed they were getting shoplifted by teens looking for cheap thrills--speaking of, Cheap Thrills is, coincidentally, the title of my third chapbook, Cheap Thrills, only available through Midnight Moonlight Press...” [Cheap Thrills is currently available for purchase in the Amazon Kindle Marketplace, $2.99.]
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