Quote:
Originally Posted by Solicitous
There are two issues I find with book stores.
(1) The prices are outrageous. When a customer can either buy a book from the bookstore or wait 1-2 weeks for delivery and buy it from an online store (ie: bookdepository) for half the price, something is drastically wrong with the local market. If the book is that important economically speaking the desire for the book then and there outweighs the cost you'd buy it, if not you buy it online.
(2) Majority of the book stores in my state have a limited number of titles. They usually push the latest and greatest, but that isn't what I always want. Most stores will order it in for you with a 1-2 week wait, so in that case why not buy online and have it delivered to your door at half the price rather than waiting the same period of time and having to go back into the store and pay full retail?
I don't think ebooks are killing the old book stores, it is big companies that are killing them. Look at every retail market, smaller operations are closing to make way for big companies who are heavily in debt/financed. One small turn in the economy suddenly puts pressure on these big companies and they look for a blame. There used to be where I live a number of hardware stores, all individually owned, now there is one big private hardware store and the rest have been bought out and taken over by big chains (actually a number closed because they could not compete).
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I usually order new books from Amazon now. If I'm not in a hurry to get a particular book, I'll put it in my wish list and use it to pad out an under $25 order so I can get the free shipping. I usually go to a new bookstore only when the chances of a book I want RIGHT NOW being in stock are reasonably good, I want to browse through books on a particular topic to ensure the one I select has the content I want/need, or to kill time by browsing through the bargain books. I quit ordering books through bookstores quite a few years ago when I ordered a book at a local Borders. They said it would take two weeks to get the book. Three weeks later, I got tired of waiting for the book, ordered it from Amazon, and received it four days later. A week later, Borders called to say the book was in.