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Originally Posted by Turtle91
Yes, very expensive, per square foot. So, decrease from 25 copies per book, to 5...and you free up book storage/display space...
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You also increase inventory and shipping costs, and will have high staffing costs. You risk running out of popular books. You cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, offer as many titles as a big store. You also need 2 or 3 times as many stores to generate as much revenue as 1 big store.
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Originally Posted by Turtle91
...not sure what you are saying...are you arguing FOR them keeping ALL of their stores open, or what??
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I'm saying there are costs involved with closing large stores, and replacing them with small stores, which advocates of the "switch to small stores!" are ignoring.
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Originally Posted by Turtle91
Isn't that happening already??
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People do browse in stores and buy elsewhere -- but if it gets to the point where the stores aren't selling books, then they cannot afford to keep the stores open. The stores are still making a profit, whereas the Nook business is not.
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Originally Posted by Turtle91
The nook as a reading device is not very good...it's not surprising it is not doing well....so what are you recommending??
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The Nook is fine, and even beat Amazon to the punch a few times -- e.g. color LCD reader, integrated book light. The Glow got excellent reviews.
What they could do is:
• Turn the Nook business around ASAP
• Use the college stores to leverage education ebooks
• Trim the stores a little bit, but put more effort into keeping them profitable
• Don't close a bunch of big stores and open little ones
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Originally Posted by Turtle91
If they see something they like, they can easily download the book from their very own....
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That process is already as easy as it's going to get.
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Originally Posted by Turtle91
...yes....again, not sure where you are going with this.
Are you saying that you read every sample of every ebook on an internet site to determine what you want to read...and therefore you don't walk around in stores?
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Mostly, yes. I'll read reviews, read articles about books, hear radio programs that discuss the books, and so forth. The only stores I browse in are specialty stores.
What could keep the stores open is that people do still like paper books, like to browse, and people like to give physical things as gifts, and the indies will stick around as specialty and/or used shops. A handful of books also still work better on paper than digital, e.g. art books, cookbooks and technical manuals.
So, what may happen is the stores will not go into free-fall; they'll stabilize. The problem is that if too many bookstores close, then patronizing them will be inconvenient and fall out of people's normal routines. The heavy readers will grumble but switch to buying online, and the casual readers will buy their 1 book a year at Target or Walmart.