Book Stores

[taming]

I now live in a community with two used book stores and two chain stores--both part of Chapters-Indigo. For 30+ years though I lived in St. Louis, Missouri where a great little indie store, Left Bank Books, was a major player in my reading life. I still look at their staff picks fairly regularly, and, oddly enough, even though I have not lived there for ten years, some of the same staff are there.

I'm greatly heartened to see the various things they are doing to be successful in this new environment. I hope book stores like this succeed.

[HarryT]

I don't know what things are like in the US, but in the UK the majority of small independent bookshops have closed in the last 20 years; they just can't complete with the big chains like Waterstones, and even less with Amazon. The only ones who are still doing well tend to be the specialist shops. I have a friend who runs a specialist SF and Media bookshop. He has customers all over the world, who come to him for his knowledge, not his prices.

[LivelyWriter]

Originally Posted by Fbone

For those with epub devices, a Border's closure would give us one less retailer to purchase ebooks.

And it would most likely hurt Kobo ereader sales.

Indigo's 4th quarter ends around May 31st so we won't know until then their 2010 sales numbers.

I considered that when I bought my Kobo reader, but as long as I can upload .ePub files from other vendors I am okay.

I imagine, too, Kobo has a contingency plan in the even Borders folds.