Brick and mortar stores are about to be roadkill. Chains are consolidating and closing stores. B&N meanwhile lost 4-5% in same-store sales in 2009, and can't take much more of that.
Selling other stuff (coffee, toys etc) is at best going to prolong the inevitable, at worst damage the brand and confuse the customer. Doing "anything" to get people into a store smacks of desperation, and doesn't always help -- cf Starbucks needing to
drop some of the superfluous extras as their core business takes a recessionary and/or over-exposed hit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by corona
Why can't you buy physical manifestations of e-books, as in an e-book on a cheap-as-dirt memory card and packaged in some appealing way?
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Because that results in the worst of both worlds.
One reason why ebooks can be cheaper than paper is precisely because you don't have manufacturing costs, shipping costs, inventory costs, returns or physical losses from theft.
More importantly, you lose the instant gratification, the ability to stock 600,000+ titles that you can access directly on the device, and ubiquity of points-of-sale. With a physical object I have to go to a store to get it; with an ebook, any time I have my reader on, I'm "in the store."
Or, just look at music (again). CD's were
precisely that type of object -- a small, light, compact, digital music medium. And at this point, music stores are dead meat. Big chains are gone and independents are struggling; and it's only going to get worse. I wonder why...?
