Also requires the proprietors to be uninterested in earning a decent living...
Run a specialist and you get treated as a fount of all knowledge re the subject and then the "customers" go hunting for the best deal and buy from Amazon... and I speak from experience having worked for a specialist outlet for over three years and managed one for nearly four. Can only compete on specialist services not price and at the end became a free source of information expected but not supported by purchases...
Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
In 1985 I moved to Atlanta, and was delighted to find a small shop called The Science Fiction & Mystery Book Store.
It was operated by two guys. One knew everything about one genre, and the other about the other.
It was a small shop, but they seemed to have everything in print for those two genres. That's all they sold. No books of any other type.
Assuming that the shop is in an appropriate location, I think that a mom & pop bookstore can succeed by matching Amazon's inventory of a particular subject. And Mom or Pop would have to be a knowledgeable enthusiast of that subject.
|