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.
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They can match Amazon's inventory on a particular subject. They
cannot match Amazon's pricing.
The "mom and pop" shops are an endangered species because they
can't compete on price.
Specialty bookstores like that stand the best chance of survival (and there are some specialty shops around me, though not SF or mystery), but it will be an uphill slog for them, too.
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Dennis