Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
This is a good story, but you left out the most important key to staying in business: having the government prohibit price discounting on books. This leads to competition on service, etc., all of which is good - but there's no competition on prices.
So this is not really relevant to what might happen in the US.
Books from Amazon in the US are 30-40% cheaper than those in independent bookstores. That, plus the better selection, is the fundamental reason why independent bookstores won't be making a comeback even if chain bookstores went away.
|
This a yes/no thing. There are ways to circumvent the government prohibit prices and it is done. They sell the books as faulty even if they aren't. But still you have a point as for bestsellers this does not happen.
Anyway, there are good reasons to buy a bit more expensive sometimes, at least for me. My Mom buys there too and she loves history. One of the staff is married to an historian and whenever I ask her for a gift for my mother she asks her husband and then calls me to recommend something. This service and the possibility to have a 110% loved gift is worth nearly every price. So my mother has a different favourite sales person as I do and I am sure each of the staff has their own followers due to their different abilities.
I work in a small shop too and we try to give our customers a good time spending money as well as expert knowledge. A good sales person has the customers follow them to whereever they work.