Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
These days, a high street is a row of empty shops with a Tesco Express at one end.
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Precisely this.
I hope this goes well for Waterstones. Where I live, it's Waterstones, W H Smith, or one of two moribund second hand book shops. You'd be better off going to the Tesco Express than W H Smith - whenever you buy anything there, they shower you with vouchers to buy cheap burgers at MacDonalds for some reason, and they seem to have an active policy of employing nobody on a full-time contract.
The Waterstones doesn't even have a cafe or anywhere pleasant to sit, so its one advantage over the internet is that it sells a range of locally-published books that aren't available anywhere else. I've lived in a few towns which have had a second thriving bookstore, only to have Waterstones buy them out and then have two cookie-cutter stores in the same town. Mind you, this was mostly happening a decade ago, before the march of technology.
It would be nice to keep a book-shop open to accompany the charity shops and 'Poundland'. Can't remember when I last bought anything at Waterstones, though.