Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
The weird thing is that record stores are making a comeback. We saw one not long ago and went in. Apparently vinyl is "retro" and cool. We were actually looking for a turntable to replace ours (we have a lot of vinyl) Turntables cost more now than 5 years ago. People are selling them from their closets for 100 or more. My husband actually works from vinyl to create digital copies (for himself). But see, what is, is not and what once was, might be again and it goes round and round.  |
Record stores never quite went away.
What happened was the big chains folded, the regional players folded, but the boutique Indies who lived off audiophiles survived. They had a clientele and cattered to it. When volume markets go away, specialty remains.
(You can still buy buggy whips today, you know.)
http://jedediahsbuggywhip.org/services.nxg 
I expect a similar end-point for pbook stores circa 2025 or so.
The smell fetishists alone should be good for a few thousand sales a month per store in, say San Francisco (pop 700k). Scale from there to see how many pbookstores most cities will be able to support.
My all-time favorite Bookshop was Moonstone Bookcellars in Washington, DC. It was literally a cellar under a barbershop a couple blocks from the White House. They carried nothing but SF and fantasy, walls and walls worth, at a time when the chains of the day carried maybe one rack. They stocked backlists on-site and did a healthy business stocking foreign editions.
I always stopped by whenever I visited DC. They'd been there for decades, apparently. Then one trip, in the late 80's, they were gone. Done in by Borders and B&N.
Times change, consumers adapt.
The sky isn't falling; it's just a t-storm coming.