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Originally Posted by bill_mchale
I wouldn't be too quick to write paper off completely.....
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The question is whether enough people will want to buy books to make a big chain still viable.
Big stores have big overheads and still only offer a fraction of the selection of an online store. As revenues and margins continue to shrink, the stores will be increasingly difficult to keep open.
It's going to be difficult and expensive (and damaging to the brand) to downsize a store, and there's a limit to the non-book stuff they can sell without also damaging their brand, or competing with companies like Walmart, Target or Best Buy -- some of which are experiencing their own sales declines.
Browsing in-store and buying on-line is, obviously, one of the big problems facing all brick & mortar retailers. B&N cannot afford to run a bunch of 27000 square foot showrooms, where half the foot traffic winds up driving Amazon's sales.
POD will work very well for college and technical stores, but it's probably already too late for that to be anything more than a JIT supplement for niche needs.
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Originally Posted by BillMcHale
Do Walmart and Target become our only local source of paper books?
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Are Walmart and Target your local source of CD's and DVD's? Why will books be any different?