Quote:
Originally Posted by dickloraine
I don't know if it would be practical in the usa, because of the size and population density, but it hasn't to be so. In germany you can order a book in a shop and get it the next day most of the time. But books are a bit more pricy here and have set prices. If the retailers in the us would take a cut from their profit to have intermediate retailers that provide the books, they could beat or match amazons delivery times. Oh, and the system can be used by small shops too, so for example in the suburb where I growed up, there was a small store for pens etc. where you also could order books.
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Oh, in the US it would be trivial for an order to be fulfilled overnight: most online retailers do it. UPS and USPS are very fast and efficient. The publishers are...less so.
The issue is that the publishers eliminated their ability to process small orders decades ago.
On purpose.
In decades past, before the foreign multinationals took over, most big US publishers had significant direct to consumer order fullfilment capabilities that were dismantled to improve ROI.
Their order fulfillment processes are now geared towards shipping big orders to distributors and bookstore chains, not consumers or independent bookstores. That is why, when Amazon switched to just-in-time ordering for Hachette books during last year's catfight delivery times ballooned.
The only reason online retailers can deliver arbitrary books overnight is they pre-order large numbers and warehouse them indefinitely at *their* expense which is something the B&M operations can't afford to do.