Quote:
Originally Posted by doubleshuffle
I meant to write "special order" of course, not "delivery."
But your replies sound pretty bleak. Seems a regular German bookshop is a lot better than an American one.
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It's not the stores' fault, it is the publishers', as was highlighted during last year's catfight between Hachette and Amazon.
Publishers don't have distribution systems, they have centralized warehouses intended to serve the entire country and they are to cheap to ship UPS or even USPS. So they let orders accumulate and ship by truck. Across a thousand miles or two.
The real book distribution systems are at the retail level for outfits big enough (Amazon, B&N, maybe Books-a-Million and Half-price Books) or the distributors like Ingram and Baker& Taylor.)
The publishers system is geared to ship tens of thousands or millions of books efficiently in time for a book launch, not shipping individual copies of two year old books.
Things were different up to the 1980 when the giant multinationals started to take over. At that time the much smaller publishers sold direct to consumers, mailed newsletters, and cared as Michael about midlist titles as they did the occasional "lottery winner" bestseller. Once the multinationals started buying publishers and "consolidating" them, all that went away. Nowadays the chase is on for bestsellers.
Check out this short video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGds6GdM7C8
Each of those logos was a distinct long-established publisher until they were taken over by Penguin, Bertlesmann, and the like, all which were then subsumed into Bertelsmann's Penguin Random House or, as it is more commonly known, the randy penguin.
There is a long history of anti-retailer behavior by the publishers that produced the enviroment where Amazon has flourished despite the big publishers' every (mis-aimed) attempt to control them.
This could be a new phase in that progression.
Or just an interesting experiment in customer satisfaction.
There is at least one news source that thinks the store is just a brand building exercise:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015...he-amazon-app/