Quote:
Originally Posted by doubleshuffle
But an ugly new thing in my book. As has been said by some others - the charm of a bookshop is finding books you aren't looking for and that haven't been liked by thousands already.
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Well, those shoppers can always go to Barnes and Noble and browse the new releases the first day they come out.
Or go online; Amazon lets you sort book listings by average review ratings and it is easy to find a million books that haven't been liked by anybody.
More seriously: if you read the Seattle times report you'll see they point out that Amazon isn't just stocking high selling books. Rather they are showcasing well-reviewed titles regardless of whether they sell by the million or the hundreds. That is the same philosophy behind Amazon's Encore and Amazon Crossing imprints. Finding good books that people would enjoy if only they could find them. Which is a non-trivial endeavor in a market with over four-million actively sold books and an unknown number of out-of-print but still available used titles.
(How many titles do your bookshops carry? 50,000, was it? How many total are in print and available for buying? In the US, 50,000 books is less than 1% of what is available to buy.)
Floorspace in B&M retail is expensive. So expensive it sunk Borders and so expensive B&N is closing stores rather than pay the going rate for rents. Selling books, shotgun style, is really a bad business in an era when stocking those books online is much more effective way of connecting reader to story.
The future of B&M bookselling is small. Lots of readers and even professional pundits have noted it for years. Amazon has simply been the first to act on it.