[GtrsRGr8]

Domino = Ebook retailer's download library.

I suppose that we could make an interesting contest of who it will really be, but I won't go there. Besides, that probably would belong on another thread.

Probably few people on MobileRead have an ebook library with Books-A-Million. Few people probably even knew that it even sold ebooks. Even less would know that it manages a customer library of ebooks ("Download Library . . . visit your Download Library to download and manage all of your eBooks and audio downloads. View Download Library.")

When ebooks took off in popularity, BAM seemed to be pretty much a holdout in embracing them. They pretty much, it seems to me, were committed to the B&M stores. And, amazingly, they have survived with that business model to this day, where others haven't.

I get emails from it, and the rate of its discounts, coupon giveaways, and such like seems to have really escalated in the last 6 months to one year, or so. That is the reason that I think that BAM may be the next domino to fall.

My observation is that businesses start heavily discounting for at least one of two reasons. One, is that it is changing its business model. Companies do that from time to time for various reasons. That's not necessarily a reason for concern. Second, they are in serious financial trouble, need to increase their cash flow dramatically, and need to do it soon. That is definitely a red flag.

If you do have a download library with BAM, I recommend (being a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, myself) that you download the ebooks (and/or audiobooks, if that applies), to your own device(s).

You can quit your reading here if you want to.


I have a personal interest in BAM and a desire for its success. The company started out as Anderson Book Company, in the town in northwest Alabama where my father grew up.

My father went to the same high school, at about the same time that Anderson did. (But, well . . . . everyone went to the same high school in that town, because there was only one there then!) But Anderson was also about the same age as my father. I don't know if they were in the same grade or if Anderson even knew that my father existed, but my father remembered him.

To my knowledge, Anderson had only one retail store, at least for a long time--it was on the main street in the town, and was called Anderson Book Company. It literally has been there (I think that it's still there!) for as long as I can remember (which is getting to be quite a long time ago now).

However, I think that Anderson was quietly getting into book distribution in a big, big way throughout the years that that store served as their token retail outlet. I remember that Anderson had a very small distribution center near where a first cousin of mine lived. He would go dumpster diving there, as a child, because there were often untold number of paperback books, with their covers torn off (to make them unsaleable for one reason or another). He would show me some of his finds. How cool.

So because Anderson was a local town boy who made good (and there weren't very many of them from that town), and the fact that my father knew the guy who built it, has made BAM a little special to me. Anytime that I could buy a physical book from BAM, years ago, instead of a competitor, years ago, I would try to do so.

I think that BAM's headquarters moved to the Knoxville, Tennessee area, if memory serves me correctly, quite a while back. The small, sleepy town where Anderson grew up and started business was not really on the road to anywhere, and there were much better places in the South to have a distribution center, and carry on other business.

I wish it well.

If there is anyone still around now, thanks for listening . . . .