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has anyone mentioned what affect the loss of so many small booksellers around the US has had on total sales? I know here where I live we once had four stores selling new books and two used book stores. Now we have just one used book store. If people want a book w/o a 50-90mi r/t drive they must settle for Longs Drugs or Walmart. I suppose Vons Grocery store also has a selection of trash novels as well.
So that leaves online for people who want new.
Something else that is worth looking at are even though books are out there on darknet, the only device people have to read them on are the supposedly hard to read on LCD/CRT based displays or PDA's. It's not like there have been enough Sony (& a couple other brands) readers sold to let people read PDF's in a reasonable fashion on a handheld device.
I'm not saying darknet is right, it's not, it's theft, but at the same time I do not believe it has near the effect publishers and some authors claim. I sense what they are really worried about is that they are in no way prepared for the sea change in reading that is going to accelerate over the next couple years.
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