{"id":3030,"date":"2012-02-13T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T10:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=3030"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"turning-tables-bookstores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/turning-tables-bookstores\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning the Tables on Bookstores"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"bookstore,
iStock Photo - all rights reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was a time when avid readers were frequent customers of small, neighborhood bookstores – these were the places where books lived and could be bought.\u00a0 Then the big chain bookstores: B Dalton, Crown, Borders, and Barnes & Noble shoved the small shops out of existence.\u00a0 The book buyer\u2019s expectations changed as the venue changed.<\/p>\n

Barnes & Noble and Amazon have been duking it out for control of the print book market for some time.\u00a0 Then, about three years ago, eReaders came on the scene and the venue changed again.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Broadsiding Bookstores<\/h1>\n

Paper books are far from dead, but they are losing market share rapidly. Barnes & Noble, captained by C.E.O. William J. Lynch Jr. and having shoved out most of the chain stores as the chain stores had the independent book shops, is the last bastion and hope of the legacy publishing industry and is locked in a broad-side battle with Jeff Bezos, skipper of the gunship Amazon.com.<\/p>\n

Despite its over 700 brick and mortar book stores, Mr. Lynch describes Barnes & Noble as a technology company and they are pouring money into Nook as they fight against Amazon\u2019s Kindle and dominance of eBook sales.\u00a0 In early January, Barnes & Noble projected that it would lose even more money this year than Wall Street had expected. Its share price promptly tumbled 17 percent.\u00a0 The big publishing houses are starting to worry about the last viable shelf space available for their print books.\u00a0 What if that shelf space begins to disappear? \u00a0No one expects Barnes & Noble to fold up overnight, but as they focus more on eBooks and their fight with Amazon, they may decide that their physical presences are not economically viable in view of the shrinking market share of print books.<\/p>\n

Alternatives to Bookstores<\/h1>\n

Yes, we can buy books at Wal-Mart and the supermarket, but selections are severely limited.\u00a0 Yes, publishers could open their own eStores to sell print books, (or knuckle under and sell on Amazon) but aficionados of paper books tend to enjoy the browsing experience.\u00a0 The look and feel of a book is an important part of the book buying experience.<\/p>\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be a delicious irony if Big 6 publishers began to woo those willing to open independent book stores again as they seek shelf space?\u00a0 It could be that the Mom & Pop bookstores with shoe-string budgets and low overhead because they employ the family will again become the primary outlet for the printed word.<\/p>\n

Resource: New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time when avid readers were frequent customers of small, neighborhood bookstores – these were the places where books lived and could be bought.  Then the big chain bookstores: B Dalton, Crown, Borders, and Barnes & Noble shoved the small shops out of existence.  The book buyer’s expectations changed as the venue changed. … Continue reading “Turning the Tables on Bookstores”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[3,8,9],"class_list":["post-3030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing-2","tag-books","tag-ebook","tag-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21609,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3030\/revisions\/21609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}