Amazon vs Independent Book Stores

Schniff, all sounds good to me...

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This thread has brought back some nice memories. One of my earliest is of a very small, or at least narrow, bookstore in Philadelphia. I was very young so I don't remember the exact location just that it was small, cramped, and musty with about 3 stories worth of books on very, very tall bookshelves about a gazillion feet over my little body. Mom and Dad were children of the depression so they rarely purchased anything unless it was a "good buy"; a mysterious term at the time to such a young’in as was I.

Perhaps my love of books partly stems from this long repressed experience, so thanks for this discussion. Thanks also, for the useful links contained herein. I found a wonderful link I use constantly...

http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/

Search by ISBN, Title, or Author and it brings up a list of on-line bookstores listed by ascending order (other options also) of price with appropriate shipping charges. Of course, some sites offer deals with free shipping and its fun to try saving a few bucks on the shipping by researching different combos of sites.

I find those sales on the sidewalk and at the local library irresistible. Once bought an 1800 page book on Criminal Law (Mens Rae and all that) on the 50 cent table and spent hours pouring through it. Yep, it was a "good buy".

JM

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Thanks for sharing your memories and that link, James. Another good source, which I've flogged before, is:

www.abebooks. com

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a friend of mine, back in the old hometown, is now selling the contents of her funky little shop through abebooks.

she's a member of The Raging Grannies and quite a delight to know. she's just who you want your independent bookshop owner to be. Very Happy

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It was a friend, also the owner of a funky little book shop, who told me about abebooks. It's quite a resource!

Speaking of that friend, he wasn't exactly what I would want my independent book seller to be. For one thing, he could be snotty to customers ("No, we don't have it," with no helpful suggestion re where to go next) and, more importantly, he never seemed to read!

He's enjoying an early retirement now...

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i've met booksellers like that, D'Art. They're pips. Rose, and her hubby, Dick, love to read, and I sometimes think it's a miracle any book escapes her shop.

this is a link to Rose in action

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/6481

Quote:

Even in this crowd of bizarre outfits, Rose stands out.

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She seems like a wonderful character, all right!

Getting back to that friend who had a book store: What he was good at was knowing how to scout for good values at other shops. The morning the most recent Nobel Prize for Literature was announced (to a somewhat obscure--at least in the U.S.--Eastern European writer) he hopped in his truck to look for the book at some of the larger used book stores in the area. Sure enough, he found several copies at really low prices. He bought 'em to sell at much higher prices online!

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I once gave serious consideration to become a partner/picker in an antique shop. My potential partner kept reminding me that the money was made in the buying, not the selling. After a couple of decades of attending auctions and then seeing the items re-appear in local shops with interesting price tags, I know Minz was right.

Soooooo, this afternoon, one of my colleagues asked me if I knew where the nearest bookstore was. Well, d'oh! Soooooo, I said I'd walk him over. <<sigh>> I should know better. Instead of leaving him at the door, I just sort of fell into the store, and three books later, I pulled myself out. Dangerous business, giving directions to a bookstore. (and no, we didn't go to a big chain).

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One does run that risk, ehBeth. I've actually been cutting back on my book buying these past few months, with one exception. Was in Portland, where Powell's reigns supreme, in search of what I could find by Nicola Barker. She's a British author with only two books published in the US (out of seven or so). Sure enough, they had two I wanted, but then I saw they had a British hard cover of one of her novels that I already owned as a paperback.

Well, of course I had to buy it. Budgeting is one thing, but self-denial at a bookstore is something else!

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Self-denial is just WRONG when it comes to books! :wink:

They bring soooooooo much to our lives. They are more than just paper and ink.

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You can say that again!

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Indeed. Though somehow I never feel that way when shopping for books online. Which, of course, I only do when I need rare stuff...

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A great slide show of Boston independent book stores (used and specialty books)

Quote:

TREASURED TITLES
Hey, bibliophiles! Short on dough but craving some new food for thought? We feel your pain. The greater Boston area is full of great used and antiquarian bookstores; perfect to pad out your bookshelf while going easy on your wallet (and the environment). Here, a look at the top spots in the Boston area. Now get reading!

—Nicole Cammorata, Boston.com Staff

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/gallery/usedbookstores/

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@tsarstepan,

If I were in Boston, I would check them out.

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Quote:

Barnes & Noble

· Forecast store closings 2013: 190 to 240, per company comments

· Number of U.S. stores: 689

· One-year stock performance: 8.95 percent

The move by customers away from print books toward digital books has hurt Barnes & Noble Inc.. Same-store sales during the nine-week holiday season fell by 8.2 percent year-over-year. The bookseller has tried to offset the declines in physical book sales with its Nook e-book reader device, but sales of that device fell 13 percent compared to the previous year. The company already has begun cutting down the number of its stores in the past several years. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the head of the retail group at Barnes & Noble said he expected the company to have just 450 to 500 retail stores in 10 years.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/4-retailers-likely-close-stores-year-1B8170146

pretty soon book stores will be a novelty. it was just a couple years ago that Borders and BN had a combined 2500, a decade ago they plus booksamillion and walden had north of 4000 stores

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@hawkeye10,

I have such a great book business idea now that all this is going on. Im amazed that noone 's thought of it.

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The End of Barnes & Noble

By Matthew Yglesias

Quote:

Barnes & Noble has put out a genuinely impressive performance over the past several years. Here you have a retail chain, originating from a bookstore in New York City, that saw its industry being disrupted and rather nimbly decided it wanted to make a piece of computer hardware. And—amazingly—the Nook is a pretty good piece of computer hardware. If the iPad and the Galaxy Tab and the Microsoft Surface and the Kindle Fire didn't exist, you'd say the Nook was a revolutionary device.
The problem is that it's not the best such device on the market. Or even the second best. Or even the third best. And while some industries have room for many global players (think cars—GM, Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, Nissan, PSA, Honda, Renault, etc.) it looks like there's only room for two or three platforms in this game. And B&N doesn't have one. Today they announced that contrary to earlier reports, losses in the Nook division are going to grow this year rather than staying flat. And all sales across both the web and brick and mortar stores fell nearly 11 percent. They're doing an impressive job of staving off collapse in the face of massive disruption, but not good enough.

It makes me sad, personally. Before Barnes & Noble was a national bohemoth it was just my neighborhood bookstore, as I grew up blocks away from the original shop. I always liked to root for it against Borders. But it won't be long for this world.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/02/14/barnes_noble_collapsing.html

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http://www.communitybookstore.net/

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Amazon vs Independent Book Stores

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