Inventory: a mix between bestsellers (e.g. Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter) and the long tail, with very specific titles tailored to smaller audiences. Amazon excel

Inventory: a mix between bestsellers (e.g. Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter) and the long tail, with very specific titles tailored to smaller audiences. Amazon excels at the long tail and traditional stores can't compete with that, as they're restricted to high street real estate with limited capacity. Another problem for small stores is that they don't have the knowledge and expertise to give advice to their customers on what titles to buy for niche markets (or buy the right stock to begin with beyond using the besteller lists), which Amazon does very well through user generated reviews and the recommendation system. This is a major concern for brick and mortars, because people value a trustworthy authority they can go to that will tell them what to read next (as the erudite bookseller of the past would do in nostalgic stories). Medium: Moving towards digital, but physical books will remain relevant. Eventually digital might become so superior from a practical perspective that physical books will become collectors items in the sense that people will want to have some of them around for nostalgic reasons (e.g. religious texts, favorite authors). But people are programmed to hoard physical objects, so even when digital becomes superior they'll still want some books. In the mid-term you will see printing on demand in a reasonable quality distributed through and printed by local stores[1], allowing them to participate in the long tail segment instead of just stocking bestsellers. Shopping experience: It's fun to go to a bookshop and browse, even if you're going to order the books you like from Amazon in the end. This will become something you do on a free afternoon as a form of leisure (as many of us do already). Successful shops will figure out a business model around this, focussing on the experience instead of the practicalities. For more practical purchases (e.g. "I need a book on Haskell, pronto") people will use Amazon instead. Small players will remain active in niche markets, like selling collectible antiquarian books, where focus and specialization gives them an edge over big players like Borders or Amazon. This will mostly happen over the internet, which is a change that is already happening. A good friend of mine runs a high street antiquarian bookshop and has days where he sells for less than $20 in his brick and mortar store, but makes up for this by selling online. The main reasons for keeping the brick and mortar shop are nostalgic, as a warehouse for this inventory and as an avenue for people to come in and sell him new stock. [1] That is if copyright holders will go along with this approach, because the publishing, movie and music industries are rackets that don't necessarily have the best interest of their customers in mind (customers as in consumers as well as resellers like bookshops and record stores).