> When I visited Pittsburgh last year, I only found one (!!!) downtown. To be fair, my impression of downtown Pittsburgh (that is, the golden triangle -- this

> When I visited Pittsburgh last year, I only found one (!!!) downtown. To be fair, my impression of downtown Pittsburgh (that is, the golden triangle -- this was a few years ago, so things may have changed) was it didn't have much residential density. Things seemed relatively quiet after 5 and the area didn't seem to have much foot traffic. I also was given to understand most Pitt and CMU folks (the intelligentsia of the city) don't tend to live downtown. I did manage to visit a comic book store. Brick and mortar bookstores do require a certain amount of foot traffic to be economically feasible. Although Amazon Prime is hard to beat for sheer size of inventory, below MSRP prices and fast/free shipping, booksellers still have a few cards up their sleeve. The booksellers near me that were doing ok pre-COVID had great browsing experiences (well-curated collections, nice furniture and adjoining cafes) and frequent book events by authors. Sadly with COVID these advantages were lost. (also, I hate to say this, but customer service in a bookstore generally doesn't really make or break it. I rarely interact with the staff.) Since March, I've bought a couple of books from Bookshop.org out of principle. The books were pricier (closer to MSRP), shipping was more expensive and slower, and there was no other value-add, but I knew I was paying their true sustainable economic cost. I guess the real problem isn't that Bookshop is expensive, but that Amazon is so cheap (and convenient). (also, despite what purists say, Amazon's b&m bookstores are actually really good -- the curation is excellent because it's based on analytics. So Amazon is encroaching on b&m booksellers' territory in that way too.)