Bookselling is truly a sui generis endeavor. A bookstore will typically have thousands of distinct items in inventory with most having only a single copy in sto

Bookselling is truly a sui generis endeavor. A bookstore will typically have thousands of distinct items in inventory with most having only a single copy in stock. For better or for worse, non-book inventory has a much better rate of return for the bookseller than actual books. The trend you describe is not unique to Europe, but has been happening in the US as well. That said, while my local indie does have a lot of non-book inventory for sale, the bulk of their square footage is still books. It's been a while since I was in Europe, but when I was, the bookshops that I visited (mostly in Paris, but I think I may have looked into one in Bruges as well), were all well-stocked with books. Same with my visit to Prague and Vienna in 2008. What I have noticed is that the density of bookstores in the US has declined greatly over the last 30 years. I used to travel a lot to give workshops in LaTeX and I would pull out the pages in the hotel yellow pages to visit all the local bookstores wherever I was teaching¹. This would occupy my evenings for the whole week of my trip. On my last business trip, to Atlanta, about 6 years ago, there were only 6 bookstores I could find in the whole city and two were chain stores. 1. One memorable moment happened in Denver when I didn't realize that the bookstore I was visiting was an adult bookstore. I wandered the shelves wondering why I didn't recognize any of the authors. It wasn't until I returned to my rental car and looked back at the store that I realized what had happened.