4 ms·

I'm suprised bookstores are still viable business. I can not come up with any real benefit of buying books in a store. The only reason that comes to my mind is

I'm suprised bookstores are still viable business. I can not come up with any real benefit of buying books in a store. The only reason that comes to my mind is the joy of browsing, maybe buying something you've seen somewhere recommended before. Are impulse buyers a huge part of the market? I've been to a local private bookstore twice and the only customers I've seen there are people who probably prefer face-to-face and resent the distant and modern way of buying things, where the only social interaction is saying hello to the mailman. Could the bookstore provide me with anything amazon couldn't? Books that were unavailable to amazon were unavailable to them. Imports took even longer and due to not living in an english speaking country, 99% of the books on the shelves were translations which I don't want to read. Which is even more of a problem in bookstore chains. We have one with four large floors and a café. How many shelves of Twilight in German the day on release? About 10. How many shelves constantly filled with english literature? 1. Out of a number that probably goes in the hundreds.

smackfu 15y ago
Well, this seems to be about used bookstores, given the talk about buying books from the public and giving stuff away for free. So the pricing will be good. Also, a LOT of books are bought as gifts, and gifts books are usually bought by browsing.
throw_away 15y ago
I do believe that there is a market for physical bookstores that can manage to fill a particular niche. Case in point, have you been to many technical bookstores? I know of two that I love: Powell's Technical in Portland, OR and Ada's in Seattle. The advantage of these stores is that, as a nerd, I'm pretty much at least vaguely interested in every book they have there, so the serendipity in browsing is high. Also, these places have used copies co-shelved, which just increases the odds that I will pick something up randomly. btw, across the street from powell's tech is the flagship powell's, which has 1 million books and like a whole room full of english lit: http://www.powells.com/pdf/burnside_map_2011.pdf http://www.powells.com/pdf/burnside_map_2011.pdf
PotatoEngineer 15y ago
My favorite thing about used bookstores is that the books are cheap: I can try out new authors (based on nothing more than the cover and the blurb on the back) and not feel I'm wasting money. This goes double since I'll be trading in my previous set of novels, so those new authors are even cheaper, and I won't have any compulsion to keep the books around. My second-favorite thing is browsing a (relatively) small selection; Amazon is so amazingly huge that I'm not sure where to begin, but browsing a dozen shelves of <insert interest here> is fast and easy.
Tichy 15y ago
Browsing is a biggie, though. Amazon does not deliver in that respect. Or at least browsing on Amazon is very different (say Filter Bubble). Still, I don't see many bookshops surviving either.

smackfu 15y ago

Well, this seems to be about used bookstores, given the talk about buying books from the public and giving stuff away for free. So the pricing will be good. Also, a LOT of books are bought as gifts, and gifts books are usually bought by browsing.

throw_away 15y ago

I do believe that there is a market for physical bookstores that can manage to fill a particular niche. Case in point, have you been to many technical bookstores? I know of two that I love: Powell's Technical in Portland, OR and Ada's in Seattle. The advantage of these stores is that, as a nerd, I'm pretty much at least vaguely interested in every book they have there, so the serendipity in browsing is high. Also, these places have used copies co-shelved, which just increases the odds that I will pick something up randomly. btw, across the street from powell's tech is the flagship powell's, which has 1 million books and like a whole room full of english lit: http://www.powells.com/pdf/burnside_map_2011.pdf http://www.powells.com/pdf/burnside_map_2011.pdf

PotatoEngineer 15y ago

My favorite thing about used bookstores is that the books are cheap: I can try out new authors (based on nothing more than the cover and the blurb on the back) and not feel I'm wasting money. This goes double since I'll be trading in my previous set of novels, so those new authors are even cheaper, and I won't have any compulsion to keep the books around. My second-favorite thing is browsing a (relatively) small selection; Amazon is so amazingly huge that I'm not sure where to begin, but browsing a dozen shelves of <insert interest here> is fast and easy.

Tichy 15y ago

Browsing is a biggie, though. Amazon does not deliver in that respect. Or at least browsing on Amazon is very different (say Filter Bubble). Still, I don't see many bookshops surviving either.