4 ms·
Retail store fronts don't have any problems that cannot be solved by better margins. If the publishers valued the service offered by Barnes & Noble, the obviou
by raymondh 15y ago
Retail store fronts don't have any problems that cannot be solved by better margins.
If the publishers valued the service offered by Barnes & Noble, the obvious solution is to grant lower prices to brick-and-mortar bookstores.
According to the article, the whole industry benefits from and depends upon customers being able to physically browse shelves of real books. Perhaps the whole industry should start subsidizing physical bookstores.
- raymondh 15y agoWhy was this downvoted? Margins are a relevant topic when discussing the survival of a business, and a "tragedy of the commons" is relevant when discussing the failure of a segment of business upon which all the others depend.
- dangrossman 15y ago> Perhaps the whole industry should start subsidizing physical bookstores My understanding was that this is how the printed book industry works already. Book stores are filled with books they didn't pay for -- the publishers are the ones covering nearly the entire inventory cost of the store! Only once a book is sold does the store pay the publisher the wholesale rate for that copy, while unsold copies are returned to the publisher to be shipped to a different store or destroyed. What I've seen on publishers' websites are examples like a $12 wholesale cost for a $20 retail book. That's a 40% margin, on top of the publishers subsidizing the existence of the store by providing the inventory for free. The reason your comment is being downvoted is probably because they can't "start" subsidizing margins when they already are.