From Publishers Weekly:
Bookstore sales fell 28.8% in October compared to 2019, according to preliminary estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Sales were $446 million, down from $627 million in October 2019.
The October decline was nearly identical to the drop reported in September, when bookstore sales fell 27.7% compared to the previous year—suggesting that, for the moment, bookstore sales appeared to have stabilized, albeit at a rate far below normal levels.
. . . .
For the first 10 months of 2020, bookstore sales fell 31% compared to a year ago, dropping to $4.97 billion, from $7.19 billion, in the comparable period in 2019. Sales for the entire retail market were flat in the January-October span.
Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly
PG says that most bookstores operate on relatively narrow margins. These sorts of sales declines suggest to PG that a lot of currently-shuttered bookstores will not be able to reopen even after Covid vaccines arrive.
Missing out on the Christmas sales season is particularly difficult for traditional bookstores.
This is in keeping with the likely future for a variety of other small retailers, at least in the United State.
While PG is pro-Amazon, primarily because Amazon treats authors well, he bears no animus towards retailers of any sort, particularly smaller ones. Each small bookstore that closes is a story of deeply disappointed dreams, likely of someone who loves books and reading.
They forget that one in five Americans have a significant disability, and bookstores have always been hard for us: crowded aisles, endcaps blocking access, few places to sit near the books we want to examine, lines, helpful people someplace else behind a counter…
I haven’t the energy or the mobility for a ‘real’ bookstore.
But I still manage to find reading material. And in a place where, if I think a book is overpriced for my use of it, I will be able to just as easily find someone else’s discarded ‘very good’ quality paperback for a few bucks.
Even if they were wide open, I find my tastes are running more and more toward books that I can only find on my Kindle.