From San Diego Reader:
Robert Schrader can recall the moment when he decided to close 5th Avenue Books, the cavernous, off-white, brightly lit used bookstore that lasted longer than most on what used to be Hillcrest’s book block. (Bluestocking Books soldiers on, but the Blue Door, Bountiful Books, Grounds for Murder, and the Cook’s Bookshop and now 5th Avenue are no more.) “I came in one morning and there were eight people in the store, and I noticed that five of them — a majority of the customers — were looking at their phones. That’s when I realized that there was so much traffic on Amazon that even those people who come in here were using it as a sample store. Oh, I like this book; I’ll look it up on Amazon and see if I can find it cheaper.”
“The store hadn’t made money since 2011,” he continued, “but I was hanging on, thinking, I can reverse this. I bought from different sources, looking for stuff that wasn’t available on Amazon. But everything’s available on Amazon.” Schrader ran his closing in stages throughout February: 50 percent off on one Friday, 80 percent off the next, then $5 a bag, then $1. I visited on 80 percent day and bought, among other things, a $150 signed copy of Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer for $30. Waiting in the checkout line, I started rooting through a box on the floor after spotting a couple of novels by Shusaku Endo. “Hey, whose box is that?” asked a familiar voice. It was Craig Maxwell of Maxwell’s House of Books in La Mesa. Of course he had snagged the Endos before me; he’s a pro.
“I spent $1000 and got some good stuff,” said Maxwell when I visited his shop a few days later (the Endos were priced at $12 apiece). “Lit was probably the best; he had almost every author under the sun. But I found good things in the nautical travels section and the Civil War” — even though World War II is a bigger seller for him and even though “80 percent of the people who walk through the door ask for children’s literature. I know they don’t read themselves because they never look at anything around them.”
. . . .
Asked why he maintains his La Mesa Village storefront, Maxwell paused before replying with a smile, “I just can’t see waking up at home, schlepping to the kitchen in my pajamas and having a piece of toast and then schlepping over to the computer and being ‘at work.’ I think of a brick-and-mortar store as a real business. I know that’s anachronistic, but these illusions are important to some of us.”
Link to the rest at San Diego Reader and thanks to Dave for the tip.
PG takes no pleasure in seeing bookstores close just as he has taken no pleasure in seeing newspapers close. The Pew Research Center for Journalism and Media says the newspaper workforce has shrunk by about 20,000 positions, or 39%, in the last 20 years.
However, PG is about to permit his last subscription to a physical newspaper lapse, thus ending a reading habit that began when he was seven years old and mispronounced most of the words he read. He just doesn’t read the physical paper much any more.
Since he spends most of his work day on the computer, PG has no shortage of access to the information contained in his newspaper. Away from his desk, his phone alerts him to breaking news at least 12 hours before the newspaper arrives.
Once in awhile, PG buys a physical book on Amazon, but he hasn’t finished reading one of those in 2-3 years. Despite a lifetime of reading books on paper (think voracious childhood reading, college lit classes, law school, law practice, voracious adult reading), they feel sort of clumsy to him now. On the other hand, he inhales ebooks, particularly titles that would never appear at a Barnes & Noble.
Despite the numbers of pleasant people in the paper book business, it’s going away. There are a couple of large universities not far from Casa PG, but backpacks stuffed with books are an increasingly rare sight. Backpacks are for laptops and tablets. Everybody carries phones and assiduously studies them between classes.
Used book stores will outlast stores that sell new books (and will probably morph into antique book stores) but there won’t be enough of those to employ most of people currently working in the paper book business.
This article has some problems to it (the dire e statistic quoted probably doesn’t reflect indie authors’ sales) in addition to its, um, difficult layout…but it does point to some of the differing things bookstores are bringing to the table above AMZ and also a mood of hope that I’ve seen reflected on the road: http://mp.floridaweekly.com/news/2017-03-02/Top_News/VOLUME_BUSINESS.html#.WOd06me1vIX
This one is interesting too (support the Guardian! Even just a dollar. Then maybe they won’t go away too 🙂 https://www.theguardian.com/books/datablog/2017/mar/18/the-fall-and-rise-of-physical-book-sales-worldwide-in-data?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Try this for context:
http://millennialmainframer.com/2014/07/ibm-reports-2q2014-earnings-mainframe-business-humming/
It’s been forty years or so since mainframe computers stopped being the center of the computing universe yet IBM still brings in over $20B a year of revenue and about $2B a year in net profits. Mostly from service and support of the long “dead and buried” legacy computing establishment. Over the last fifty years IBM got in and out of desktop PCs, Laptops, printers, shrink-wrap software, and their legacy mainframe business is still about the size of the entire US publishing industry and about as profitable.
Legacy businesses don’t really die overnight.
They linger on like zombies, muddling through year after year, like the knight in the Monty Python movie, celebrating that they’re “not dead yet”, or that they only shrank by 1% or that a new fad got them a temporary 1% growth year.
Print isn’t dead.
Not going to die any time soon.
But that is a pretty low bar to clear for its cheerleaders with a vested interest in keeping the old establishment in power.
Try looking a little closer into the reports of “young readers prefer print” or “print sales are strong” and note that they don’t break down the numbers by market, by audience, by customer. They lump in textbook sales or homework reading or journal sales or adult coloring books. Whether it be comics or manga or catalogs or gaming guides. It’s all print. Or it’s all reading. And yes, it’s all true. More or less.
But how relevant is that to, say an author looking to make a living off mysteries or romance or historical drama? Strip away the camouflage of “it’s all print” underlying the cheerleading and a different reality emerges for fiction authors. And that is the reality that authors are dealing with today.
There is a lot of talk about a divide between tradpub authors and indie authors as if they were different creatures when they’re all just authors looking at the same changing market from different locations. Legacy authors are vested in tradpub and print because that was the only game in town when they started and established themselves. Newer authors aren’t vested in print and see it as a slower, less profitable, less viable way to *launch* a drawer, as a market to be tapped later, a lower priority.
It’s all about a return on investment, cold numbers, rather than religious attachment.
Cheerleaders aside, in the markets that matter to fiction authors print *is* in decline and it is not going back up. It will remain a minority format to be tapped at some future date, much like audiobooks, but not the top priority. And that is not just for Indies.
Digital-first is a thing in tradpub and it will continue to he a thing.
Legacy publishing will continue as it is, muddling through, year after year, cheering flat sales or 1% growth, even when that growth comes from Amazon scarfing up ever bigger chunks of the pbook market and totally ignoring the fact that, unlike independent bookstores and the big chains, Amazon can and *will* stock and sell Indie pbooks. And their own. Lots and lots of their own.
Even if “print is back” were real, it wouldn’t mean the legacy publishers and legacy authors are back in command. Instead, it would mean they are weaker than ever.
“Print is back” is no life preserver, it’s an anchor.
Tie yourself to it and you just might drown.
Felix, as I’ve tried to say, I’m very averse to predictions, and also to one-size-fits-all claims. Perhaps print will go the way of the main frame or the horse and buggy. Perhaps it will go the way of the radio star (whom video didn’t kill). I don’t want to get lost in the weeds of any metaphor here, though, or debate the future. Maybe you’re right. Who knows?
That said, I am a relatively new author, whose sales are divided about 60/40 in favor of e. That still leaves an enormous slice I’d be crazy to ignore–independent of my own preference for print or digital. It’s true that indie authors, with the barriers to entry into B&M, are finding the bulk of sales through digital. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t love to add that 40% of sales (or whatever the exact figure is; again, no one-sizes-fits-all from me) to their readership. I am vocal in my hopes that the talented indie population will widen their revenue streams to harness those people who don’t read digitally or buy online.
Of whom there are many. Whether they are many because they’re the vestiges of a dying model and just don’t know it yet, or whether they’re at the forefront of a resurgence-in-the-making, or whether both populations will cohabitate until the digital dark age takes us all down…is unknown to you and me.
Have you been published by a traditional publisher? (I find the term ‘legacy’ needlessly inflammatory and insulting). In my experience, they are riddled with practices that don’t work well, as most long established businesses are…and some of the smartest, most creative, and passionate-about-books folk around. An honor to work with–as would be Jeff B. or anyone else who has risen to the helm of a very big ship.
Jenny Milchman. I like your positive attitude of problem highlighting and suggestions for solving instead of being a non stop grouch. Refreshing and thanks.
There was a Russell Crowe movie released eight or nine years ago called ‘State of Play’ in which he played a reporter at a DC newspaper. His character repeatedly referred to his employer as ‘the Daily Afterthought.’
Media people chuckled at that eight years ago, but I don’t hear them laughing much anymore…
PG, I love your compilation, and it’s one of the few I read all the way through, multiple times a week.
But one aspect disturbs me–and that’s the way you expound upon bookstores and print books without being aware (seemingly) of a) the ways in which statistics and conclusions can be massaged to reflect basically any point and b) the results that, while subject to the same distortion as the ones you quote, conclude that far from dying, print is more robust than ever, and bookstore openings up over the past 7 years.
(Not Barnes & Noble openings it is true–but there are reasons for that.)
My point isn’t to debate who’s “right” because truthfully neither of us is, and we won’t know how things fall out until many years or decades from now. The quote-facts and numbers could make either prediction look likely.
But the posts that report dire things for those of us who do love paper and bookstores seem to outnumber the many I see from other sources reporting the opposite, and your addenda make your preferences clear.
It’s fine for you to prefer digital and Amazon, of course–they’ve done wonderful things for books and reading and hopefully will continue to do so. Just don’t assume that your views reflect the whole…or even that X number of articles and “facts” reflect it.
OK, now that I’ve gotten that off my mind, I truly do appreciate all the work you do on this site!
“… the many I see from other sources reporting the opposite …”
Any links you mind sharing? I’m always interested in which sources are saying/claiming what, especially when we see even the old diehards like ‘Mike Shatzkin’ changing their tunes.
Sure, here is just one recent one: https://therealdeal.com/2017/04/02/are-the-bookstores-coming-back/
I can look into my old history, if you like too–just let me know.
According to the ABA, independent bookstore openings have been trending up over the last 7 years. Sure, some are closing, and some always will. Businesses come and go on an individual basis.
But whether as part of a return-to-local movement, or because certain towns/cities became bookstore “deserts” to a great deal of regret so there was a need, and/or the communities stepped in (Ithaca, NY) or a pair of 20 somethings realized their dream was to own a bookstore (Minneapolis, MN, Oakmont, PA), and I could go on…all across the country, bookstores are thriving, in my experience.
The last B&N is closing in the Bronx, and a really exciting book event hub/bookstore is set to open in its place.
Yesterday, I think it was PG who noted that Politics & Prose opening a second branch in Bethesda, MD doesn’t mean much because it’s such a wealthy community. The Bronx, however, is not.
Exciting stuff, from where I sit.
The last B&N is closing in the Bronx, and a really exciting book event hub/bookstore is set to open in its place.
Any idea how the B&N book shelf space compares to the exciting book shelf space?
I could go on about this, but I think it’s worth looking at the money quote in this article…
“The store hadn’t made money since 2011,” he continued, “but I was hanging on, thinking, I can reverse this.”
That’s a direct quote from the owner of the store.
Here’s one from the owner of Black Oak books in Berkeley, which closed last year…
Cornell said the bookstore never generated enough foot traffic to cover costs. Though he said he didn’t take a salary or expect to have the store pay for its rent, he was still having to subsidize the business to keep it open.
He was paying out of his pocket to keep the store open, and this is in a college town where reading is ubiquitous.
In Memphis, Booksellers at Laurelwood is closing. Again, the owner says “The store’s yearly net losses are $50,000 and growing.”
This beat goes on and on. It’s not hard to open a bookstore, you just throw money at it. The question is, are these stores turning a profit selling paper books?
As an aside, I am SO SAD to hear about the Booksellers at Laurelwood. A stop in Memphis on all three of my book tours, and a beloved one. Really sad news.
Yes, many bookstores lose money, just as many local businesses do. Then they close. Others make money, then others come in to try and do the same.
I think the real question is where our fates lie re: bricks, mortar, locavorism, versus chains, big boxes, and online consumption. Books will be a teensy sliver of this overall market reassignment.
You are correct that print today is as “strong” as it has been all century. That does not mean it is as “strong” as it was in the early 90’s before the last *Three* Book retailing revolutions. Or that it actually STRONG in absolute terms.
Two facts you can readily verify by yourself if you choose to:
1- Print sales show small regular gains because sales are reported in dollar terms and because the big publishers are phasing out the cheaper mass market format in favor of the more expensive trade paperback format and hardcovers. Actual unit sales of new print books have been declining since 2003. This can be verified by looking at the American Association of Publishers’ publicly-available annual reports. They are the official tradpub cheerleaders and they present their numbers in the best *possible* light and even with that spin it is clear print was in trouble long before digital became significant. In fact, if you look at the annual reports, year by year, you will find that for years they reported sales numbers for mass market and trade paperback separately and that for the better part of the last decade, they reported large mass market sales declines coupled with modestly higher trade paperback sales until recently when they stopped separate reporting so they could report combined paperback sales increases. In dollar terms, not unit sales.
2- If you look at the annual sales reports from the big trade publishers year after year, you will see modest revenue increases but if you look closely at their merger and acquisition activity you will see that the combined post-merger sales numbers will typically be *lower* than the separate pre-merger numbers. Again, that is *their* numbers, not those of somebody with an agenda.
Knowing these things isn’t about boosterism or secret agendas. It is necessary self-defense for anybody with even the slightest aspirations of participating in the business, whether by traditional or non-traditional channels. It is homework required to navigate an industry in transition.
These are not made up “facts” or cherry-picked spin but the environment that surrounds us. Ignore it at your peril.
Well, hopefully not at my “peril,” although I take your point.
Yes, there is a decline in reading long-form text, and has been for some time–not related to digital media, if I’m recalling correctly. For example, people predicted that newspapers would die in response to online news–and it appears to be so–but isn’t really. Newspaper reading has been trending steadily down for decades before the internet was a force–see THE CONTENT TRAP.
So, it’d be great to get those numbers up, whether they apply to print or e.
And e has opened up an affordable, and easily accessed book market, surely drawing in new readers. More power to it.
My only point is that there’s a rich, thriving swath of the population that loves print and bookstores, and there are facts that reflect this “truth” as well.
Sure, as I said, there’s still a lot of pbooks being sold.
But the number of books sold is steadily and continually declining.
It’s not a market to be ignored.
But neither is it a market to bet the farm on. Especially if you’re on the B&M side.
Of relevance to this thread: in 2011, Amazon had 22% of the pbook market.
http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/12-stats-on-the-state-of-bookstores-in-america-today/
Today they’re at 50% give or take a point or two. So we have a market where the total number of books sold is declining and the fraction sold online has doubled. That means the market for books sold at bookstores has declined by half in 5 years.
The size of the total market isn’t the only relevant number: *where* those books are selling is important, too.
Definitely relevant. And of course Amazon has a larger slice now–they get the cheaper, faster, more convenient market.
Don’t get me started on my theory that a paradigm shift is coming whereby cheaper, faster, and more convenient become less prioritized…because then you’ll think I am nuts.
As of now I’m just a bookstore lover 🙂
Not nuts.
Just hopeful.
I’m not.
I go by the numbers and the two relevant numbers I see are 5% and 2.4%. The first is the percentage of new books sold through non-chain bookstores and the latter is the average profit margin of non-chain stores. The first number makes the second untenable.
When the head of the ABA’s forward-looking advice to store owners is “start selling gifts and trinkets” I just can’t be hopeful for their prospects.
It’s not a pretty picture the numbers paint.
The first number makes the second untenable for the current number of non-chain bookstores. If the same sales were spread across fewer stores, there might be a point at which it is tenable. However, non-chain brick and mortar bookstores are limited in their reach. A bookstore in Peoria won’t pick up customers when a bookstore in Wichita goes under. B&M loyalists are probably too thin on the ground to support a local bookstore outside of major urban areas.
Thinning the herd was the reason why the BPHs assisted Borders and B&N in putting so many indie stores out of business. It was also the reason why they pushed Borders to liquidate, expecting shoppers to go to B&N. Not a totally unfounded expectation since 75% of Borders stores were within a couple miles of a B&N.
It turned out that any that did were merely offsetting some of B&N’s losses.
At the macro level, the B&M pbook market has surrendered a third of its revenue to Amazon over the last five years. That is five to six times the size of today’s entire independent bookstore segment.
I can see why those number suggest a gloomy future. My sense (maybe hope) is that the numbers are set to change, though.
The locavore movement reflects a shift in how we value things. We can buy X ingredient cheaper elsewhere–but increasingly, people choose not to. Is that a relatively privileged segment that chooses not to? Only in part. Farmers markets are coming to communities that have been food deserts heretofore. They’re entering lunch programs in at-risk school systems. Etc.
I see this as people beginning to realize that we eat cheap and fast at a cost…and it’s not necessarily even a cost we can’t offset by changing the model a bit.
And maybe we read that way too.
Now, mind, I love a 50% off book as much as the next reader or author, and I shop from AMZ frequently.
But there are times when nothing but a B&M experience will do, and I’ll sacrifice to pay for it. If more and more people feel this way–as it seems they may based on how they react when The Last Bookstore Closes [in their community]–then the numbers could reverse, allowing for all sorts of more viable ways to run a bookstore.
Besides relying on greetings cards and board games.
I think there’s a lot of wishful thinking involved in tying paper books and paper bookselling to the eat-local movement. The bottom line is that if you look at paper booksellers, they keep reporting fewer and fewer customers and less and less revenue. If they didn’t, that would be great, but that is what keeps showing up in the press.
It is important to keep informed of these trends, because there is a subtext to the paper-is-back meme, which is that now is a great time to open a small local b&m bookstore. When I see articles like the OP where an owner says that they couldn’t keep absorbing losses, and juxtapose them with happy “so-and-so is opening a bookstore, isn’t that great” articles, I’m bothered. It’s just as likely that so-and-so is actually flushing their life savings down the crapper. That’s not a happy story to me, and it’s not one we should thoughtlessly promulgate.
Dave, if it’s false, of course we shouldn’t promulgate the notion…what I’m questioning is whether it is true though. There is no doubt that communities often feel the pain when they become bookstore-less, sometimes opening a co-op to counteract, sometimes depending on one citizen to lead the charge. I offered a few examples where this has occurred.
When I see young people deciding to open bookstores, as I have as well, I see a new generation recognizing their value.
Like you, I wouldn’t want to see anyone fail, although some failure in this business and in others is inevitable.
I think over 90% of restaurants tank. But no one is suggesting these are dying out.
But really–my aim isn’t to debate reality, as I think we’re both not in the camp of reality right now, but of predictions, and those are notoriously tough. I respect the reasons why you see a bleak future here.
One of our local bookstores has posters up in the store promoting the buy local movement. A bookstore whose entire stock is from big publishing houses, who refuses to stock or special order books by local independent authors because they don’t come from real publishers. I would put more money into the local economy by buying local independent authors via Amazon than by shopping at that local independent bookstore.
Gordon, I’ve seen different bookstores across the country do neat things with (and for) indie authors, and would love to see a viable business model emerge to sell this stock, in addition to Big 5 (et al) releases.
But the economics are pretty tough–it isn’t the easy task some writers think it is. One bookseller told me that she has a full-time staff member devote 1/3 of her work week simply to cutting checks for the indie authors whose works they sell, for example.
And when you delve into the money that comes from those publishers to bookstores–and not from indie authors–then it really gets complicated.
It’s a problem that needs solving–but the solution isn’t readily apparent, especially given the economic reality of running a bookstore as discussed in this thread.
I’d love to see more business-oriented minds than mine address it, though.
Yes, the big publishers payola is significant and useful… if you only look at the check. But the problem is the checks come with strings: the need to promote the books the publishers want promoted over the books the readers in the community might be interested in buying.
Over in the UK Waterstones just reported their finances have improved. (Yay!)
The way they did it was by turning away publisher payola and letting local store managers highlight books their communities are interested in.
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2017/02/balancing-the-books-how-waterstones-came-back-from-the-dead/
The found tbat the best way to adapt was to focus on the needs of their payng customers instead of their paying suppliers.
Running any business is risky and complicated. But it grows more complicated if you let your suppliers control your marketing.
How long is that employee’s work week? If someone is spending 12 hours a week cutting cheques, it sounds like they need to improve their bookkeeping systems.
Do you mean co-pays and other funds not generated by selling books for more than the wholesale price? Publishers are “maximizing efficiencies in [their] cutting-edge supply chain.” Those extra monies are going away soon as publishers trim and redirect the remainder to where they get more return on investment: B&N (for the moment) and Amazon.
I’m all for the local independent bookstore, but happy thoughts don’t make a business plan. Many of the up up news releases I’ve seen from the ABA about new independent bookstore openings include phrases such as “the volunteer staff” or “space donated by the local arts council”. Those aren’t viable businesses, and they don’t pump a lot into the local economy. If we want to preserve access to books, including physical books, as a cultural service, and I think we do, then the public library is a more viable banner carrier than the independent bookstore.
There is a crisis brewing in Saskatchewan libraries. Some time ago the provincial government amalgamated all the local library systems into a single provincial-wide system to increase efficiency. Now the provincial government has just slashed library funding and told the libraries to shut down all the public access computer terminals and keep running the very expensive system by which physical books are couriered between branches so anyone can read any book in the system.
Gordon, I don’t want to speak too much out of turn–I’m an author, not a bookseller, and as you can probably tell, not too well versed in the business side of things–but yes, it was 1/3 of a full-time work week. This was a big bookstore and they feature hundreds of indie authors’ works in rotating displays. It doesn’t sound like a lot to me when you consider it includes calculating payment.
What’s important to understand is that with the trad publisher, with whom a bookstore typically works, the process is very, very streamlined. A single order can be built that puts dozens (sometimes more) books in stock at one go. Each indie author is his/her own account. The logistics–from my perspective–are monumental.
Then there’s the issue of quality control and gate-keeping–also a huge challenge. Some indie authors are better than last year’s Pulitzer winner. Others…are not. You probably know what I mean.
But none of this should be insurmountable. I do hope this becomes something booksellers AND indie authors tackle. I do think it will require work from both parties, not simply, “Hey, you’ve got a beautiful store, can you stock my book?” I always tell indie authors–learn the economics. Know what you’re asking for.
Felix, couldn’t agree with you more–and I love what’s happening with Waterstones. The current system vis a vis the publishers could certainly do with some re-tooling, although I don’t find it quite as malefeasance-laden. The big 5 are somewhat equipped–only somewhat–to know a) what sells and b) what makes a good book (two different things) and wanting bookstores to stock said good books makes sense, minus a little…monkey business.
But the number of books sold is steadily and continually declining.
It wasn’t too long ago that publishers and their supporters told us publishers’ unit market share didn’t matter because they “Bank dollars,not units.”
PF is incredibly savvy about statistics – including the billions of ways they can be manipulated.
He’s been doing this a very long time.
He’s been observing both sides of the indie/trad divide – and how they quote such things as sales at least since 2012 (when I started reading).
And he is always up on Author Earnings reports.
TIt’s not just AE.
Even going with AAP, ABA, and Nielsen spin anybody willing to study the public numbers with see that fiction pbook is not, broadly speaking, a healthy business.
There’s a lot of shrinkage still to come.
Jenny – Thanks for your comment.
I’m happy to look at any links to stories that talk about the other side of any of the issues you raise.
Basically, I’m on the side of authors. Any person or business that helps authors is one I like.
Send me links to any stories you think would be of interest to TPV visitors (including yourself) via the Contact page of this blog – http://www.thepassivevoice.com/contact/
Incidentally, while I don’t usually enjoy my Barnes & Noble experiences, I am a big fan of really good bookstores. Whenever I’m in Portland, for example, I block out at least two hours for a visit to Powell’s.
Hey, it’s an honor to hear from you, PG! I really do love this site. One of the few I carve out lots of time for.
I get that you’re on the side of authors, and will happily send on articles that buoy my spirits, since in addition to wanting authors and readers to thrive myself, I have a horse in the bookstore race as well. Just can’t bear to lose ’em.
They can’t all be Powells, but even the quirkiest holds some magic for me in this Muggle-dense world.
Thanks for the blogging.
“even the quirkiest holds some magic for me in this Muggle-dense world.”
Says it better than I’ve yet seen.
Aw, thanks, USAF. I am trying not to hide that I have an emotional stake in this discussion. But hopefully I bring a little factual info to the table as well–I’ve visited about 1100 bookstores in the last 4 years.
I noticed that five of them — a majority of the customers — were looking at their phones. That’s when I realized that there was so much traffic on Amazon that even those people who come in here were using it as a sample store. Oh, I like this book; I’ll look it up on Amazon and see if I can find it cheaper.”
I take issue with this. Not everyone in a bookstore is price checking. I have been in this situation and my first question was “is this book any good?” and my response is to look up Amazon, or perhaps Goodreads reviews.
Of course, at Amazon’s new bookstores all of the books have to clear the 4-star bar in order to be shelved at all.
“Not everyone in a bookstore is price checking.”
Nope. Most often it ‘sounds’ like something I’ve already read and I’d just as soon buy another copy of it.
I check reviews for lots of books at used bookstores. It’s the only way to keep from getting a stinker when looking at interesting computer or finance books.
The big benefit of buying what’s right in front of you for used books is you know the condition and what it will cost. Pretty much any used book on Amazon I add an extra $4 for shipping which means local is often better if you find it.
One must adapt or die.
This goes for the buyer as well as the seller.
I have to hunt up my old (and they sometimes give me a headache) reading glasses to reread some of my old paperback books (that I have to be careful of so the pages don’t start falling out), or I can just bump up the font size on my kindle (or computer screen) and away I go.
They’ll not be getting all these worms back in the can, so it’s time to go fishing for the next great thing/idea.