Note: Don't get discouraged
if big box bookstores turn you away; many are restricted by corporate policies from helping authors outside of publisher - arranged collaborations.
They forget that Amazon is the one place where readers can go to find just about anything they want, unlike the
local big box bookstore that is limited to what their corporate purchasing office says it should stock.
Despite the delaying tactics large publishers have been using to slow ebook growth, it's likely that in 2011 we'll see ebooks hit a tipping point where
most big box bookstores will no longer be financially viable, and will close or move to smaller locations.
Amazon is getting more aggressive about reaping $ $ from authors and publishers who want visibility in their store (including their OWN imprint) the same
way big box bookstores like B&N have always done.
Oh, wait, B&N and the
other big box bookstores (most of whom are no longer in existence) put the majority of the indie stores out of business.
The age of
the big box bookstores is waning.
It also fails to take into account the fact that indie bookstores, where some of those less than best seller books could be found, were run out of the market by the influx of
the big box bookstores in the 1980s and 1990s.
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That is something that is all too often lacking in
the big box bookstores.
They were already dying as a result of
the big box bookstores moving into their communities, stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders.
Customers voted with their dollars when their only choices were
the big box bookstore that mostly sold candles, or two - day free shipping and instant download ebooks.
Seriously, walk into
any big box bookstore and take a guess how many individual titles there are on the shelves.
They are moving into small storefronts — sort of like what they did before they were driven out of business by
the big box bookstores like BN and Borders.
With the news about
some big box bookstores struggling to pay their bills or offer any new product, what, if any, initiatives does Marvel have to help smaller Direct Market stores increase their book product ordering without feeling their own financial pressures?
You don't find them talking about how the influx of
the big box bookstores destroyed the locally owned bookstores or how the poor business management and over-expansion of the big box stores then caused their own downfall.
It was
the big box bookstores.
Nor should they forget that the real problems for small bookstores came with the influx of
the big box bookstores like B&N.
Amazon doesn't have to try to put the «
big box bookstores» out of business, it's a natual progression.
Big Box bookstores are going bye bye.
I've said
the big box bookstores are going to have to re-examine their business models and find ways to think outside the box or they will go the way of Borders.
But, as I said many times in the months leading up to Borders» dissolution, a large part of the problem was the influx of
the big box bookstores.
They increasingly prefer digital over print, Amazon over brick and mortar bookstores, fast shipping over driving to
the big box bookstore to pay outlandish prices for hardcovers.
It's sad that it seems that
the big box bookstores no longer seem to want that too.