The End of the Real Bookstore

[purplerabbit]

Not long now and the only place you will be able to buy a book is online or in a big chain store.

Cody's Bookstore on Telegraph in Berkeley is closing.

A Clean Well Lite Place for Books in San Francisco is up for sale.

Soon, only a handfull of corporations will control what you can read.

Comments

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

This is really disturbing. It seems like all the places I like to go are closing. Big business seems to own the world now.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Borderlands is still going strong though.

too late for that

[metaphorge.livejournal.com]

Soon, only a handfull of corporations will control what you can read.

Actually, they already do, since Ingram controls the bulk of the book distribution industry, and indy book stores serve as little more than fronts for them and the large publishing houses.

The real arbitrar over what you find in a book store mostly breaks down to what kind of deal its publisher has made with Ingram, influencing what the discount is for the bookseller.

One example of how this works out is that it actually costs most bookstores money to sell you most books they do not have on their shelves, so in most cases you're doing the bookstore a favor to make special orders through Amazon instead of having them special order it... a chronic weakness of indy stores is that they will not say "no" (as they should) when someone orders a book they will lose a substantial amount of money on, often because the booksellers are not familiar with discount/return policies for various publishers.

It's my view that any independent bookstore that doesn't put a lot of its business model into a used section (such as Powell's) is doomed, unless they want to offer an identical or lesser selection than your average B&N or Borders, which kind of defeats the purpose of the store's existence. The exeption to this is niche stores, but they often make the bulk of their profits off sidelines.

[beanolc.livejournal.com]

Bookshop Santa Cruz, last I checked, is still alive and kicking. To me, that's a lot.

Soon, only a handfull of corporations will control what you can read.
And don't forget; they can track what you order as well.

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Oh no!!!

[sojournscoffe.livejournal.com]

This sucks I shop at codys all the time

[adnar-el.livejournal.com]

That sucks big rocks.
If it helps, if your ever here in sacto, theres a wonderful used bookstore here tht is still very popular and busy. Its called " the almost perfect bookstore". To my knowlage, they have no intention of going out of buissuiness any time soon. With the exceotion of my manga, I go here for all my books, particularly for my Anita Blake and Merry Gentry books. Good luck!

there are a couple of things...

[chewt0y.livejournal.com]

If you can get down to Santa Cruz, Bookshop Santa Cruz is still open, but with Border's just down the street, they've lost a lot of business. I worked for them in their Business office for a little more than a year. The more people lose the intent to keep business local, the more likely the independants will close.
In SF, Borderlands has very limited space and offers only specific categories of books. People don't realize that voting with your money is a reality. It's a place where we still have the power to affect change even in small ways. If every person decides that it's not worth the bother to walk or drive or bike a few extra blocks, we're left with a diminished reality. Put energy and money where you want it to be, talk to people. You are not powerless to stop it the decline of the open mind.

[treecat]

Cody's was able to keep all that glass through the rough periods on the Ave. because people respected it, that says a lot. For years BofA had no glass.

This is sad to hear. :(