Books are perfect for online shopping
Mike Shazkin’s recent post about the 7 Ways Book Publishing will change is a great read (albeit one that’s influenced by his relationship with the distributor Ingram). I wanted to pull one entry out for here because it’s a really useful way to look at the the shifts in book retail: Books have a ton of characteristics that make them perfect for online shopping. You want to shop from a full selection no store has. It is very seldom when you must have a book right now. And books are heavy, so you don’t really want to carry them around if you can avoid it. The view from here is that it will continue to be very challenging to make physical book locations commercially viable. As a bookish person who has a bunch of friends who work in book retail, many of whom are doing it tough right now, that’s the kind of idea that’s not going to entirely welcome
