Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
Or Is It?

June 12, 2007 -- 4:03 PM
Posted by -- Laurie Sanders
Editor Black Velvet Seductions

I was reading a few other romance blogs this afternoon…as I sometimes do when I have a lull between tasks or I need a whiff of inspiration to get my fingers working on my own blog post.

Summed up, today’s blog at Romancing the Blog is about the slow trickle of readers away from brick and mortar stores. Though the blog itself is an interesting read, what is even more illustrative is to read the comments following it.

Of the roughly 14 comments following “Bookstore Breakup” all but 1 or 2 showed a shift toward the convenience and greater variety of titles available at Amazon.com and BN.com

Though I am sure there are two sides to every story, and though I know that brick and mortar booksellers are doing their best to meet reader demands the comments following this post show that by and large they are failing at the task.

I believe that the reasons for the struggle that faces brick and mortar stores are many. A part of the struggle undoubtedly does stem from customer service that is in lacking and the general unwillingness of some (especially chain stores) to carry books by less known authors and publishers who use the POD production model.

While there are reasons for their decisions, the decisions are not aiding their long term viability. By stocking only well known authors they are making themselves irrelevant in the big picture. While readers are abandoning bookstores they are also giving more and more of their reading time, attention, and dollars to non New York publishers.

Recently I sent an author who wanted to know what we were looking for in terms of western historical to the bookstore to purchase some of Sarah McCarty’s work. (Though she writes for a competing publishing company she’s a great author and I loved her Promises series). The author wrote back to me later to tell me that the bookstore she had gone to didn’t have the books so she had ordered them from Amazon.

So, what happened there? Can bookstores claim that publishers aren’t supporting them? I suggested these books…the author went to the bookstore with the intent to purchase the books. The books were not there for her to purchase. Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident…it happens all the time, especially with authors who write for smaller publishers.

Booksellers gravitate to the big names…which is I suppose a surer thing; at least there is a large demand for those books written by big name authors. But there are also a lot of places that sell the big name author’s books, including the grocery store, and Wal-Mart, which are both places that readers go without the requirement for an additional stop on the way home.

Convenience more than any other factor seems to be the driving force behind the slow exodus from brick and mortar stores in favor of the online giants. Sadly, it is hard to compete with convenience of being able to shop from your bedroom in your pajamas. Most small stores do not have the ability to compete with that kind of convenience.

It is also incredibly difficult for a small store, or even a chain store to carry every book that a reader might want. However, if they were willing to order the book upon a customer's request that would at least offer a start. My authors have had readers tell them they tried to order their books from the bookstore and were told it was out of print. The bookstore had a customer…wallet in hand…ready to buy a book…but they turned them away. In the scenario they also disappointed the author whose support they profess to want.

Though I do have some frustration with brick and mortar bookstores I do not want to see them fail. I would love to see them play a vibrant role. However to survive the exodus of readers to more convenient and more readily stocked ebook stores they are going to need to take a step back and examine what they can offer readers and book buyers that Amazon.com and BN.com can’t offer them.

What about it readers? What does your favorite bookstore (new or used) give you that Amazon.com and BN.com can’t?

Read Comments (1)

To link to the whole Black Velvet Seductions Blog use this link

To link to this post specifically please use this link