By Michael Weinstein There’s been a great deal of conjecture lately about the future of the bookstore: What will happen to the B&N stores (especially if they do plan to reduce the number of stores)? What about independent bookstores? Will Amazon crush bricks-and-mortar stores out of existence? Oh, lordy, will there even be such a thing as a bookstore!?!? Not surprisingly, this all made me think of a song. Under time pressure to have a song for the first Earth Day concert in 1970, the great Tom Paxton created the gold standard for songs about ecology when he wrote “Whose Garden Was...

From today's Toronto Star comes this feel-good story about The Cookbook Store, a Toronto landmark celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The story also has some good lessons for those who wonder how book retail can continue to survive and thrive in today's Amazon-and-Internet economy. Some takeaways? Go with the Flow The article mentions that the store's founder started in on a five-year lease and figured she would 'see what happens.' I think that's a healthy attitude. I've read too many articles about book publishing whose authors twisted themselves into knots trying to predict how the business model was going to change into...

It's certainly not news that the rising tide of books in the so-called "mommy porn" genre are driving sales of e-books like nothing else that has come before them. But a recent article in Ireland's Belfast Telegraph explains that erotic fiction is resulting in many more e-book library loans, too. In one Irish community, according to the article, e-book library loans rose "from 16,231 in 2011 to 19,847 in 2012." And what was the area's most popular library e-book in 2012? A steamy Harlequin romance by India Grey, titled At The Argentinean Billionaire's Bidding. Another Harelquin, Kate Walker's Bedded by the Greek Billionaire, was the second most-borrowed...

Bittersweet news came out this weekend that Nicholas Hoare, a landmark Toronto bookstore, is set to close April 1, 2013. The store is known for its eclectic stock and elegant interior, and has been in operation in three different cities, at various junctures, since 1971. The shocker? This article on the closure says there isn't actually any 'untoward' reason for the closure—no 'competition from big chains will destroy us all' or 'Amazon is killing the little guys' or 'ebooks are causing the death of print.' It's simply that Hoare's lease was up for renewal and Mr. Hoare had a choice to...

Remember those rumors from February that Amazon was going to open its own retail store chain, possibly starting with a boutique store in Seattle? On Forbes (and reprinted in Digital Book Today), Carol Tice takes a look at the idea and finds it rather exciting. She suggests it could be “likely the birth of a major new retail bookstore chain, a Waldenbooks for the 21st Century.” An Amazon store, says Tice, could be an antidote to the depressing sameness of physical merchandise in retail outlets these days—and a way to appeal to the younger generation who is growing up...

On the Columbia Journalism Review, Ryan Chittum has a rebuttal to a number of recent posts about e-book production costs and price, including the post by Mathew Ingram that I covered here. Though the article is replete with quotes and counter-arguments, but the central thrust seems to be that publishers ought to be able to charge what they want to—but they really should be wanting to charge less. At base, copyright holders have the right to ask what they want to get for their work (which is why they were so concerned about Amazon selling ebooks...

Remember when Target started selling the Kindle, almost exactly two years ago? It appears that the bloom is off the rose. The Verge reports that Target is going to “[phase] out Kindles and all Amazon- and Kindle-branded products in the spring of 2012.” However, Target will continue to offer other e-readers, including Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Other blogs such as Engadget are speculating on the causes. Might it be because Target is going to open mini-Apple stores, and Apple asked Target to phase out goods from its closest competitor? But Best Buy has its own mini-Apple stores and it...

PaidContent reports that the US’s second-largest bookstore chain, Books a Million, is following in the footsteps of Barnes & Noble and proclaiming it will not stock Amazon-published titles in its brick-and-mortar stores. It’s not clear whether, like Barnes & Noble, they will sell the titles online. Books a Million sells a version of the Nook as its own e-reader. There’s a Books a Million store in Joplin, Missouri, and I stopped by it a few months ago. I wasn’t particularly impressed. Unlike Barnes & Noble, the store does not offer free wifi for its customers—you have to pay for...

Stephen Windwalker's Kindle Nation Weekender has an excellent article, with the above title, about what is happening in retailing.  Here's a part of it: It's not very Zen of me to say so, but where we are may be less important than where we are headed. We've already arrived at a place where there is: a store that sells everything.... a store that can suggest what we want next.... a store that delivers instantly.... a web browser that anticipates where we are going.... Sure, there are other retailers who can look at the above list and say "we do that too," but we all know that Amazon...

Remember how one of the biggest disadvantage of the Kindle versus the Nook used to be that Barnes & Noble had so many physical outlet stores and Amazon didn’t? Well, today Amazon announced that, as of November 15th, over 16,000 stores across the US will be carrying the devices, including Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Staples, Sam’s Club, Radio Shack, Office Depot, and more. Of course, most of these stores already have been carrying Kindle goods for a while, but it’s a little startling just how many of them there really are now. It’s a far cry from the days...

That's the title of an article in FUTUReBOOK today.  Talking about the new deal between Kobo and  W H Smith for the latter to sell Kobo ereaders: It comes hot on the heels of Kobo's French deal with Fnac. And while I am pleased that WHS is finally waking up to the e-book market, the arrangement brings with it clear dangers. WHS was in a difficult position. It's e-book website hadn't evolved and compared with that of Amazon, and even Waterstone's, looked like something designed in the 1990s. In fact even today, it's an unattractive proposition...

From the Frankfurt Book Fair, via The Bookseller: Retailers will need to develop and market their own dedicated e-book readers if they are to compete with Amazon, delegates at Frankfurt Book Fair have been told. Speaking at a Google panel about e-books, Bloomsbury executive director Richard Charkin said: “Essentially a huge proportion of e-book sales goes through the obvious internet retailer. Whilst the others have dabbled with offering e-books without a reader to go with them, they don’t seem to have made any significant inroads to Amazon’s market.” Charkin referred to Waterstone’s own e-book device, which is...