Are independent booksellers making a comeback?
From a piece in Forbes...
Amazon made headlines recently, reporting that its customers are purchasing more Kindle books than all print books, both hardcover and paperback, combined.
There were a few raised eyebrows about its number-crunching (helloo Amazon, breaking out the different categories according to their sales revenues would have been more telling), but all in all it was a striking announcement. E-books as a trend, it seems, is firmly entrenched and will only deepen as more e-readers come to market and the devices drop lower and lower in price.
That is all right with Jeff Mayersohn, owner of the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. An independent book store not associated with the eponymous and, of course, quite famous university across the street, has carved out its own niche in the e-book market. What’s more, he tells Selling It, in some ways the bookstore has a competitive advantage over Amazon, at least locally.
“People can come into the bookstore and can get a book printed within four minutes. We also deliver books by bicycle. So in essence we have our own local manufacturing and distribution operation that, in some cases, they would have a difficult time matching.”
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