E-Books Changing Bookstores
Give me the print version please.
Nowhere is the e-book tidal wave hitting harder than at bricks-and-mortar book retailers. The competitive advantage Barnes & Noble spent decades amassing—offering an enormous selection of more than 150,000 books under one roof—was already under pressure from online booksellers.
It evaporated with the recent advent of e-bookstores, where readers can access millions of titles for e-reader devices.
Even more problematic for brick-and-mortar retailers is the math if sales of physical books rapidly decrease: Because e-books don’t require paper, printing presses, storage space or delivery trucks, they typically sell for less than half the price of a hardcover book. If physical book sales decline precipitously, chain retailers won’t have enough revenue to support all their stores.
Some question whether book stores will go the way of music stores, which closed en masse once consumers could sample and download music digitally. Blockbuster Inc., the video rental giant, is struggling to reshape its business at a time when movies can be downloaded directly to digital devices.
Unlike music, the book industry didn’t suffer dramatically from digital theft and, for years, couldn’t figure out how to make money from e-books. There was no sense of urgency.
