E-book reader owners are Voracious

[amafan]

Read an article today in the San Jose Mercury News about the plight of the DTB chains.  The gist of it was now their turn at the guillotine after killing all the local bookstores twenty years ago.  On-line sales and ebooks are causing chain sales to plummet.  A quote from Billy Hulkawer, an analyst at Mintel, while only a relative few readers are ebook readers they tend to be voracious in their consumption.  He predicts that ebook sales will triple in the next two years. Check it out.

http://www.mercurynews.com/chris-obrien/ci_15955446?nclick_check=1

[Cyanide5000]

Id be surprised if the populatiry of ereaders didnt increase by at least 3 fold if the forseable future.

As soon as schools/colleges and universitys start to use them primarily instead of paper books, manual librarys and the likes will become a thing of the past.

Id be surprised if within the next 5~ years that didnt happen

[mooshie78]

No surprise.  One has to be a fairly serious reader to go shell out $100-200 (and more in the past) for an e-reading device.  They're not worth it for the casual reader who buys a best seller or two a year at Wal-mart.

[Trophywife007]

Do you suppose that if B&N and Borders close their doors the independent book retailers will make a comeback?  Or perhaps casual readers will be happy buying their books in the grocery store or Walmart?  It seems that there's always an audience that does not desire to interact with technology.
 

[Geoffrey]

Do you suppose that if B&N and Borders close their doors the independent book retailers will make a comeback?  Or perhaps casual readers will be happy buying their books in the grocery store or Walmart?  It seems that there's always an audience that does not desire to interact with technology.
 

At a guess, we may well see more indie bookstores crop up as a sort of boutique - a bit like how there are still horse stables, but they're more of a support facility for a luxury item ....

[mooshie78]

Do you suppose that if B&N and Borders close their doors the independent book retailers will make a comeback?  Or perhaps casual readers will be happy buying their books in the grocery store or Walmart?  It seems that there's always an audience that does not desire to interact with technology.
 

I think the coffee shop part is key.  Always a ton of people in the Starbucks/Seattle's Best in these big book stores reading books and magazines while drinking $4 coffees.

If the big stores can't stay afloat, the independents should steal the idea and have gourmet coffeeshops in their stores so they can make money even from people who don't buy many books.

[Thalia the Muse]

A lot of them do. Book Soup in L.A. has a coffeeshop, if I'm not mistaken, I know Powell's in Portland does, and we were in a very cool bookstore/coffeehouse in West Yellowstone in June.

[BTackitt]

while only a relatively small number of people own e-reader devices like Amazon's Kindle, they tend to be heavy readers. The surprising surge of e-book sales has sliced off many of the biggest customers from the bookstore chains

yep. Why would I drive 45 minutes 1 way to get to the closest decent bookstore when I now have my Kindle and can spend my $ easily from home/school wherever.

[kb7uen Gene]

It's the old "The sky is falling speel" to panic people.  If the investors lose 5 cents from their portfolios, then the company is doomed.

Do I feel sorry for the big book store chains and their top management, their board of directors, and their investors?  Absolutely not!

But I do feel for the chain's employees, the people who actually do the real day to day work and keep the chain going.  But the bottom line is that the big book store chains didn't care one bit about pushing the Mom and Pop book stores out of business and I don't care one bit if the big book store chains go out of business beyond what it does to the people who really matter, the employees.

Gene

[Trophywife007]

I think the coffee shop part is key.  Always a ton of people in the Starbucks/Seattle's Best in these big book stores reading books and magazines while drinking $4 coffees.

If the big stores can't stay afloat, the independents should steal the idea and have gourmet coffeeshops in their stores so they can make money even from people who don't buy many books.

Yes, I think that branching out is key.  We had an independent bookseller here located in a more "posh" shopping center who began selling original art and other specialty items in addition to books and managed to do pretty well.

[ClickNextPage]

That's exactly what I said when I wrote to a favorite author suggesting he make his out of print backlist available electronically. Lucky for me, he said his agent just mentioned it to him the other day and he'd let me know when it happened! Go Kindle!!!