I came across an article this morning about Borders financial difficulties in the Detroit Free Press, a newspaper that is struggling, too. It got me thinking about how the literary world will survive this financial downturn we’re going through.
Here in the San Francisco Bay area, which I’m told is one of the readingist areas in the country, independent bookseller are closing like they are all across the country. We’ve lost Cody’s and Stacey’s – both bastions of the Bay Area literary community – and Kepler’s only kept its doors open through through community support.
Where are the book buyers who used to shop at these stores going? On a New Jersey Library Association blog, I learned this about one alternative source of bookbuying: “most every book Starbucks stocks … sells more than 100,000 copies in its outlets alone. That pushes most Starbucks selections into the top 1 percent of all books sold that year, without counting sales in other types of stores.” That sent me off to the New York Times, where I found an article about a memoir for which two thirds of the copies sold in the first few weeks were bought at the coffee shops.
A quick search didn’t uncover statistics about what percentage of book sales are online these days (and I have a book to write so I do need to get to work), but if anyone knows please do share the information in a comment below.
Is this the future of book sales? Non-traditional book outlets and online stores? Is the neighborhood bookstore headed the way record stores have gone? I don’t have an answer (except perhaps to be glad that The Wednesday Sisters is available as a Kindle read), but I’d love to hear your thoughts. – Meg
