Discount or value books may be the step-child of publishing, but they are still a part of the family. It’s often a very profitable part.
Are Niche Bookstores More Viable in a Digital Economy?
Bookstores that cater to a specific audience, rather than the mainstream, may have the best chance at survival.
A Bookseller Who Bridges Print and Digital, Day and Night, This World and the Next
Watkin’s Books — the world’s most famous mind-body-spirit bookstore — nearly went under in 2010. A 21st-century business strategy and an American with vision saved it from extinction. By Roger Tagholm LONDON: You wouldn’t expect the owner of London’s –- if not the world’s -– most famous mind-body-spirit bookshop, Watkins, in Cecil Court, a Victorian walkway off Charing Cross Road, …
Can Niche Bookstores Survive in the Age of Digital?
By Edward Nawotka Niche bookstores are being squeezed on both side: first from the chains which offer an increasingly broad range of products and second from digital, which offers virtually all products. To survive, niche bookstores — whether focusing on mysteries, travel, or mind-body-spirit (such as Watkin’s Books, discussed in today’s feature story) — will need to be offer to …
Barnes & Noble: From Thug to Love
Editorial by Edward Nawotka For a long time Barnes & Noble, the United States’ largest bookstore chain, was the bully of bookselling. B&N was the bookseller whose massive expansion into superstores in the ’80s and ’90s was seen as the catalyst for the closure of numerous independent booksellers across the country. They were the booksellers who absorbed much beloved small …
Will Independent Bookstores Be Able to Survive Without Selling E-books?
By Edward Nawotka In today’s editorial I wrote about my perception of the changing culture at Barnes & Noble, a company that is transforming itself amide internal and external strife. One of the things the company has managed to do is incorporate e-books into the products it can offer customers and, increasingly, this looks to be a key to its …