Good afternoon,
We still have a Waterstones book shop in my town centre, I know that Waterstones are a chain, but they are a chain where the shops only sell books. They are in a convenient location, the shop has been fitted out to a high standard and it is a really nice place to go, but when I go into it I think where are the books?
Yes there are plenty of Harry Potter and Games Of Thrones, but only a couple of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke etc.
I am old enough the remember when WH Smiths had a high street shop with an upstairs book department that was about 200 feet long and 12-18 feet wide. I have really forgotten the prices but a hardback cost around 20-30 pints of beer and the latest Dick Francis novel was so expensive that it was a birthday present between my parents.
Yes beer prices have risen dramatically but the cost of a new release hardback book was still close to a day's wages for average earners.
Okay I get that those authors may no longer be best sellers, some don't age well, but some have, yet the bookshop is dependent on a publisher printing the books.
A while back Print On Demand was going to be the next big thing, a trusted shop would be given the right to print single copies of books in their shops. I could go into Small Village Books and they would say come back in an hour and I can have James Blish's Star Trek novel "Spock must die", and the staff would know that such a book existed.
This didn't happen and it was never tried as It was too much effort. Yet nearly everyone here can download a book and print it off, yes for most the toner/ink costs are too high for this to be sensible but a book shop could afford a slightly better printer. Once you get to £10k printers are pretty good and cheap per page.
Bye
Ian
