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NEWS: Borders, Barnes & Noble Report Weak Holiday Sales

I wouldn't say eBook readers are a nail in the coffin. To be honest, the B&N stores I shop at are always busy every time I'm there. Yeah, I can go online and get a book from Amazon and save a bit, but often times the savings aren't that much with books, particularly when you factor in the wait, and not being able to hold the copy in your hands to verify its condition. A lot of people who buy books aren't just buying a copy to read, but something to keep on their shelf, so condition matters.

Plus, I can't really check a book out and come across new books as easily online. Yeah, Amazon has their recommendations based on browsing and order history, but that is frankly worthless in my opinion. No, nothing yet beats just browsing through the local bookstore when on the prowl for something new and interesting. You are exposed to far more when checking out those shelves, and you can take a seat and read a few chapters to see if it'd be worth the trouble. If it's a reference or art book or something like that, it's also valuable to be able to look through it and see all it offers so you know if it's worthwhile or not.

So yeah, if I know exactly what I want, I can save a few bucks on Amazon or Buy. Generally though, that's not why I go to book stores, so Amazon and Buy are still of no use to me in that regard. So no, they're not more and more obsolete, and it actually has seemed apparent to me that the pricing gap isn't as pronounced as it used to be.

Can I come to your job and tell you what you should be charging for the goods or services you supply? No.

Book stores are becoming more and more obsolete by the day. The fact that they constantly refuse to charge anything less than retail price means than many heavy book buyers are forced to shop online to get better sales.

The point is: I want to buy that book. I would pay them real, American currency for it. I just refuse to spend quite so much on it. Every time I walk out of there, that was a potential sale. The Synaptic Self remains on the shelf (the one that's to the right of the entrance against the wall of the children's section) becoming more obsolete, taking up space that B&N could have filled with a Dan Brown book and recouped whatever they'd have lost by cutting me a deal.

This is just one reason brick & mortar bookstores are failing.

The main reason is that online books are not plagued by the same problems that come with brick and mortar stores. I don't have to worry about: whether I can get the security tag off the page without ripping/damaging it, no one has left sticky residue over the cover and pages, no has handle the book in such a way that it is no longer new - it can only be classified as acceptable, and no one has opened the shrink wrap to remove any of the bonuses that sometimes comes with books.