"The Shifting Sands of Physical Bookselling"

"The independent stores will never be more than a niche business of modest sales and very modest profitability. But the same is true for many small businesses, which makes them no less vital—but also means they'll never be candidates for public markets. The chains competed in public markets for investor dollars with precisely the wrong metrics and with Amazon undercutting their growth prospects. They churned inventory and tried to become digital players, and they lost. (Barnes & Noble may yet reverse that trend with its recent partnership with Samsung to develop a next-generation tablet and e-reader.) The independents, meanwhile, offer something neither Amazon nor the chains can: attention to the quirky needs of their customer base. For the Upper West Side and thousands of other neighborhoods, those stores have turned out to be irreplaceable."


Zachary Karabel in Slate observes the resurrection of independent bookstores.