At the Cortlandt Manor store, managers decided to move entertainment biographies — which were outselling other biographies. Music also is a declining segment, according to a person familiar with the matter. September 19, pm Updated September 19, pm. Jon Enoch Photography. Share This Article. If you know what you want, of course it's exponentially easy to get a book from Amazon.
But that isn't what a bookstore does. The two of us, libraries and bookstores, you are completely able to go at your own pace to discover books, and the serendipity of that discovery is a very different experience. That comes naturally to independent bookstores and that's why the people who are there are of central and overriding importance.
Daunt is well aware that Amazon is a competitor. After all, the e-retailer 25 years ago launched through the category and remains a bookselling giant, in some months responsible for half the sales of new books in the U.
Amazon itself, though, hasn't reported its book sales — print, e-book or self-published — in some time, and didn't respond to repeated requests for more information on those results. Some two-thirds of book sales are through e-commerce, and Amazon has the "lion's share" of the e-book market and of the online print market, according to Codex.
Less focus on superspeed, and more on certainty , supports the trust the individual managers build through their stores, according to Daunt. If the three days is sometimes three days and sometimes a week, booksellers have in general allowed that kind of chaos," he said.
Because our skills and our experience are completely unbeatable. It's really needed for the industry to maintain some kind of balance — otherwise it's Amazon in totality. Daunt is unequivocal about his appreciation for how physical space, arranged, appointed and managed well, establishes the kind of atmosphere that lends itself to book browsing — and buying. Indeed, Waterstone's, under Daunt's direction, gave up its e-book business in , tying up with Rakuten's Kobo p latform instead.
But Daunt sounds ready to give Nook the attention it has desperately needed, as Amazon's Kindle has run away with the space. But if you want to read digitally, the app is fantastic. I'm a champion of digital books and digital book retailing, but above and beyond that I'm a champion of reading. Bookstores are somewhere you should feel comfortable, unthreatened, at ease.
And it should be done to reflect the community you're within. Daunt is a fan not only of the three chains he's personally tied to, but also other bookstores, like Books and Books in Miami and The Strand and McNally Jackson in New York, to name just a few. There's no one secret there. Each of them has their own secret sauce. I just have to come up with that for hundreds of stores.
Follow Daphne Howland on Twitter. Daunt acknowledged that most stores will carry many of the same titles, but where the books are placed, and in what quantities they are ordered, is now left to managers.
The stores are still adding new fixtures and are beginning to get ready for the fall by adding such things as new cash wraps. This spring, Elliott bought the stationery and gift retailer Paper Source and put Daunt in charge. Daunt is among those industry members who believe interest in reading will remain high even as other activities that had been closed reopen. He looked back on how excitement over the Harry Potter books created new book audiences and said while some new readers may drop off, the majority will remain.
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