Online and e-book impact on brick-n-mortar bookstores

 

By Blake Wilson

Bookstores in Windsor and across the globe are facing stiff competition from online and digital competitors.

Back before the Internet, bookstores were one of the main ways for consumers to obtain reading material and public libraries were virtually the only competition. Today bookstores are up against digital technology in the form of e-readers, e-books, online bookstores and free online textbooks, all courtesy of the Internet.

In the US, more than 1,000 bookstores have reportedly closed between 2000 and 2007. According to Professor Albert Greco of Fordham University, Quebec independent booksellers share of the market declined 27.7 per cent in 2012, an overall reduction from 2008 of 31.9 per cent.

A Banff, Alberta independent bookstore shut down after 44 years in business in 2009 because of competition from the Internet and big box chains stores.  Toronto has also felt the effects of the new digital technology wave when the World’s Biggest Bookstore closed in March of this year.

Local Bookstores have been dealing with the same issues.

The bookstore Biblioasis, has already merged digital and traditional print media into their business model and are doing just fine.

“We’re both a publisher and a bookstore, so we do sell ebooks of all our books as well, we do tap into that market,” said Biblioasis Production Manager Chris Andrechek “People were saying that ebook sales would have taken over print book sales by this point in time, but they’ve sort of plateaued at maybe 30 per cent of sales.”

Like Biblioasis, some believe the future for bookstores will be their ability to digitize in order to remain relevant and competitive and minimize the loss of customers. Utilizing the new QR code, bookstores may be able to stem the tide by making available a wider selection of material to their consumers. The QR code will also allow the stores to offer their customers a choice between purchasing a book that is out of stock in hard copy or digital form.

Local bookstore Juniper Used & Rare Books is just now starting to experiment with merging the off and online worlds.

“Let’s say you have a classic book like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on the shelf,” said Roger Wurdemann, owner of Juniper Used & Rare Books.” And beside it is a QR bar code, you put your phone against the code and hit the code and a classic animated adaptation of that book comes up. So you can see the one medium translated to the other.”

The future of books and bookstores may not be as bleak as once predicted. The same thing was said about digital downloading in the music industry. Like the story of Chicken Little, who went running around warning everyone that the sky was falling, and the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Both tales warn that things are sometimes not as bad as people make them out to be and this just might be what is happening in the world of bookstores.