By Juli Monroe
Digital Book World posted an excellent article today about the Barnes & Noble elephant in the room at DBW 2013.
The big takeaway from this article was this statistic:
“According to the most recent Codex survey, online selling accounts for 61 percent of book sales, but only 7 percent of discovery.”
That’s huge. I’m one of those 61 percent. Sure, I buy all my books
online, but I find new books and authors by browsing my local Barnes
& Noble. And what happens if that local Barnes & Noble goes
away? It’s not looking good for them as a business right now. Well, I’m
confident readers will figure out a way to find books, but there will be
a gap until then.Another good quote comes from Peter Hildick-Smith, CEO of Codex Group:
I completely agree. B&N and the publishers have a vested interest in keeping the company alive and healthy. Earlier this month, I wrote about this on our sister site, GadgeTell.“Physical retail works if you protect it … Movie producers do [protect movie theaters]. I would argue publishers are not doing enough to help bookstores.”
So …. why doing as much as they could? (Or, as Hildick-Smith suggested, as much as they should?)
