Computer bookstores in GTA

[Christopher Browne]

On 8/13/05, pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org <pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> I thought what I said in an earlier thread beared repeating, and
> probably its own discussion. To repeat:
> 
> As far as el-cheapo bookstores are concerned, I believe Compubooks
> of Scarborough is the last one in existence in the Greater Toronto
> Area. Last month, PC Maniak bit the dust. They say it is due to
> publishers selling to Amazon, Chapters and the like at a rate that
> undercuts independent doscount booksellers such as Compubooks.


Amazon and Chapters (in "Internet form", at least) can offer something that 
"brick and mortar stores" can't, and that is a guarantee of relatively low 
return rates.

In effect, they get in a few boxes of each book, and ship to customers out 
of that box.

In contrast, book stores have the *massive* added costs of evaluating and 
pushing inventory throughout their store networks. This leads to an inherent 
inefficiency, namely that unless they HEAVILY overstock, it is likely that 
they will run out of a book at some locations whilst copies remain unsold 
elsewhere.

That doesn't happen for Amazon and Chapters; the books are only at one 
location, and the way they "run out" is if there truly is no stock left.

The "sell via Internet" model allows APress to sell books with smaller 
production runs (e.g. - recent works on zsh, Lisp) where they can get low 
wastage out of the fact that the inventory doesn't get pushed 2000 ways (e.g. 
- copies going to each "brick store" outlet of Barnes & Noble, Borders, 
Chapters), but can rather stay in a very few central locations.

This is changing the book industry; O'Reilly is still wedded to the need to 
push their books out to 2000 "big box store" locations, so they have to sell 
to a lowest common denominator which means that I'm not interested in the 
kinds of books they publish anymore. I doubt I'm the only one...

This does leave "Compubooks" in a sticky place; the "new way" of bookselling 
described above leaves them out. I don't have an answer to that...
-- 
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