Supremetronic Redux

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 10:44 AM, James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> And the "tech book" section at the average bookstore has indeed become
>> a pale shadow of what it was 15 years ago.
>
> Yeah, that seemed to happen shortly after Heather Reisman bought out
> Chapters/Coles/World's Biggest Bookstore.  She even stated that her goal was
> to change them into gift shops.  She certainly has done an excellent job of
> dumbing down those stores.  Years ago, I often bought my Ryerson texts from
> WBB.  You'd think that with all the stores she has, she could have at least
> left WBB as a decent book store, given it's central location, close to
> business, UoT, Ryerson, the hospitals etc.

Ah, but as much as there are undesirable things about what she has
done with Indigo/Chapters, this is not fundamentally a Canadian
phenomenon.

I watched the "crash" from pretty close on in 2002-2003; was doing
some review work for Wrox back at that time, when they effectively
imploded.  Around 2000, all kinds of publishers were pushing out crazy
amounts of stuff, particularly in the technical book arena.

At the publisher level, there has been an incredible amount of
contraction of market between 2000 and now, and the relevant
publishers aren't Canadian.
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