The Irony of e-Books

Within the past ten years, big chain book stores like Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, and Borders put small book stores out of business. A lot of people were enraged by this. Even a movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, You've Got Mail, added this theme in the form of Fox Books putting Kathleen Kelly's independent book store, The Shop Around the Corner, out of business. For a long time, the chain stores have been top dogs.

Then e-Readers were invented. First Amazon came out with the Kindle, then it exploded from there. Barnes and Noble has four different versions of the Nook, with a fifth likely on the way. People stopped just being angry about independent book stores going out of business, but also became disturbed at what they thought would be the imminent disappearance of the physical book altogether.

I work at the Barnes and Noble in my hometown as a bookseller (I shelf books, zone, and work at Customer Service). I've worked there for over a year now. Last Christmas, we made a killing in Nook sales. We beat our expected dollar amount in store sales every day by several thousand dollars. But at the time, I couldn't help but think that we were shooting ourselves in the foot. How would we ever beat our own sales next Christmas? (We still have yet to find out on that one.) But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Because of all the Nook sales, many more people have switched to buying e-Books instead of physical books. Therefore, in-store sales are way down. Barnes and Noble is still making a ton of money right now, it's just not their physical stores that are bringing in the cash anymore.

I'm not saying that Barnes and Noble is going to shut down all their stores. The Amarillo store is definitely still remaining open (and about to make several big changes to the store interior, so be on the lookout for that). Don't panic.

However, I do foresee it happening eventually. Book stores are really going to have no choice but to switch to full digitization at some point. Then Barnes and Noble and all those other big book stores will be just like Amazon. But after those big stores are gone, who is left to fill the void?

Is there a void to be filled? Yes. All those people who hate e-Readers and prefer physical books (myself included, though more moderate on the e-Reader hating) will still create a demand for them. That's when independent book stores will begin to crop back up, catering to the needs of the soon-to-be, but very much appreciated, minority of book readers.

So the irony is that the big chain book stores stomped out the little, independent book stores. Then they came up with e-Readers and shot themselves in the foot. But they didn't completely kill themselves off. Rather, they put themselves in their rightful place--in the digital world--and have allowed for the little book stores to return. Essentially, the e-Reader will eventually balance out the battle between lovers of big or little book stores.