Making bookends meet

With the collapse of Borders another route to market for publishers closes. I reckon it won't be long before we see publishers (both big and small) either go under or cut back radically.

They are pumping out thousands of books a year (the tally you hear is between 150 thousand and 200 thousand per year). But most of them probably don't get out of the warehouses where they are stored.

If they are lucky and leave the warehouse, this is where they might end up:

1. Waterstones with its over 300 shops. But first they have to get the attention of the bookbuyer for their category. Poor bookbuyer I say. It is an impossible and thankless task trying to fend off all the publishers vying for attention.
2. WHSmith. I have never heard of anyone succcessfully penetrating this chain.
   
3. Blackwells, more of an academic bookshop.
4. jsmith, again a bookchain that is mainly located at university campuses.
5. Foyles or Daunts. London based chainlets.
6. Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury or Morrisons. Put it this way, they won't want to stock An introduction to bee keeping.
7. Online retailers such as The Book Depository and the mighty Amazon.
8. Friendly, local independent bookshops.

The question is - how long will it be before terrestial bookshops are purely treated as a browsing booths? Shoppers go in, they see what books they like, they sit in the comfort of the coffee shop while going online on their mobiles to order that very same title from Amazon for perhaps 20 percent less and which they don't have to bother carrying home with them?

The only people who will carry on buying full price books are ones like my dear old Italian mamma who still considers Amazon to be that place in South America. Once the older technology ignorant generation stops shuffling up to the tills, then I fear there appears to be little hope for bookshops.

Would it be possible for Waterstones to guarantee to match Amazon on price, or is that just pie in the sky thinking?