Clay Shirky wrote interestingly, if at excessive length about local bookstores and what they might need to do in order to survive and prosper. You can skip a big chunk of the first part of the essay… The crux is “the local bookstore creates all kinds of value for its community, whether its providing community bulletin boards, putting rocking chairs in the kids section, hosting book readings, or putting benches out in front of the store. Local writers, harried parents, couples on dates, all get value from a store’s existence as a inviting physical location, value separate from its existence as a transactional warehouse for books.”
But “the store doesn’t get paid for this value.”
What will stores need to do “if the profits or revenues of the core transaction fall too far: collect revenue for the side-effects. The most famous version of this is bookstore-as-coffeeshop, where the revenues from coffee subsidize the lingering over books and vice-versa, but other ways of generating revenue are possible. Reservable space for book clubs, writers rooms, or study carrels; membership with buy-back options for a second-hand book market run out of the same space; certain shopping hours reserved for members or donors; use of volunteer labor, like a food coop; sponsorships from the people or businesses in the neighborhood most interested in the social value of the store and most interested in being known as local machers.”
Shirky
Elsewhere, Walmart.com’s ceo says “we’ve been the price leader in books for months before that program [deep-discounted pre-orders] was announced” and their pricing is not an “illegal predatory practice since they are not “intending to use pricing to drive someone out of business.”
Bloomberg