USA TODAY (@USATODAY) reports that, while “mega-chain” bookstores have crowded out independent bookstores over the last decade, it now seems that the indies are discovering a business model that might work in this digital age we’re in.
As measured by numbers, bookstores are in inevitable decline, says Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch, a digital newsletter. At the same time, he says, some "modestly sized, locally connected independent stores have found a successful formula" for surviving in today's market.
[A]bout 200 independent bookstores [are] in a digital partnership with Google eBooks, launched in December. The unprecedented partnership allows customers of independent bookstores to buy ebooks via a link on the stores' websites to the Google eBook-store (which also sells ebooks directly).
And Oren Teicher, head of the American Booksellers Association, says in an age when millions of books can be found online, the “curator skills” of local booksellers “to match a book with an individual reader is more important than ever.”