Martin Taylor (@nztaylor), founder of the Digital Publishing Forum, says bookstores should adapt the example from the technical industry in order to succeed in today’s fast-changing retail environment. He points to the strategy known as co-opetition, in which it’s “in each supplier’s self-interest to help competitors reach its customers.” He says, in the advent of Web 2.0, “even traditional media sites found that opening up and sharing widely, even with competitors, was good for business.”
Bookshops are already operating in a world where readers have lots of choices for new book discovery with bookshops just a small part of their repertoire. In this world, the idea that a store in some way ‘owns’ a customer who is disloyal if they stray elsewhere to buy seems quaint.... So a better strategy than closed walls might be a welcoming and respectful openness.
The lesson from co-opetition is that when barriers come down and markets open up, your best strategy might be to work with competitors in ways that make your customers’ lives easier.
Influence – amplified through partnerships, online media, and other channels – rather than location, price, or convenience might be the currency of the leading bookstores of the future. At an industry level, that influence – whether or not the purchase happens in bricks and mortar stores – is the best antidote to the too-common view of an industry in terminal decline.
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