LISNews: Librarian News

Anonymous Patron writes "MSNBC.com: Independent bookselling is a business prone to nostalgia it can ill afford. Those booksellers who recognize that location trumps sentiment are the ones opening new places. Ross came to San Francisco; Neal Sofman, a co-owner of A Clean Well Lighted Place, has opened Bookshop West Portal, and Books Inc. will take over the former Clean Well Lighted Place spot in September. Elaine Petrocelli is in negotiations to open a third location of Corte Madera's Book Passage in a Novato development that will include Whole Foods. Chains are not the worst of it"

Anonymous Patron writes "Another one on the Indys closing: ContraCostaTimes.com: Ross and many other independent booksellers in the Bay Area share a common lament over a grim or nonexistent future for some of the most cherished havens for book lovers and strongest venues for visiting authors. Many cite Amazon.com and the proliferation of big chain bookstores. But there are other factors, they say, that have piled straw on the backs of businesses that face thin profit margins and stiff competition from discounters. They range from the dot-com blowup to bad city planning, to a societal turn toward laptop literacy."

The Strand Bookstore in New York City has a service where they sell books by the foot. Take a look at the website. The pictures of the different categories of books they sell by the foot is interesting.

The Village Voice asks Do Bookstores Have a Future? The last decade has not been kind to the traditional corner bookshop. Battered by online discounts and chain superstores, the American Booksellers Association has crumbled from 5,200 bookstores in 1991 to 1,702 stores in 2005. So if you were to seek a summary of their dilemma, this one might sound apt: "The old-fashioned bookstore was a charming place, but charm alone will not solve the problem of modern book distribution. . . . Hard though it may be to face the fact, the bookstore of today cannot primarily be a place for those who revere books as things-in-themselves."