Not many of us now will still go to bookshops and spend an afternoon to find a book you are interested to read. The Economist (2010) states that more than 50% of books were sold at some large retailer like WalMart and Target. Also, everything around us becoming electronic, Amazon starts to sell digital books online and wreaking threat to the physical-bookselling market. Problems faced by bookshops rise as the style of living changed globally.
One of the havoc experienced by booksellers is the huge increase in competition. Over half of book sales in the US not take place in the bookshops, but other big retailer. It's an extremely convenience way that people can shop for books while they're doing grocery shopping. Statistics also showed 19% of printed books sold by Amazon in 2009, which is higher than the world’s biggest bookseller. Not only printed books but also e-books. The rising of e-books did make a surge impact on printed books, some e-book reading devices are allowed to read thousands of books in one slim devices, with compared to the volume of bringing printed books around, we can see the reason why people would rather to buy e-books than printed books.
Many world’s well known booksellers close their branches and stores. Guardian (2011) states the shares prices of some booksellers sunk steeply and may even file for bankruptcy. Despite all the bad effect by the above problems, bookshops are actually motivated by that as well. They renew themselves offering new and highly knowledgeable services such as hosting classes or book clubs. They now also sell more variety of goods to market themselves.
Every cloud has a silver lining, while outsiders think it’s a tough time for booksellers, they’ve found ways to survive and keep their customers. Bookshops will sure not disappear completely, as they know how to reinvent themselves to merge with the market change.
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