Lessening Space For Books
Why are they giving up thousands of square feet of prime bookselling space — the area just inside of entrances, which have the highest sales-volume-per-square-inch of any area in the store by far — to displays of, well, one simple, not to mention small, product: the Nook.
Since owning an iPad, I’ve actually been reading more. I still prefer reading physical books. Typography on e-readers is terrible. Worse, on devices like the iPad or an Android device, the glow of the screen is tiring on the eyes.
Barnes & Noble reducing floorspace dedicated to physical books is not surprising to me. More people are buying digital books; it seems only logical that booksellers devote less retail space to them. I do not necessarily think this means bookstores will disappear, just as record stores are still around. I suspect that bookstores will simply become something different from what we are used to, and cater to a different—perhaps specialty—market.
