Bookstores need to sell e-books

US bookstore sales were down 7.9% in the first half of 2014, compared to the same period last year. The total bookstore selling space in the US decreased 30% between 2008 and 2014. Some architects want to reinvent bookstores, and doesn't this sound like a kiss of death? These architects say that new bookstores should "anticipate every sort of literary need, from grabbing a paperback or download, to relaxed browsing, personally tailored reading-lists, self-publishing, book clubs, author events and even an enhanced experience of reading a book in the bookish equivalent of a flotation tank", which is fascinating but doesn't seem to involve actual selling of books.

The traditional advantage of bookstores was that their employees help customers in discovering books that don't show up in the recommendations of Amazon or other online retailers. These books include fine literature and quality non-fiction (such as stuff that is not written by Malcolm Gladwell). In the old times, this service was strictly associated with selling: the employee would find the book that was just right for you and you would buy it. Now you say "thanks for the suggestion" and then go home and buy it from Amazon at a lower price.

Bookstores are especially useful for small and independent publishers that cannot afford to spend a lot of money on promotion, like the Big Five publishers do. Tom Roberge, who is Publicity & Marketing Director at New Directions (they publish Roberto Bolaño, Muriel Spark, and Robert Walser, among the others) wrote a worried piece on Publishing Perspectives:

... we as publishers simply cannot function without independent bookstores. Apart from the sales revenue (and my employer, New Directions, relies on the these channels much more than any of the Big Five publishers, by a factor of ten), there is the less quantifiable and yet equally important fact that the indies support us in a myriad of ways. 

Unlike Amazon’s vaunted algorithm, bookstore employees talk to their regular customers, get to know their tastes, and recommend titles that Amazon might never deem appropriate. Individual book stores and booksellers are the most valuable participants in the crucial search for word-of-mouth buzz, championing our titles on the frontline of literary engagement. I could go on and on. The point is, bookstores matter. To see them slowly and steadily shutter their doors because they couldn’t slash prices enough would be heartbreaking, of course, but it would also be bad for the publishing business as a whole. 

Even the Big Five know this: why else would they devote so much time and effort to building relationships with thousands of unique stores despite the fact that those stores represent only 3-5% of their annual sales?

As Roberge emphasizes later in the article, selling e-books would help bookstores. The technology for sending e-books directly to the customers at the desk of the store already exists. However, the e-book market is almost totally dominated by Amazon. I think that a strong anti-trust argument could be made that Amazon should make easier for e-book distributors to access the Kindle platform. This could involve abandoning DRM. In the Netherlands there is a thriving e-book market that is based on watermark. Opening up the Kindle platform would lead to a more diverse e-book ecosystem, with many different retailers, in which even physical bookstores could carve their niche.