Goodbye book stores - eBook Judas in our Midst 01

Angus & Robertson, Borders and Whitcoulls In Administration – Covered nicely by Teleread‘s “Go Bust!’

An “In Administration” notice spotted at our local Bondi Junction Borders by laurelpapworth.com – I decided to make it a ‘Picture word a billion digital words’ and show it in context with the culprit in the same shot. RIP ”many” big book chains 🙁 (Ironically the picture taken on a Samsung Galaxy Tablet – a nice eReader in itself!) – The book store industry unable to adapt to a hybrid model of in-store paper and electronic purchases? I for one would love to browse the paper book/mag version and then buy the eBook equivalent, selected titles only of course…

Need some statistical evidence of the reason for the decline?

  • $805 mill made from physical books in the US in Jan 11, 30% drop from same month last year Source AAP Mar 2011
  • $69.9 mill made from eBooks in Jan 11 in US a 115% increase from same month last year Source AAP Mar 2011

These stats now reflected on the ‘heritage’ tab on my Social Media Counter – ht – Serge for the heads-up on the January 2011 Association of American Publishers Report

Goodbye book stores - eBook Judas in our Midst 02

Note: I will from now on, be posting short, game changing mini-items that provide a little more context and commentary than my tweet stream – while also avoiding just reposting cool, YouTube Eye-candy 🙂 Of course still doing the long, resource style tomes!