Great thread, so many valid points. My own personal experience, well 15 years ago if you told me Tower records would someday not exist, I would have laughed and said, yeah right. Never going to happen. I buy more books and music than anything else, even more than groceries and food! But I stopped actually buying books from bookstores like Borders, Barnes & Nobles, etc probably about 3-4 years ago. Just stopped completely. I'll still stop by both stores every now and then to look at magazines, and kill some time. However for the last few years the only things I've ever purchased in the retail bookstores are last minute gifts. For example, 2 months ago I ran in on the way to a bday party and bought one of those oversized books full of photographs of skyscrapers. It was like $6.99. And even that was after walking through wal-mart for 1/2 hour and not finding anything suitable for under 10 bucks. I have also found that even non-retailer, small independent bookstores usually overcharge when they have something of value. So many times I've seen Buk BSP hardcover or something similar and thought, YES! Only to find out they were charging lets say $125.00 when you could get in on eBay, Amazon, or Abes for $50.00! So I really don't frequent those either. I have amazon prime, which gives you free 2-day shipping on new items, and I have never seen a bookstore come close to amazon's prices on new releases. I have now collected a group of "friends," rather I should say associates that keep my acquaintence solely to buy them books on Amazon. They pay me for the book, but they have also found when a new release comes out, Amazon usually has it for $12-$18 bucks while Borders, Barnes & Noble, or even Target is offering it at their discounted price of $24.99! So, at this point I can't really imagine what would ever make me buy a book at one of the retailers, save for the above scenario, where it's a last minute gift and I had no other choice. I would think, once millions more get comfortable with on-line purchases all retail book stores will be done.
On that thought, someone gave me a bestbuy giftcard for my bday last month. I walked around Best Buy for 45 minutes or so the other day..I had about 80 bucks or so worth of merchandise in my hand and said, if I went home, bought all of this stuff on Amazon alone(yes some items would have to be bought used) I would pay about 20 bucks! BUT it's a giftcard I tried to convince myself, I never had the money in the first place? But it didn't work, I put all the stuff back and thought, well I have to go to 2 bday parties in Sept and 1 wedding in October, so maybe the giftcard will make a good gift for that. I remember driving home and thinking, man, why do people pay those prices, how long will it last? Then I thought about Circuit City and figured, well there may be something new someday, but things exactly as they are, even best buy can't last too long?
So when all is said and done, I have one final thought...
I look at record stores like Amoeba Records in Hollywood. I mean, they are very successful, sometimes it'll take you 35 minutes to find a parking spot. There's never less than about 25-30 cashiers ringing people up! You're also lucky to find them at a time, when the line is not 40 people deep. Yes, I know they have a prime spot, Sunset and Vine(hello Hugh Grant) and I know they might not be this successful around the country. However, the thing I wonder about... Amoeba sells USED and NEW items of pretty much everything a store like best buy sells(save for appliances, computers,cell phones. But eveything else is there from movies, records, cds, video games, etc.)Is it that simple? Is that too hard for Borders, or Best Buy to do? I know you can order used stuff from Borders, but it's not their physically on the shelf. So if I was at Borders and they had a new release for 27.99, but had a used copy of it for 19.99, that they paid someone 10 bucks for, I probably would buy it, to have it right there, right then. The store would still have made a profit of 10 bucks, rather than letting me walk out without making any profit. I would say its safe to say, every independent music store and book store sells used items. What would be wrong with walking into Borders and browsing used books, or walking into Best Buy and being able to buy a used dvd for less than a brand new copy? Maybe there's something I'm completely missing here, but it seems to me, it might work, to an extent.