Skip to content

Andy Unedited

  • About Andy
  • Write Better

Andy Unedited

Exploring Books, Life, and Writing

The Crystal Ball

September 22, 2008 by Andy Le Peau

When anybody talks about the future of publishing, the impact of the digital world is always front and center. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. It is having and will have a massive impact. Tom Woll acknowledges as much in the conclusion to his book Publishing for Profit, as well. But what is really interesting, I think, are his predictions for brick and mortar stores, which many prognosticators ignore.

Eventually, he says, superstores will find that stocking a wide array of inventory that doesn’t sell won’t make economic sense–and therefore having 50,000-square-foot stores won’t make sense either. In a few years’ time the superstore strategy will revert to the mall chain strategy.

When that happens, surprise! The independents will return to the scene. Those, he believes, will tend to be more focused on certain genres like history or mystery or travel.

Is his crystal ball clear or cloudy? I’d be interested in what you think.

Post navigation

Previous Post:

Small Returns Are Beautiful

Next Post:

Publishing for Profit: Redux

2 Commments

  1. mike says:
    September 22, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    I hope it clear.

  2. Merrie Destefano says:
    September 24, 2008 at 10:26 pm

    I hope you’re right. I’d love to see more independent bookstores, along with more small publishing companies. And, of course, I’d love to see science-fiction and fantasy as genres that get more attention than they do now.

Comments are closed.

My Books

Categories

Subscribe to Andy Unedited

Loading

Archives

Recent Posts

  • The Vaccine Hero
  • Still Amusing Ourselves to Death
  • An Editor’s Work
  • Two Visions of the Future
  • The Current Events Entertainment Industry

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2021 Andy Unedited | WordPress Theme by Superbthemes