What country has the least number of bookshops per person I wonder. During my last trip back to my home town, Auckland New Zealand, I discovered there was only one "large" bookshop left and it had reduced its sales area to a single floor so calling it "large" was pushing it.
Then I read online last month "Not so long ago, Aucklanders had three large bookshops in the city centre. Whitcoulls, as had been the case for more than four decades, occupied its landmark Queen St location, while Borders and Dymocks were prominent. From mid-year, they will all be gone. It was announced yesterday that Whitcoulls, Auckland's foremost bookseller, would vacate its flagship store." [1]
That leaves one small bookshop in the CBD of a 1.5m population city. Any other city CBD's out there like this?
Similarly the one big box bookstore of Vancouver, Chapters, just closed its doors. They're supposedly going to find a new location downtown at some point, but that does currently leave the city with no major book store in the CBD.
Even for small independent book shops I feel the city is lacking. There are two great, tiny, shops that I'd recommend to visitors, but that feels like a very small number.
I suspect Amazon etc[1] have hit New Zealand harder than Argentina. Just about any book is cheaper to import directly than to buy in the local bookstore.
Once the "medium tail" is lost the economics of a big bookstore probably go south very quickly.
[1] The Book Depository is probably more popular since deliver costs from Amazon are high. Ebooks are also pretty common.
Then I read online last month "Not so long ago, Aucklanders had three large bookshops in the city centre. Whitcoulls, as had been the case for more than four decades, occupied its landmark Queen St location, while Borders and Dymocks were prominent. From mid-year, they will all be gone. It was announced yesterday that Whitcoulls, Auckland's foremost bookseller, would vacate its flagship store." [1]
That leaves one small bookshop in the CBD of a 1.5m population city. Any other city CBD's out there like this?
[1] http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...