Where do you get your books?
Some people have lawn and garden: mowing the lawn, trimming the bushes, planting new flowers, etc. etc. I have a LibraryThing account. I'm always tweaking things, adding more information, changing stuff around, reorganizing.
Over the summer they introduced a new "from where" feature which I only just noticed because I've been busy and also haven't had a lot of new books to enter. "From where" basically lets you specify where you got the book, linking it to the LibraryThing Local page for the store you set. You can also set online vendors.
I've gone through my entire catalog and set as many stores as I could; most of the ones left are either books I got when I was a kid, or manga that I probably bought at one of two places and now need to either figure out/guess which one.
So the statistics page actually breaks down the "from where" for you, giving a solid number for each place. You'd think the list would be dominated by Amazon, right?
So here's a look at my top 15. They don't let you filter by collection, so that's why you see the Brooklyn Public Library locations in there. Disregard those for now. Amazon is at the top of the list, but it doesn't dominate like you would have expected it to. It only tops out the next store on the list by 20 items, and keep in mind that the Amazon statistics are over a decade, while I worked at that Barnes & Noble for only a year.
One thing, it's really depressing that I gave so much of my small salary back to the store. OH GOD. But more importantly, in my case at least, Amazon didn't kill bookstore shopping for me. Though Amazon overrides any one particular brick-and-mortar location, if I were to consolidate all of the bookstores together it would equal or surpass the Amazon numbers (and keep in mind the current numbers are low, given that I can't place many books' providence and so their entries are blank for now).
So what does this say? Well, one, that sometimes I just wanted the book NOW. A lot of times I bet there was a good sale (certainly accounts for the comic shop numbers). Sometimes I bought a book at a signing. And I distinctly remember buying a lot of manga at the store because the prices online were identical.
I'd love to see other people's collections and see how they stack up. Everyone says that Amazon killed the brick-and-mortars, now we can analyze buying habits to see how that worked.
Third thing to consider is that the writing was already on the wall for the brick-and-mortar stores long before Internet retailing became common. When I was a kid libraries were plenty, bookstores were few. My first stop in any mall was the bookstore (usually Waldenbooks or B. Dalton), I really didn't get a lot of exposure to non-chain bookstores (or even big box stores) until I was much older. But I still had a large collection of books, due to the magic of mail-order.
You can see that on the list: Scholastic Book Club, Science Fiction Book Club, Troll Book Club. I know my mother had a Doubleday account, and most of the books I have as a child were subscription-based/mail order: I have a large collection of science picture books, Dr. Seuss (which actually aren't in my catalog because my brother has them), and ValueTales. So ordering books by mail comes naturally to me, and probably other people. They still do school book clubs (though I found out Troll is now part of Scholastic), so they have been essentially training kids to buy books by mail instead of in a store.
I don't think mail-order in inherently bad, because it brought books to people who normally didn't have access to them at brick-and-mortar retail. And because of that I can't really hate on buying books from Amazon or any other Internet retailer. They bring books to people who don't normally have access. If you're a person who would walk down the street to a store and drink coffee and read magazines and sit on the floor and never actually buy anything, well, maybe people could point fingers, but personally, my conscience is clear.
Over the summer they introduced a new "from where" feature which I only just noticed because I've been busy and also haven't had a lot of new books to enter. "From where" basically lets you specify where you got the book, linking it to the LibraryThing Local page for the store you set. You can also set online vendors.
I've gone through my entire catalog and set as many stores as I could; most of the ones left are either books I got when I was a kid, or manga that I probably bought at one of two places and now need to either figure out/guess which one.
So the statistics page actually breaks down the "from where" for you, giving a solid number for each place. You'd think the list would be dominated by Amazon, right?
So here's a look at my top 15. They don't let you filter by collection, so that's why you see the Brooklyn Public Library locations in there. Disregard those for now. Amazon is at the top of the list, but it doesn't dominate like you would have expected it to. It only tops out the next store on the list by 20 items, and keep in mind that the Amazon statistics are over a decade, while I worked at that Barnes & Noble for only a year.
One thing, it's really depressing that I gave so much of my small salary back to the store. OH GOD. But more importantly, in my case at least, Amazon didn't kill bookstore shopping for me. Though Amazon overrides any one particular brick-and-mortar location, if I were to consolidate all of the bookstores together it would equal or surpass the Amazon numbers (and keep in mind the current numbers are low, given that I can't place many books' providence and so their entries are blank for now).
So what does this say? Well, one, that sometimes I just wanted the book NOW. A lot of times I bet there was a good sale (certainly accounts for the comic shop numbers). Sometimes I bought a book at a signing. And I distinctly remember buying a lot of manga at the store because the prices online were identical.
I'd love to see other people's collections and see how they stack up. Everyone says that Amazon killed the brick-and-mortars, now we can analyze buying habits to see how that worked.
Third thing to consider is that the writing was already on the wall for the brick-and-mortar stores long before Internet retailing became common. When I was a kid libraries were plenty, bookstores were few. My first stop in any mall was the bookstore (usually Waldenbooks or B. Dalton), I really didn't get a lot of exposure to non-chain bookstores (or even big box stores) until I was much older. But I still had a large collection of books, due to the magic of mail-order.
You can see that on the list: Scholastic Book Club, Science Fiction Book Club, Troll Book Club. I know my mother had a Doubleday account, and most of the books I have as a child were subscription-based/mail order: I have a large collection of science picture books, Dr. Seuss (which actually aren't in my catalog because my brother has them), and ValueTales. So ordering books by mail comes naturally to me, and probably other people. They still do school book clubs (though I found out Troll is now part of Scholastic), so they have been essentially training kids to buy books by mail instead of in a store.
I don't think mail-order in inherently bad, because it brought books to people who normally didn't have access to them at brick-and-mortar retail. And because of that I can't really hate on buying books from Amazon or any other Internet retailer. They bring books to people who don't normally have access. If you're a person who would walk down the street to a store and drink coffee and read magazines and sit on the floor and never actually buy anything, well, maybe people could point fingers, but personally, my conscience is clear.