Post #4770 by snarkoutgirl on Wed, Jul 31, 2002 10:18 AM

How about bookstores?

You used to go to bookstores and find employees who had worked there for years and years, and actually knew things about books. Now they're more adept at running the latte machine than coming up with the author of Romeo & Juliet...

Sidebar- my husband & I run a small bookstore, but even though our closest Barnes & Noble is an hour away, our business is still hit big-time by customers using the internet, especially Amazon (which has YET to make a real profit, believe it or not). When the Book of Tiki was republished, I was excited to see that our wholesale supplier, Ingram, carried it. So I put one on order. It never showed up, even though it was clearly on hand at at least 2 Ingram warehouses. I called them to see what the deal was, and found out that it was a "Library Only" title. How am I supposed to compete, if I'm not allowed to order the books?! Crazy.

I ended up just buying one from buy.com since we don't have an account with Taschen. sigh...