They could…but do they? I’m not doubting you necessarily, but do you have examples of authors or publishers who were manipulated by the big guys? And how would controlling content be beneficial to a bookseller of any size? There’s someone out there who will shell out a few bucks for nearly anything a writer could conceive. I just don’t see how it could benefit anyone.
I’ll add that when I moved to this pathetically white-bread-soccer-mom community 18 years ago, the only book store was a christian reading room. We’ve since acquired Barnes & Noble and Borders, and if it wasn’t for them, I’d be reading the back of a cereal box.
I wasn’t counting used bookstores in my argument. :rolleyes: In my estimation, they are a catagory unto themselves and I patronize them often. 
I was thinking of booksellers that sell strictly, or mostly, new books. The SF&Fantasy&Mystery Bookstore was one of these magical stores that you described, Exapno Mapcase, and I wound up chasing them miles and miles out of my way as they kept moving to save on rent and even donated cash to a fund to try to keep them in business. But they are gone, and now the closest indie book store to me is a Christian book store, and a couple of times that I’ve patronized more ‘literary’ type stores in the past, they’ve been snobbish. If the trade-off for well-read, knowledgeable employees is that they curl their lip at my more ‘low-brow’ tastes, you can keep them. I do miss the cat, though.
When you say that it is difficult to browse amazon, I think it depends on your definition of browse. On the one hand, you certainly can’t look at as many titles at once when you are perusing recommendations or another reader’s picks, and you can’t open the book and read a chapter(though it frequently will give you at least a page). But on the other hand, you get some instant context instead of having to just judge by the author’s name and the title and typeface(or the cover if the book is lucky enough to get displayed). It’s ‘because you said you owned/wanted this, maybe you’ll like this other similar book’. It’s not perfect, of course, and sure I’ve bought books online that disappointed, but I’ve bought plenty in bookstores that disappointed too.
As far as supporting local business, it’s restaurants for me. I eat out all the time!
I suspect its at least partially a matter of the publishers not publishing as many “small” books - books that they would not print a large number of copies of in a first run - if their only outlet for the books is the big 3. If they only have a choice of stocking at the big 3, they potentially wouldn’t publish a new author who they’re only willing to risk 5000 copies on initially because where are those 5000 copies going to go - 1 copy each to 5000 stores? Not a very effective selling strategy, and the 5000 stores probably don’t want that one copy because they might not see it as suitable for a mass-market audience.
So a new author won’t find a publisher because no publisher wants to print a book that the big 3 won’t want.
Hope that makes sense. I’m feeling very rambly today.
I know I posted a link without much comment, but it really is worth reading. It explains why prior to the internet you needed indie book and record shops if you had non-mainstream tastes and why the great changes in in inventory management technology (and the advent of discussion forums) brought by the internet make for much broader choice and make indie shops much less important.
Thank for the link! It is very interesting reading! 
This is pretty much what I was thinking, that the internet was picking up the task that the indie stores had been doing, and doing better at it besides.
That is one of the main reasons I love independant bookstores, the ambience. They are just fun to be in. The smell of musty books and dusty shevles, the creak of a wooden floor under the strain of shelves filled with hard bound antiques, and the cat.
Count me among the people who have a widely varied taste in reading that cannot be satisfied by the chain and internet stores. When I walk into a bookstore chances are I don’t even know what subject or genre I want, I want to browse randomly until I find something that catches my interest. The often hodge podge variety of independant bookstores is perfect for this.
When I do have a specific book in mind I still do use B&N or Borders since they have a greater chance of carrying what I am looking for, or being able to get it in short notice, but they cannot replace the local independant stores in my mind.
I don’t know if it’s ever happened, but it’s enough to know that they could. It’s not likely that they would refuse to carry a book by one the few authors who have fans like that, but that only addresses the tiny minority of authors you can say that about. You get a better diversity in selection when you have more than three people choosing what’s going to be available.
I agree with everyone who crows about the nostalgic feel of independent bookstores. The problem with chain bookstores (or rather one of the problems) is that they’re so similar to any other store: bright white lights, wide aisles, far too huge, and designed to favor quick shopping rather than browsing. When I look at the list of my favorite authors, I can easily see that I first encountered most of them in moldering, dusty piles, double-shelved in ten-foot-high stacks.
I also disagree with long tail theory, which seems to me like one of those meaningless buzzwords that sweeps the corporate world from time to time. It doesn’t change the fundamental fact about economies of scale: it’s always cheaper to make and sell ten copies of one item than ten individualized items. So even if people are buying through an e-tailer like amazon that offers the possibility of shopping for two million different titles, from the publishe’rs angle it makes more sense to focus on the bestseller rather than the hoard of small sellers. In science fiction and fantasy, we’ve certainly seen the field condensing towards a handful of big publishers in recent years, while the small presses get squeezed and few new small presses get off the ground.
The Wall Street Journal has had a series of columns debunking The Long Tail. It seems that much of the data used to back it up was collected back in the early days of the internet, when stores had much smaller inventories. As the inventory at Amazon moved from hundreds of thousands of books to over 3,000,000 books a funny thing happened: the same number, but a much lower absolute percentage, of books made up the bulk of the sales. This turns out to be true for Netflicks and CD vendors and iTunes and all the places that are pushing their millions of choices. The same big blockbusters dominate their sales and sell more than the lowest million combined. Where Anderson once made the statement that 98% of all titles are purchased on a regular basis, that figure is now under 75% and falling.
You have to be very careful with this argument because you can use the numbers to back any side you want. While it’s great for all concerned to have every possible choice available, it is questionable whether the effort to track down, stock, or make available those last million choices generate any profit. Chain stores work because they make money on bestsellers. The larger selections do bring in more customers, but the sales curve remains about the same. Amazon’s tail actually comes from its allowing used book dealers to sell their books at the site, but that’s a function of the Internet allowing easier searching for used books and can be seen at abebooks, alibris, half.com and many other used book sites.
In short, while the tail effect is a fantastic boon for those of us who desire it, we’re a tiny percentage of the overall audience. The availability of all those items in the tail will make them better available to the few of us who want them, and that’s money not made before, but we’re too few to affect the overall numbers much, and the costs of the tail make celebrating its existence increasingly iffy as the size of the tail grows.
And it’s simply not true, BTW, that the chains and Amazon sell 99% of the books in this country, and it never will be. The last figure I saw had Amazon at a staggering 3% of new book sales. It’s probably gone up from that, but I can’t imagine it’s even as high as 10%. Same for B&N, stores and website both. Books are extremely well distributed as to sales points. Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club may outsell both of them for bestsellers, but smaller and more controversial books still have thousands of outlets.
Sigh. I remember when Borders was the local bookstore, with a cat curled up in a sunny window.
I got very excited when Borders in CT opened, but then was disappointed by the mostly mainstream selection. (It was still better than B&N, IMO)
Recently, however, I was browsing in a newer Borders, and one of the staff asked if he could help me find something. When I told him I was just browsing, he asked which authors I usually read. He then took me to the DVD section and showed me some work by Neil Gaiman I would never have even thought to look for (and which will make a most excellent present for a friend.)
Bingo. My local independent bookstore has a great selection of GLBT and local fiction, but a lousy SF and fantasy section. Not just small but bad. How hard would it be for them to carry at least one copy of the latest Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award winners? The mystery section isn’t much better, and the history section is teeny-tiny.
I’m glad the place is around, but they just don’t stock a lot of the books I want to read.
I want to mention here something that I just discovered:
If you have an unrestricted wishlist on Amazon, you might read Amazon’s wishlist and privacy pages and believe that your list is only accessible to people who look YOU up by NAME or E-MAIL ADDRESS on AMAZON. Right? Wrong-o.
The other day I searched for a book title on Google. Among the first links returned was somebody’s Amazon wishlist. I contacted Amazon immediately to say (though more politely and high-fallutin’ly), “Hey! How is a wishlist showing up on Google?” After three e-mail exchanges with Amazon, in none of which did they seem to get kit that I searched for a title on Google, not a person on Amazon, I phoned them.
I spoke with a very lovely representative who poked around on their site and said, Yup, our policies do not indicate that when you set your wishlist preferences to make the list searchable by anybody, your wishlist might show up on a search performed for an item on your list, on a general search engine. And, Yup, that does indeed happen. I’ve asked Amazon to include this in their wishlist and privacy pages. We’ll see. Meanwhile, be aware that you have even less privacy than you may have thought.
My independent bookstores don’t have this problem. Nor do they maintain a database of my purchases, unlike the big chains if I pay with a credit card.
20 years ago chain bookstore meant B Daltons or Waldenbooks in a mall. They had a relatively small selection of all the same stuff, and the independent booksellers were much better.
Today I prefere specialty bookstores or really big indies like Powells when I’m in Portland. But for the most part I prefer a Borders because of the selection - they’re big enough that they don’t carry only the bestsellers. (Indies who are literarily oriented almost count as specialty stores in my mind.)
Used bookstores are another matter entirely. I’d much rather browse in a brick used bookstore than search on Amazon. How can you tell if a book will appeal without feeling it?
This is the main reason why I go to the SF&F independent bookstore in Berkeley. I like mystery stories set in medieval times, and those are much more popular in the UK than the US, for whatever reason. I got started on some of my favorite mystery series from books I bought there.
There are some independent bookstores in San Francisco that I visit when I am in the neighborhood, just to see the cats. I might end up buying something (that’s always a good possibility if I go into a bookstore), but I’m not interested in literary fiction or any of that- I go in to see and pet the cats.
How well I remember the bad old days…
I can’t hate B&N et al, because I remember my high school days when the only bookstores I had access to were mall bookstores, and how happy I was when I discovered B&N. I’m no more interested in most bestsellers than I am in literary fiction, so it was heaven to find a bookstore that had more interesting stuff. It’s sort of like how I can’t hate Starbucks, because they gave me my first experience with coffee that wasn’t instant or Maxwell House (or other low-quality canned coffee, or diner coffee).
Not to devalue serendipity, but it’s easy to browse on Amazon–often easier than at your local and even more fruitful.
And by the way, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0531037320/sr=8-1/qid=1155662051/ref=sr_1_1/002-2863838-6841635?ie=UTF8 
Recent story about independent book store, and how they might influence books differently than national chains might.
Shoshana’s remarks about privacy (or lack thereof) on Amazon lead to what I came into this thread to mention. Joyce Meskis, the owner of The Tattered Cover here in Denver, made news several years ago when she refused to allow authorities to review her store’s sale records during an investigation of a customer who was suspected of manufacturing drugs. The case eventually went to the state’s Supreme Court, which ruled in Meskis’ favor. (The books sold to the suspect in question were later revealed not to be about the manufacture of illegal drugs, btw.)
I don’t see owners of large chains standing up to law enforcement officials that way, and it’s one of the many reasons I’m happy to buy books at The Tattered Cover. I don’t care if I’m buying copies of The Anarchist Cookbook (which I’m not) or a Dan Brown novel (which I’m definitely not), but it’s my business what books I’m buying and no one else’s.
I got a bit soured on independent bookstores from the town where I used to live. There was a “local” bookstore that got all up in arms that a Borders was going to open down the block. People filled the local newspaper with rants about chain bookstores and how we were losing our “local” bookstore. People in the store put up signs and petitions to try to keep Borders out.
I put *local * in quotes because the newspaper did a bit of research. The bookstore was corporate owned, with the three majority shareholders living in another time zone. The place had three other stores in two other towns and one other state. It was a chain, albeit a small one. Their “save our mom-and-pop business” cry was bull.
By the way, it’s been at least 6 years since that happened and the “local” bookstore and Borders down the street are both still open and doing business.
I love independent bookstores. I was visiting Arlington VA earlier this summer and I wandered into a store that had endcaps with books that the staff recommended, complete with handwritten little cards explaining why they thought it was so good. I appreciated that personal touch much more than Joe Modem’s digital musings on the Bestseller Of The Week. I don’t trust Amazon reviews. I’ve read enough rants, LSD trips, and poorly-thought-out three-word sentences to last me the rest of my life.
There are two local bookstores in my town. One is a used bookstore that I love with all my heart. The lady who owns it has a radio playing NPR hidden in the stacks and she’s always willing to talk with you about your purchases and the books you’ve brought in. I’m building up a pile of books in my closet for my yearly trip. (Yes, yearly. If I go more, I’ll spend my whole paycheck there.) Then there’s the New Bookstore/Coffeeshop. I love them because they have Cadbury chocolate for sale and really good chai that doesn’t cost your tibia like a certain chain store I can name. They also have local books (both from the university and statewide) that AREN’T by Nicholas Sparks. It’s a very cozy shop. All it needs is a borzoi and it’ll be the used bookstore I loved in Salisbury.
B&N, the Big Name Store, is all right. I go there to see what new releases are out and to browse the occult section. I’d go to Used Bookstore and New Bookstore before I’d go there, though. For one thing, their shelves are too neat. There should be books piled on top of the shelves haphazardly for the real bookstore feel, IMHO.