We have weighed in recently on the various changes afoot in the book trade as regular readers of this blog would know. In the interests of balancing our biases – probably not that necessary given that we encompass two of the areas most affected by the rapid uptake of Web 2.0 namely PHOTOGRAPHY and BOOKS – here’s the other side of story…As specialist independent booksellers currently maintaining a shopfront in a major retail shopping precinct, we consider ourselves reasonably in touch with the state of play in the hugely popular Australian sport of recreational shopping. It is quite literally easy to see how things are going simply by sticking our little beaks out the front door watching the punters on the street.
To our minds, the trends in retail spending habits have as much to do with a fundamental change in values as they do with competition and globalisation. People seem to be a bit more careful where they waste their money these days. There’s lots of looking, touching and “maybe later” going on instead of the ‘buy now, worry later’ impulse shopping that we remember so fondly from last century.
We try and achieve a balance between servicing our local, national and international customers via our website while maintaining an expansive collection of photography books that will suit casual browsers as well as photography enthusiasts. This approach is based more on staying afloat than expanding our global marketshare and we certainly appreciate being able to choose titles from the widest possible selection!
Stephen Matchett writing for the Weekend Australian has pinpointed another trend likely to effect the range of books that distributors and retailers carry. He argues that not only will the option of publishing material online become increasingly attractive to authors it will also translate into the production of and sale of books. TPI are glad to know that bibliophiles will still get their fix in the future…
