Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ We heard Monday from one of the county commissioners that Books-a-Million would be closing at the West End Plaza. It came as no surprise as many book stores are endangered species owing to the growing volume of books being sold on the internet by Amazon, Barns & Noble, Books-a-Million, and Half.com and countless secondhand booksellers. Many readers are habituating themselves to Ebooks now being read on tablets and E-Readers.
I enjoyed my sporadic visits to Books-a-Million at the West End Plaza where I sometimes purchased bargain remainder books and browsed their magazine racks. I am a voracious book reader and have written some 18 or so books many published by mainstream publishers like Tab-McGraw Hill, Zebra, and so forth. Quite a few were republished in England and Australia.
My wife was briefly the manager at the Books-a-Million at the Mall back in the 90’s when she was finishing her senior year at Catawba. I believe it was called Book Land at the time.
Here’s a RFP article on beating the list price book trap and why bookstores both independent and chain bookstores are doing a disappearing act:
