The rise in availability of entertainment (books, movies, etc) is actually having the opposite effect: the bestseller is more important than ever. With so much to choose from, people are more likely to go on recommendations, and the trend in recommendations has always been that once something (of reasonable quality) gets a little traction it tends to outstrip its competition.<p>Of course, there's more room for niches (so we might see more domain bestsellers in smaller domains).<p>Meanwhile, the author of this post, who obviously has a rich marketing background and has used it in this piece, seems to downplay the role of marketing (pretty much all publishers do is marketing) in getting bestsellers going.<p>As well, any level of anticipation for a title shows that bestsellers are still strong - the post assumes people choose what to buy once they see the shelves, but often they choose before that.