Book Shopping in Stores, Then Buying Online

Over the years I've actually done the opposite. I'll read reviews on books I'm interested in on Amazon and go to a local bookstore to buy it. I appreciate the book reviews but I'm impatient and want the book now.<p>The iPad and iBookstore have changed my behavior slightly in that I can both read the reviews and buy the (e)book at the same time. I'm still buying mostly physical books because I love the weight and feel of books but I'm starting to gradually switch.

I worked in an independent bookstore while in college for about 3 years, shortly after the rise of Amazon as an ubiquitous force in bookselling.<p>The independent bookstores that are still operating today are survivors. They've somehow survived the big box retailers, the bargain booksellers, Amazon, the Amazon / eBay used book secondary market, the rise of e-readers, the decline of magazine &#38; newspapers, and the general decline of long-form reading across the board.<p>I doubt indie booksellers are worried at this point. They've survived the apocalypse several times over in the last 15 years. Barnes and Noble has something to worry about, but the indies survive purely on the sense of community among avid readers and generally being a staple of intellectual pride in the neighboring community.<p>If you have a local bookseller on your block, who is still operating it means they are a warrior and a survivor. I'd take a bet they're more worried about the economy and inflation than technology-based disruption at this point...

For someone like me who buys a lot of books is it worth paying an extra 30% every time to keep a large chain alive? What's the difference between taking a picture of a book and writing down the title? I still buy a lot of books from brick and mortar stores anyways. Also, I think buying the used books at my local bookstore is more profitable for them than buying the new books they sell.<p>Edit: I'm a Canadian so the special "Canada" pricing makes the price difference 40% sometimes despite our dollar being close to parity. I don't like the disappearance of small bookstores either so I do the best I can to support them. What can brick-and-mortar stores do against Amazon? What Chapters does is sell a lot of other stuff besides books. Stuff they can mark up with higher margins.

If this is really a problem (and I suspect it the number of people who do this is much lower than the number of people who don't buy the book at all) then maybe the stores should focus on those who come to buy only one book or the immediate gratification of walking out with the book, rather than waiting days for it to get from Amazon.<p>Finally looking it up on Amazon means you can read the reviews -- and, funny enough, take advantage of Amazon to decide if the books should be brought or not.<p>But it is also clear that the future of book buying isn't going to happen in book stores -- I am kinda amazed they lasted as long as they did. With expenses for employees, heating, rent, theft, etc you would think the stores would have gone banckroupt a long time ago.

Just like with online referrals, Amazon should release a barcode scanning system with store-identification or perhaps simply a geotracking system where brick and mortar stores get a cut of sales from Amazon made by recent visitors to the store. Everybody wins.<p>The only difference between online and offline referrals is the difficulty of tracking credit for the purchase but I think that can be surmountable.

A parallel: a local hockey pro shop charges a "fitting fee" ($25, I think) for trying on ice skates there. If you end up buying skates, they put the fee towards your purchase.<p>I find the practice repellant, but that's just me.

I do this a lot, not just in book stores either.<p>For me, it's the reviews. I see a book (or product) that looks interesting, make a note of it and check the reviews online (typically Amazon) to see if it's worth the purchase. If the reviews are favorable and I decide I want to buy it, the choice is pretty simple; I'm already at the online store, the price is usually lower and the purchase is a click away (versus a drive back to the store and potentially waiting in line).<p>If I do bother to check the reviews on my phone while I'm in the store, then it's a simple price comparison, and the online retailer almost always wins again.

I do this quite regularly, mainly because it is a lot more convenient to "browse" in book stores and taking a look at titles that seem interesting than using Amazon for the same purpose.<p>I think that this is more of an UI failure on Amazon's part than an inherent advantage of physical stores, a failure that a competent designer or even someone who things rationally should be able to solve quite easily.<p>Unfortunately I doubt we'll see an Amazon redesign proving my theory as long as any brick-and-mortar store is still standing.

Could a bookstore not offer an Amazon purchasing option? If customers want to browse books in the store and purchase off Amazon, why not explicitly enable this? The tradeoff is obvious to the consumer: either get the book now for a heightened price, or get it later more cheaply. The bookstore could make a commission off the Amazon referral.<p>A quick web search turns up: <a href="https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/" rel="nofollow">https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/</a>

Former independent bookseller here, and former employee of Borders and Amazon.<p>There is little new to see here in this story. In general retail, physically checking out the competition's pricing has a long history. The only new twist is the barcode apps to check price immediately. Brick and mortar bookstores or "showrooms" are going to have to compete with better service and markup on non-book items. I don't think that's going to save the bookstore chains, though.

I do this, but I buy all most of my books from www.betterworldbooks.com. It has free shipping to Argentina(where most pages won't even ship here, and Amazaon charges a hefy fee), and it gives a lot of the profits to charity. Getting books in their original language is damn ahrd here, and I care a lot about that. I don't like reading translations if I can help it.<p>But honetly, the bookstore seems to be blossoming here. I've seen more bookstores opening than closing in teh last few years. Specially ones that serve coffe on the side(or maybe it's their main business), and ones that selled niche or used books. I'm sure the fact that importing books is ahrd for a private citizen has a lot of imapct on this. Shipping from Amazon takes at least two weeks, and I've waited as much as two months for a shipment from BWB. And I can't even think of a good book page for books in spanish, but I can't say I've looked to hard for that.

I try to buy from the Tattered Cover (<a href="http://www.tatteredcover.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tatteredcover.com/</a>) when possible since they stood up for civil rights (<a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020411_hodes.html" rel="nofollow">http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020411_hodes.html</a>)

Definitely a problem for the bookstore's business model, however I don't see how this is different than going to your local public library seeing a book you like and buying it on amazon later, in fact most public libraries will get a book for you ( and you can borrow it! ) for no or very little charge.

If you prefer the e-reader to the bound book, what choice do you have? I "showroom", but then again, I only drop in bookstores because they're a calming detour in a busy day in some city - almost never as a lone destination (which was common for me 5 years ago). As much as I love the stores, I've completely bought into the convenience of e-books and Audible, which have made it possible for me to take in orders of magnitude more books in a given week than I could in the era of the printed page.<p>The focus on customer ethics is misguided when you consider the likelihood that a good portion of bookstore's best customers are probably exactly the kind of people ready to rapidly adopt new reading mediums.

I do this all the time. I spent a summer working in NYC and used to visit Strand Books pretty frequently (at least once a week). Stand has an interesting model because the downstairs is filled with used books. I'd regularly do a price comparison check on the used titles versus their Amazon counterparts.<p>What I found is that sometimes the brick and mortar bookstore actually had the price advantage with these used books. When you factor in the minimum $3.99 shipping cost on a lot of used Amazon non-prime titles, they came out to being slightly more expensive than the used books I looked at in the store. This wasn't always the case, but it happened at least 30-40% of the time.

Most of what the store is doing, apart from the human and atmosphere aspect can be replaced by an online curated browsing site. I think ultimately it's not enough to keep them operating on current form and would need to move towards something of a book club or reading space that only sells really niche things and things like coffee.<p>I think amazon could make physical spaces in certain locations as somewhat of a club or browsing experience an sell the books near the online price with same/ next day ordering in. Could be like an extended prime membership. Whether they would go down this probably low margin path though is another thing.

My preferred method of purchase is locally, and in cash.<p>My usual temptation is different: to go onto Amazon and review some book that I bought elsewhere. I don't do this--it implies no economic loss to Amazon, but it seems to me to involve bad manners.

"December 4, 2011, 10:36 PM" ... "Now a survey has confirmed that the practice, known among booksellers as showrooming, is not a figment of their imaginations."<p>Really, just figuring this out in 2011?

There are people who <i>don't</i> do this?