The focus of book selling may move half a mile from the sleepy environs of UCLA, but the result will be a statistical gain. The discrepancy between the results of the survey and what booksellers report is important because it marks a difference of perception. While the industry as a whole welcomes change and replacement as a sign of health, individual booksellers feel beaten down by changes being forced upon them - small generalists cannot compete with giant infiltrators that mainline on the bestsellers list, buy in volume and discount on price. In order to survive, the independents are being forced to become niche marketers. When it collapses or gets transformed by commercial pressure into a specialist store, it reminds us of the fragility of that consensus and the endangering of choice.
Chain bookstores endanger choice as an operational necessity.
Group purchasing prevents them from selecting stock with the same sensitivity as local stores that buy on their own. Profit maximization prevents them from supporting books or areas of interest that may not sell well but expose readers to new ideas. Superstores may be better equipped to offer dynamic service and be more sensitive to market trends but their methods are inappropriate to the values that book retailing stands for. The effect of superstores on clothes-buying, for example, is that options become categorized and everything we wear becomes more or less an example of a uniform. The effect on books is likely to be the same.