But today, more people are flocking to superstores, where espresso bars, video racks and CD bins are common, along with inventories of 150,000 books or more. We're trying to see if local bookstores survive or if the decisions about what we read will be made by corporations. Ghiz is irate because the two superstores in her neighborhood offer books at a 20 percent or 30 percent discount prices that Midnight Special and other bookstores cannot hope to match. The chains, featuring what some independent stores had pioneered long ago, offer food, drink and musical products, which are usually unavailable in the smaller stores. In the process, the larger stores have actually redefined what a bookstore is.
People walk in and they expect a place for coffee, T-shirts, all sorts of things.
They expect you to have 50 billion copies of one title stacked up in the front. The cash register at a retailing store is the polling booth. This is a legal fight that nobody in publishing really wants. This is a legal fight that nobody in publishing really wants. Entrekin knows what he is talking about.