More and more book shops are creating Web sites that offer services to their customers, including online book purchasing. At last count, more than two dozen Washington-area book stores had Web sites. After all, it's hard to reproduce the smell, whispers and tactile excitement of being in touch with the Ancients using a keyboard and a terminal. But as far as our Web sales competing with them, that's never going to happen.
Online sales is just one service the store offers on the Web site.
It's not something we're counting on to be a money maker. But there may be strength in numbers, argues Dick Harte, proprietor of Rutherford Book Shoppe inDelaware, Ohio, and creator of BookSite, an online consortium of independent book stores. And there may be hope. Harte has signed up more than 150 book stores to participate in the BookSite program. This gives independent stores a lot more rocks to sling at Goliath.