In these changing times for the publishing industry, there will be winners and losers. Books are recognized as big winners if they are large blockbusters, and it seems like publishers may reduce the number of books they may release if this is the case.
Another casualty may be the independent book stores, those wonderful stores with their quirky personalityies and community links. They are also responsible for helping to identify local novels that may indeed become best-sellers. For example, Barbara Kingsolver's first novel, "The Bean Trees," as was reported in Mercurynews.com,
" was first discovered by local booksellers such as Clark Kepler of Kepler's Books in Menlo Park and Bill Petrocelli of Book Passage in Corte Madera, who promoted it to their customers. Since then, each of Kingsolver's successive books "has become more and more of a best-seller-mode type book," Petrocelli says."
Is the independentbookstore capable of re-inventing itself? How does it fit in with the emergence of the ebook?
