Andy Laties: We don't know what he's doing, either

The always-perceptive Mike Shatz has gotten a fascinating conversation going at his Idea Logical blog with a commentary in which he notes that “the competitive advantage of the trade publisher is inextricably dependent on the survival of brick-and-mortar shelf space for books,” and that by his calculations “we’re talking about a brick-and-mortar decline from 72% of the market today to 25% in 5 years!”

The post has generated a ton of passionate and interesting responses, both in the comment section and on other blogs — such as this comment, our favorite, from Andy Laties at his Rebel Bookseller site:

For the past several days I’ve been vociferously commenting on a fascinating blogpost. Industry expert Mike Shatzkin believes that the rapid rise of eBooks will depress print-book sales so much that chain storefronts will not be able to continue to operate profitably. He thinks that a very large number of superstore locations will close. He is principally concerned about this because he thinks that the major publishing companies will be seriously damaged. However in a number of exchanges with him, in the comments section of his blog, I was able to elicit the opinion that unusual, quirky, creative and talented independent booksellers might be able to continue to operate bookstores during the coming eBook revolution, even if the large general bookstore corporations were in dire straits.

My conclusion here is fairly obvious. I won the war!

Or, okay, we, the indies, won the war.

Some may say, “You didn’t win the war–Amazon.com and Apple and Google won the war.”

I disagree. I have been fighting the bookstore chains since 1985. So, if I have been fighting them, and if the chains go kerplunk, then, clearly, I won.

Thank you very much!