Like the good publishing wonks that we are, we open up our email every morning to find the ever-reliable Shelf Awareness waiting to tell us something fun about the business of making books. Yesterday was no exception. We found a link to Peter Fund‘s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and got a kick out of his musings on what a sequel to the late-90s Nora Ephron film, You’ve Got Mail, might look like:

[A]s the film begins, the Fox & Sons mega-bookstore chain is in trouble. Kathleen Kelly-Fox, now executive vice president, tweets: “Sales down 63%. Internet taking best customers. Ebooks killing us.”

Joe Fox, meanwhile, has given up quoting “The Godfather” and now speaks almost exclusively in lines from “Avatar.” Standing in the deserted lobby of his giant store, he quips, “Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.” A few days later, Fox & Sons files Chapter 11 and is shuttered.

But in the end the Foxes sell Joe’s yacht and use the money to reopen The Shop Around the Corner, which now has a coffee bar and free Wi-Fi. Profits are modest, but the couple lives happily ever after because sales, while too small to sustain the big-box store, are just right for the needs of a hard-working, book-loving, Internet-addicted couple.

And the moral of the story is one few would have guessed: The Internet might save Main Street.

So it’s a fantasy. But still, the problems are real, and yet the chains aren’t making it any easier for themselves. The New York Times’ DealBook blog piled on with the story of the infighting going on between real-life Joe Fox and chairman of Barnes and Noble, Leonard S. Riggio, and activist investor Ronald W. Burkle. Said Riggio about the ordeal last week, “I find it almost repulsive I have to be put in a position to defend myself…I don’t want to consume myself with not liking people. One could nearly sympathize. At any rate, here’s hoping the Kathleen Kelly‘s of the world are thinking about a comeback.