Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Learned some good news last week - if you're in SF, you'll be happy to know that your favorite sci-fi book store has found a way to stay open.

Not only is this cool because it's a sci-fi book store, it's cool to see an indie book store innovate like this and find new ways to be a profitable business in the 21st century. I've been waiting for someone to do this. Even if you aren't local, you may consider kicking in.

Customers Save a San Francisco Sci-Fi Bookstore, at Least for Now

I'm sure that's good news for the San Francisco customers, especially those who chipped in $100 to balance the books. On the other hand, it seems a little sad that a retail business has to solicit donations from its customers. (In the long run, I wonder how many of those who tossed money in the hat the first time around will continue to do so year after year.)

As an aside, contrary to popular rumor, the number of independent bookstores in the US has actually been growing for the last six years. The American Booksellers Association reported an 8% increase in Indie bookstores in 2012 and 2013, and a 27% increase since 2009. Most of that has come at the expense of the big-box bookstores: Borders and it's shopping mall subsidiary Waldenbooks closed in 2011 and Barnes & Noble has been shutting down retail outlets steadily for the last four years, providing an opening for Independent booksellers to fill the void.

I'm sure San Francisco poses special challenges: real estate is expensive, rents high & wages higher, 80% of the population is wired directly into the Internet and the other 20% are high. :)

I don't have a particularly romantic bent towards bookstores. Almost any new book I buy these days is an e-book. I can appreciate a really good sci-fi bookstore, mostly because we have none around these parts. :(

I hope they make it....brick and mortar bookstores are important to me....yes, I own a kindle, and yes, I buy alot of digital books...but there are tons of good books that never made it to digital...I am always ordering paper books from amazon not available in digital (got one in the mail today, another due in tomorrow), but I'm not wild about mail-ordering books. Perfect example, yesterday I got in the mail a copy of The DC Vault, cost me $19 postage and all...it was advertised as being in very good condition, what I got was in poor condition, fit only for the dumpster, not my permanent collection...$20 down the tubes. If I could have found it in a brick and mortar store, I could have examined the book before deciding to buy. Also, it just plain FUN walking into a bookstore and running across a cool book you never heard of before, or finding that book you have looked for FOREVER, and bumping into interesting people who share a love of good books....alot to be said for a good bookstore....

Spooky1947 wrote: "brick and mortar bookstores are important to me...."

Sometime I think you confuse bookstores with ye olde antique shoppes :)

In ye olde dayes, when magic still flowed to the stone of the land and I worked for a Very Large Corporation, a group of fellow sci-fi fans would get together for a weekly lunch trip to the bookstore across the street, where perky Meg Ryan would point out all the very best new books. Okay, no Meg Ryan; we just held an ad hoc scifi mini-convention in the cramped SF/F aisle for 15 min., recommending books to each other (Usually by pulling books off the shelf and thrusting them into each others hands.)

G33z3r wrote: "Sometime I think you confuse bookstores with ye olde antique shoppes :)

In ye olde dayes, when magic still flowed to the st..."

I think ye olde days can be young again - we just need to find a business model that works for book stores. I mean Borders worked for a while before they tried to be everything to everyone and imploded under their own weight.