If I order through a bookstore, I have to go out to a bookstore to get it. If I order it online (whether it's from Amazon or Powell's or ABE or whoever), the book comes right to my house.
I'm not rural. But it would be a 20 minute drive up to True Colors (which used to be Amazon Bookstore) or Dreamhaven, 25 to Uncle Hugo's/Uncle Edgar's or Wild Rumpus. And I can't drive. With the vertigo, I can't even take the bus by myself, and taking a cab by myself has some major drawbacks/risks about getting from the cab to the inside of wherever I'm going, never mind costing money. And in at least three of the above locations, there are difficulties for me getting around inside the store--Uncle Hugo's, for example, is nearly unnavigable for those with vertigo due to the piles of back stock nobody wants all over the floor.
With free shipping offers and discounting offers and coupons and this and that, ordering online is often no more expensive in money. But it frees me from having to say to someone else, "Please run me on this errand." It is an independence factor for me.
Also--and I don't feel as firmly on this point--when an independent bookstore consistently doesn't stock anything I want, the impetus for me to support them goes way, way down. This is less a factor with the stores I've listed, each of whom has gotten some of my money in the last two years, than with other independents I've known. What is the value to me in having a brick-and-mortar bookstore that only carries the bestsellers and special interest books for interests I don't have? Why should I put the extra time into going out to the bookstore, telling them what I want, and returning to pick it up? (Or using the phone to order and then going to pick it up--I hate the phone.) Not just any independent will do.
It's not novelty to me--I've been ordering online my entire adult life. And I don't think you've hit upon the rare case where a book was in stock in a warehouse. I do think that "the independent bookstore was right across the street and was not an undue amount of effort compared to my schedule for the week, and I already had warm fuzzy feelings about this bookstore" may be a pretty unusual combination, though.
Also, I don't like other people. I mean, I loved my bookstore clerk at The Other Change of Hobbit, when we still lived out there and he was still employed there, before he got fired for haranguing people who bought the new Orson Scott Card book. But other than him, I have at best found it to be neutral to have to put my book requests through other live human beings and make sure they were looking under the right thing and spelling it correctly, and often it's worse than neutral for me.
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I'm not rural. But it would be a 20 minute drive up to True Colors (which used to be Amazon Bookstore) or Dreamhaven, 25 to Uncle Hugo's/Uncle Edgar's or Wild Rumpus. And I can't drive. With the vertigo, I can't even take the bus by myself, and taking a cab by myself has some major drawbacks/risks about getting from the cab to the inside of wherever I'm going, never mind costing money. And in at least three of the above locations, there are difficulties for me getting around inside the store--Uncle Hugo's, for example, is nearly unnavigable for those with vertigo due to the piles of back stock nobody wants all over the floor.
With free shipping offers and discounting offers and coupons and this and that, ordering online is often no more expensive in money. But it frees me from having to say to someone else, "Please run me on this errand." It is an independence factor for me.
Also--and I don't feel as firmly on this point--when an independent bookstore consistently doesn't stock anything I want, the impetus for me to support them goes way, way down. This is less a factor with the stores I've listed, each of whom has gotten some of my money in the last two years, than with other independents I've known. What is the value to me in having a brick-and-mortar bookstore that only carries the bestsellers and special interest books for interests I don't have? Why should I put the extra time into going out to the bookstore, telling them what I want, and returning to pick it up? (Or using the phone to order and then going to pick it up--I hate the phone.) Not just any independent will do.
It's not novelty to me--I've been ordering online my entire adult life. And I don't think you've hit upon the rare case where a book was in stock in a warehouse. I do think that "the independent bookstore was right across the street and was not an undue amount of effort compared to my schedule for the week, and I already had warm fuzzy feelings about this bookstore" may be a pretty unusual combination, though.
Also, I don't like other people. I mean, I loved my bookstore clerk at The Other Change of Hobbit, when we still lived out there and he was still employed there, before he got fired for haranguing people who bought the new Orson Scott Card book. But other than him, I have at best found it to be neutral to have to put my book requests through other live human beings and make sure they were looking under the right thing and spelling it correctly, and often it's worse than neutral for me.