Bank in March, I wrote this post criticizing the bookstore oligopoly of their vast ineptness of being able to carry any decent books and five months later, the book stores still don’t have a clue. I’m actually reminded of the big 3 auto firms when I think of bookstores as they appear to have the same clueless management and rely on business models from their grandfathers day.

I visited three, yes THREE, bookstores (B&N, Borders, and Book-A-Million) to find a variety of books in a wide range of areas: Risk Management, Project Management, M&A, Advanced Statistics and not one single book store had ANY of the books I wanted. Sure, I could search online and order the book online but if that’s the case, why bother with a bookstore?

Curious about my observation, I ran a stock chart on all the major book stores courtesy of yahoo.com. Here’s what the chart looks like:

Books

It doesn’t surprise me one bit that Amazon is climbing up while the other book stores languish and head toward the abyss. Amazon is doing everything right to move the book business forward into the future. The Amazon Kindle serves up books electronically (much like iTunes) and this is in large part, the future of books. Right now, there is an 8 week wait on a couple of books I want…why? Why is there an eight week delay on books that were printed a couple of years ago? The book has already been written, most likely on a computer, so why can’t I just get the electronic version sent to me asap?

The only criticism I have of Amazon is their ridiculous shipping costs, sure if you can wait 2 weeks for a book, shipping is free but if you want the books sooner the cost of the book doubles because of shipping. Electronic format books eliminate this cost altogether and improves delivery time 10000 x fold

Here’s some advice for the fat lazy executives at the big three bookstores:

1. Every major city in the United States has what are called “colleges” and college students buy things called “books.” You should get off your fat lazy ass and go visit one of the cities and colleges. Find out what classes those young rascals really like and STOCK THE FREAKING BOOKS that they need/want to buy.

2. Every major city has a industrial specialty: New York is the capital of stock trading & fashion/design, Chicago is the capital of futures, Houston is the capital of oil & gas, Hollywood is the capital of movie making, etc. See the pattern? Here’s a crazy idea, why not stock and sell books for the professionals that work in these industries!

3. Almost every major city has what are called “professionals” and these guys usually make a lot of money (i.e. disposable income) to buy the books you sell. How about SURVEYING what they want; How about TRENDING what they want; How about doing anything other than stocking the “fad” garbage you stock at your bookstore?

Borders keeps sending me coupons for 20% to 50% off any books, the latest was buy 4 books get the 5th one free. Too bad there wasn’t a SINGLE book I could buy Borders that I needed. My kids generally find books at Borders but that just reinforces my “fad” garbage theory.

I give these bookstores about 24 months before they head into the permanent abyss unless they make some revolutionary changes starting with getting rid of their horrible management.