Guest Column: Minding the Store

While it’s easy to get into whatever emotional or nostalgic reasons publishers may have to support bookstores, they often overlook the practical and economical one: In a bookstore, the future of the store depends on books. In a non-bookstore, the future of the book depends on the store. If publishers don’t ask themselves hard questions and do a better job managing their offline content, they might just wake up one day and realize the future is out of their hands.

Michael Norris is a senior analyst at Simba Information, a market research and consulting firm in Stamford, Conn. He is the lead author of “Trends in Trade Book Retailing 2009” and “Trends in Electronic Book Publishing 2009,” and a frequent speaker on news and events shaping the consumer book industry.