Red Cardigan has an interesting post on the changes coming to the publishing industry due to on-line sales of used books.

The times, they are a-changing. Borders is evidently on the verge of bankruptcy, so I’m told, and from my own experience have certainly changed their strategy over the last several years.

I remember when Borders first moved into our area. At that time, the two big chains were Barnes & Noble, and Supercrown. Both had massive stores, but Supercrown was way down-market. Supercrown stocked lots of discounted books, and though their various sections were huge, the selection was shallow, heavy on the newer books and best-sellers, and typically with many, many copies of each title to fill up those shelves. B&N, by comparison, was up-market, with a deeper selection.

Then Borders came in, with a selection so deep I thought I was in Heaven. I’d frequently go to Borders and find dozens of books I wanted to read that I hadn’t even known were in existence. Squeezed from above, B&N started to move down-market, at least in our area, and Supercrown was crushed out of existence. (Having a Borders on the opposite corner of the intersection will do that to you.) Even after that, B&N’s selection continued to become more shallow; by three or four years ago I stopped going to B&N altogether unless I happened to be in the vicinity for other reasons.

But as I say, over the last several years I’ve noticed a change. Borders has been moving down, and B&N has been moving up, at least in my area. It’s been especially pronounced in the last year-and-a-half, when I’ve been hitting the Religion and Philosophy sections particularly hard: these sections at Borders have been getting smaller and shallower, while the corresponding sections at B&N have been getting larger and deeper. And, consequently, I’ve been buying more of my books at B&N. And from Amazon, of course, because no brick-and-mortar store has a selection that’s as deep as I’d like it to be.