My memory of old-style bookselling is of dingy, cramped premises, redolent of boiled cabbage, unable to supply the book you actually wanted in less than a month.
Since 1990, they've increased by 66%, thanks to the globalisation of bookselling, the flourishing of independent publishers, the awareness-raising of prizes and the openness of readers.
The migration of bookselling to Brooklyn, uptown, and Jersey City follows the flow of the city's literary life.
Acquired in 1995 by the Thorn EMI group, Dillons was the UK's second largest bookseller behind Waterstones and was the bookselling arm of EMI's retail division, which included HMV.
In 1961, the old bookselling firm of Stevens, Son & Styles decided to move out of London, and Ben took over its three-storey building at 39 Great Russell Street.
LifeWay, as the bookselling arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, shifted from selling a broad range of faith-based books to ones that largely promoted Southern Baptist perspectives.
For the recommended $8 a copy — the price of a paperback romance — readers will be able to buy anything from "Moby Dick" to "Dame Curtsey's Book of Candy Making," The Google-On Demand partnership could transform retail bookselling — especially of books for university courses.
It is tempting to view the demise of the Borders Group as a dark cloud over the future of bookselling, and certainly the disappearance of hundreds of bookstores leaves a lot of vacancies where readers once browsed the aisles.
Tim Waterstone, a key figure in the bookselling revolution of the Eighties, now says that 'it was a philistine decade which saw the restoration of the book'.
In 1838 he became junior partner in the bookselling firm of Ticknor, Reed and Fields, which became Ticknor and Fields in 1854 and Fields, Osgood and Co. in 1868.
