Independent shops stress face-to-face relationships with loyal customers. "It doesn't cost anything to talk to me," an owner says.
"We have to compete differently now," he says."When it was Borders and Barnes & Noble, we just had to have a much better selection of books on these topics than they did, which was not that hard." "Oh, my goodness, any moment I'm happy to have people come to learn from me," Anderson says."You know, it doesn't cost anything to talk to me."Amazon, itself, has been experimenting with face-to-face retailing since 2015, when it opened the first of its 18 brick-and-mortar Amazon Books stores in a mall less than a mile from Edge of the Circle.
On a busy weekday morning, Fulcher accompanies customers around the store pointing out books and merchandise he thinks they might want. For 20 minutes, he disappears into the Bible room with a man who's seeking a very specific King James Translation. "They know that they're probably going to pay more for something here than if they went to Amazon, but they're committed to the idea that there's a Christian bookstore in our community, and they want to keep it there," he says."So they'll come in or they'll call me and say: 'I saw this on Amazon. Can you order it?'"Anderson and Fulcher are survivors of a dramatic shakeout in the market for brick-and-mortar religious and spiritualist bookstores.
Wenner says a lot of sales are moving to general retail giants like Walmart and Target as religious and spiritual books have become more mainstream — some of them topping general best-seller lists with sales in the tens of millions, like Warren's"The Purpose Driven Life" and William Paul Young's 2007 blockbuster,"Shack." And that"lessens the need for religion-specific bookstores," she says.
Add it all up, and it spells"a lot of trouble" for religious and spiritual retail, Wenner says."They're hoping for stability, and that's the best case." Bolme said many religious and spiritual bookstores are setting themselves up as"third places." But she wrote:"It seems that most Christian bookstores are maintaining the old model of simply setting up shop and expecting customers to come because they are interested in what the store is selling."At shops like his,"you can talk to somebody about this stuff who is familiar with it," he says.
Rebranded fantasy books.
Spirituality never dies. In it you can find a reason to live!
Interesting, NBC doesn't do similar articles on LGBT or Feminist bookstores. MeToo Resist Resistance resisters
Will go get books from here for sure! Thanks for the find bookworm bedbugs
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