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bhbhbhhh t1_ja0dwtw wrote

Reply to comment by RobertoBologna in What Is It That Makes Used Bookstores So Wonderful? by zsreport

I'm not talking about the quality of individual books. I'm talking about the selection. Your Barnes and Noble will only have a sliver of the books that have "been through a few printings," while carrying a much higher percentage of the books that have recently been released.

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RobertoBologna t1_ja0l9ga wrote

I don’t think it’s true that B&N has only a sliver of books that have been through a few printings. I’d guess only 20 or 30% of the store is new releases. What’s boring about a B&N is that each time you go is mostly the same experience because that other 70-80% of books gets reordered from the publisher when a copy is bought, whereas a used bookstore could have entirely new books from one visit to the next.

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bhbhbhhh t1_ja0ob2m wrote

> I’d guess only 20 or 30% of the store is new releases.

80% of a regular-sized store is maybe a small percentage of the size of the building you'd need to gather up every book in the language that's been through multiple print runs. You need a warehouse.

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bhbhbhhh t1_ja91cij wrote

I said “only have a sliver of the,” not “only have a small portion of the shelves be dedicated to the”

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