Read and Return

The read and return policy at Paradies Shops caught my attention the last time I was through New York. I have a hard time parting with things and books are the top of the list. I love each book I have and can remember where I bought them, who gave them to me, where I read them, what I thought of them. I was curious whether people actually returned their books and started digging around. I found some people complaining that it's not really a good deal but that's about it.

In my digging around I found this little (now-defunct) bookstore called the Read and Return Bookshop in the UK. Operating since 1972, they just closed their doors this last spring. An excerpt from their last blog post:

But the book trade has changed drastically since then. Between the economy,supermarkets, the Internet and ebooks, it's become a very difficult thing to run what used to be so common - a simple, straight forward, dedicated 2nd hand bookshop.

I thought this was interesting because BEA week we were reassured over and over again that eBooks are a very small percentage of book sales and that actual, hold-in-your-hand books are still the main sellers. I suppose it could be different for the used book market? Kind of hard to compete with Amazon.

Regardless, I think the winds of change are blowing and no one quite knows in which direction. Will be an interesting few years ahead!