Summer Reading — By the Book, or By the Box?

This week’s cover of The New Yorker shows a man unlocking his independent bookstore while his neighbor receives a book delivery from Amazon.

Its a reminder of how the Internet has changed the bookseller market and how this change affected the bookseller’s relationship with readers and publishers — 60% of book purchases now happen outside the traditional brick-and-mortar bookstore, and take place online or in places such as airports, grocery stores, and general discount merchandisers like Wal-Mart, according to Brooke Gladstone of NPR’s On the Media.

Last week’s episode of On the Media focused entirely on the book and covered topics such as e-book readers, print-on-demand, the effect of celebrities (like Oprah) on book sales, and why book reviews are vanishing from our newspapers.

(image from the New Yorker)