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.

New Yorker Magazine Summer Fiction Issue

(image from the New Yorker)

Phil Davis

Phil Davis

Phil Davis is a publishing consultant specializing in the statistical analysis of citation, readership, publication and survey data. He has a Ph.D. in science communication from Cornell University (2010), extensive experience as a science librarian (1995-2006) and was trained as a life scientist. https://phil-davis.com/

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