The following article out of The King’s County Register outlines what one bookstore is doing to keep up with demand and changes in technology:
Valley bookseller using new technology for old books
Jonathan Archibald, a Middleton-based used book dealer, says his answer to the Kindle is to print more books.
Published on September 6, 2012
Heather Killen
A bookseller in Middleton may have found a way take the bite out of e-books while bringing rare, local interest books back into circulation.
Jonathan Archibald says he has lost some sleep over the growing popularity of electronic readers, but he is hopeful he has a way to turn other new technology to his advantage.
The owner of Blue Griffin Books expects within the next five years he will see the new, paperless book industry cut into his general fiction sales and have a negative effect the number of incoming new titles he can resell in his store.
However, Archibald gets a steady stream of requests for out-of-print local histories, genealogies and other special interest publications. While it is possible to find these volumes, the price was usually too high for him to make the sale.
Now he has found a way to bring these rare books back into the market through an affordable print-on-demand system. The business is catering to a specialized market of historians, genealogists and even local authors.
“Our answer to e-books is to print more books,” he said. “This is an opportunity to diversify away from just used books and give us something fairly unique to offer.”