Books Birdviews 書海: What Does the Drooping Book Business Need ...

The large independent bookstores that depended upon city markets were closing down and being replaced by smaller shopping mall stores that couldn't carry backlists. They had to depend upon current books. I tried to offset this problem by ... This was a telephone-size directory of some 40000 backlist titles that you could order through an 800 number. The Internet wasn't yet commercialized. The Reader's Catalog was a huge success, but we were losing money on shipping. ...