Alan Cooper on independent bookstores in the age of Amazon:

Rather than seeing Amazon’s strength as competitive, brick-and-mortar stores should see it as liberating: they no longer have to maintain such a large, expensive inventory of books or maintain distributor relationships to order requested books.

Instead, the local store can offer something unique and desirable: a physical place for readers to go where they are supported and welcome, and where the books on view are personally selected, intimately displayed, and available for perusal. No internet company can provide that.

It’s a beautiful idea — though I suspect there would be some overlap with the library model (which isn’t doing so well). Worth a read for the analysis on historic trends that’s brought us here.