Musing Mondays

Today's MUSING MONDAYS post is about changes to the bookselling industry in the last century.

Do you like the changes that have come to bookselling in the last several decades? Do you shop online? Do you prefer big chain stores, or do you prefer small, independent shops? Why?

When I was a student, I used to shop at smaller, independent bookstores because it is convenient and is within our neighbourhood. Those big chain stores are mostly situated in the town areas, and at that time, I would rather borrow books from the public libraries or buy my favourite books from these smaller stores.

And then of course, there are also small used bookstores around so we have a choice to buy or rent the books if we want. At the used (rental) bookstores, we will pay the full price of a latest release (cheaper if it is an older release) and if we decide not to keep it, we can always return to the stores within a month (or two months depending on how many books you rent) and they will refund part of the money to us. In this case, we paid only a few dollars as the renting fees. I find this works best for me if I am not sure if the books I want to read are keepers.

I love browsing and shopping at bookstores, no matter if they are big chain stores or small, independent stores but I do shop online too, because it is convenient and/or I find the books I want are not available or hard to find in bookstores. I was quite happy to find some out of print books on ebay lately because I know I would never find them in bookstores. Thus, I do not really have any preference when it comes to book shopping, as long as I get what I want.