Top Ten Reasons Why African American Bookstores Are Closing by Gwen Richardson

Top Ten Reasons Why African American Bookstores Are Closing by Gwen Richardson

1. Book sales migrated to the Internet
Most Black bookstores failed to take advantage of this trend. According to WebPro News, books are the #1 item people purchase online. Other brick-and-mortar chains, such as Blockbuster, also were flanked by their online competition, so this trend is not exclusive to bookstores.

2. Price competition
The advent of Internet sales ushered deep discounting on books. Because large online sites like, Amazon and Wal-Mart, are able to take advantage of volume discounts, Black bookstores could not match these discounted prices and, if they tried to, they were unable to maintain profitability.

3. Failure to diversify
With the advent of price competition and Internet book sales, diversification into other product lines was the only way Black bookstores stood a chance of maintaining viability. Most did not make this adjustment fast enough and some didn't make it at all.

4. African American sections added to stores like Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, WaldenBooks and Borders
Black consumers urged the major chains to include African American sections in their stores. Once this occurred, most Black consumers flocked to these stores for their purchases and kicked the Black bookstores to the curb. (See reason #5)

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