Say "So Long" To Vanilla Bookstores?

You'd never know it, judging by the proliferation of Borders and Barnes & Noble stores 'round here, but "real readers want bookshops with personality and choice" (or at least The Guardian thinks that "real readers" in Britain do).

The story of 21st-century retail is surely going to be about niches as much as it is good value.

Slowly, consumers are wising up: they...increasingly relish the local, the unusual, the personal.

By their very nature, those who buy books - and most people don't - are likely to be ahead of this trend. More than many, book buyers resent blandness - even heavily discounted blandness - as the publishers who, like sheep, invested in one too many celebrity memoirs are now discovering.