Comments on: The road not taken: the French and English library systems compared https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/2013/06/the-road-not-taken-the-french-and-english-library-systems-compared.html What's happening to your library? Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:01:36 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.3 By: Tim Coates https://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/2013/06/the-road-not-taken-the-french-and-english-library-systems-compared.html#comment-5771 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 07:04:00 +0000 http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/?p=5238#comment-5771 The decline of the number of book shops in the UK wasn’t caused by a reduction in the retail price in books – for a decade after the end of the ‘net book agreement’ which held prices high, the number of book shops and the investment in them was greater than it had ever been. … In fact, for years, people in libraries blamed the decline on the use of libraries on the increase in the quality and quantity of book shops (which actually was an incorrect analysis)

The decline in the number of book shops has been caused by the outstanding quality of service offered by Amazon . Book shops have failed to compete

There is no reason why Amazon has to be a monopoly – it is just that their service is so much better than anyone else’s that they have such a large share of the book retail market . Someone else could do the same – or better – if they could think of a way

The decline in the use of libraries has also been caused by their failure to compete with the service offered by Amazon or by book stores. They have failed to play to their strengths, which were a large number of libraries in smaller places than a book shop could afford to operate. Declining use has led to a declining willingness to fund – and that is the spiral we are in.

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