Barnes and Nobles and Borders and Books-a-Million are all reporting lower sales. And, if you scratch under the surface just a little, the news is even worse. For instance, they all got a huge boost in sales (if not profits) from Harry Potter last year. No more of those coming....

I'm not the least surprised. I think the whole model of building more and more, bigger and bigger, and filling them with more and more books, had to reach a breaking point eventually. Yes, they have a ton of books -- BUT THEY ARE ALL THE SAME BOOKS! Books McDonald.

There are some systemic flaws that no one is talking about, but which are almost guaranteed to catch up to them.

The return system.

If you can just return unsold books, there is no real discipline in how many you order. This has been punishing the publishers for quite a while now. Magazines, especially, are built on a false premise that all these millions of slick pages are actually being read, if only to have coffee spilled all over them. A few magazines have been caught recently with inflating their sales; but they're desperate. The return percentages are astronomically higher than they used to be.

If advertisers ever catch on.

But the mega-bookstores are just having done to them by Amazon and the internet what they did to the independent bookstore. The big record stores are having similar problems, after doing in the independent record stores. Toy R Us has been crushed by Walmart, after doing in the independent toy stores. Card shops were doomed from the moment Target noticed cards, and so on and so on.

Comics have hung on because no one has figured out how to create a nationwide chain, and they never quite penetrated the chainstores. Graphic novels have made it much easier than comics for a Barnes and Nobles to carry the stuff; and this seems to be the fondest desire of the comic shop haters. (What! You don't have (the most obscure, out-of-date title imaginable) in stock? Worthless comic shop! I'll just get it online!)

So the news that Barnes and Nobles might purchase Borders sent these consumers into rapture. See, Borders has a more progressive policy toward graphic novels than B & N.

And then someone pointed out: what is more likely, that the bigger store will adopt the failing store's policies, or the other way around?

Oh. oops.

Meanwhile, I have a sneaking suspicion that the independents are on their way back. Any species that is stressed by the environment will end up with the hardiest survivors, who will then reproduce. I think we're at that stage -- even with the continued pressures of the mass market, even with continually increasing pressures of the internet. I believe that the survivors have figured out ways to get by.

There is the occasional extinct species; railroad and model hobby stores, sport cards shops, but others are starting to become hardy hybrids; record stores actually starts selling records again, sells dvd's; bookstores become more and more unique, instead of duking it out selling the latest best-seller.

Just a few years ago, there were 7500 different indy bookstores making independent decisions about what to stock. Then you had Barnes and Nobles and Borders who all carried the same thing, because they have corporate buyers. I do believe that diversity is the key to the survival of any species; and 7000 different buyers is healthier for publishers and consumers than two.

Don't get me wrong. It'll probably never get back to the way it used to be. It will take a very long time for independent to regain market share.

But I actually believe it's possible.