Just don't do it.

This will be a forlorn little wimpet of a post, cause I know that I'm the only retailer out there who thinks this way and talks about it.

Booksellers! Don't Buy the 9.00 books from Amazon, Walmart and Target!

Every book you buy simply reinforces the trend!

There I said it. Everyone who hears this message will ignore it. They'll say something like, "I can't afford not to save money."

Whatever.

Cut your own throat. No, better. Hand the medieval surgeon a knife and pay him to drain you of blood.

Been there, done that. Actually, been there, seen that, because I decided early on that I wouldn't hand my money over the competition. Seemed just a tad shortsighted.

Back in the early '90's, most sports card were being sold by small independent sportscard shops. Then they started showing up in massive quantities in the chainstores at cheap prices.

Guess who bought out the stock in the early years?

Yep, sportscard retailers.

Idiots.

So Topps and Donrusss and Fleer and Upper Deck looked at the stats and saw how many boxes were selling in the chainstores, and came to the obvious conclusion.

Let's say, just for a chuckle, that sports card shops and mass market were at 50/50 sometime early on. If the indy's start buying 10% of their material from the chainstores, that tips the trend to, what 45/55? (Math isn't my strong suit.) Thus giving impetus to the manufacturers to give the chainstores a bigger slice, thus forcing indy's to buy even more of their material from the chainstores, and on and on...

Karma is a black-hearted bitch, and most of these shops are gone now, and the displays at Shopko are pretty pathetic. Now, retailers bleed themselves by buying from online discounters instead.

Thus reinforcing the trend.

Slowly bleeding to death.