Not me. Browsing a bookstore was usually a frustrating experience. Poor selection, usually focusing on NYT best seller lists. Annoying children being disruptive. Intrusive clerks always walking up and asking to help you (which is actually a way for them to get you to buy something and get you out the door).
The only benefit of mall bookstores was that I had a place to go to when the wife was shopping.
Amazon built a better mousetrap using the concept of the long tail. Now millions of titles were available instead of just the lowest common denominator (best sellers) titles.
You know what the problem with that is for me, though: Finding what I want. Looking for something to read on a website, like Amazon’s or B&N’s, is a pain in the patootie for me. I used to love walking in to a Waldenbooks. The new stuff was in a display or faced out on the shelves.
20 years ago when networking was new and booming i decided to educate myself thoroughly. I went to Borders bookstore and bought dozens of books on networking and computing at $50 a pop. When I say thoroughly I mean it, I even bought and studied books on the code for the TCP/IP implementation in Unix, cryptography, fiber optic physics, et cetera. It cost a ton but I became the smartest guy in my company in this hot new tech that our customer was demanding but nobody else understood well. I’m not the smartest guy in the company at this stuff anymore, not by a Longshot. But I was first and that has ended up paying off massively for me financially over the past couple of decades.
so not just best sellers.
Amazon doesn’t have millions of books in stock. They have the books-in-print catalog incorporated in their interface.
I miss Half.com. Music, books, videos...new & used...from 75 cents on up, shipping $3 per item. Great search engine, massive inventory, a “wish list” function, easy purchase method. It was a wonderful site. eBay owned it and closed it down last year. eBay wanted everything under the eBay.com website, but it didn’t incorporate the massive inventory into eBay...just killed the site and told sellers to reenter their listings. Sellers from Half.com have been slow to go to eBay.