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It's getting easier to publish via the print-to-order businesses, some of which can even produce hardcover editions. In the long run, that avenue will develop a lot more, and result in publication of a lot of books that would never have gotten published before as they have a very small target audience.

I'd like to see that in technical textbooks. Some of my daughter's textx are obscenely costly, although I think much of the cost is professors lining their pockets

Stuff that needs to be updated frequently is a prime candidate for print-to-order

Bibliopath BTT. (Guilty as chargec, m'Lud!) There are, of course, two arms to this argument, only one of which is cultural. The first of these is business model. There was a charming, old-school model in which the customer used to like to come in and browse for something interesting he or she might purchase. This corresponds very nicely with dusty old used-book shops that hold a 20-year-old printing of Kant. There is another, however, in which the customer already knows what he or she wants and will go to whatever outlet promises availibility and low price. And that's why you find the big-box book bins. The difficulty is that the latter can support browsing while the former can't support inventory.

It's boutique versus supermarket and there is room for both models as long as the boutique really does offer something unique. Smart businesspeople running independent bookstores know this and behave accordingly.

Now, cultural arm of this little problem is fairly evident here:

Kepler's Books...was saved by a group of investors who could not bear the loss of a cultural and literary hub with a long history of progressive thought.

As long as the "boutiqueness" of the bookstore revolves around politics it has to depend on only that portion of the population that is sympathetic to those politics and not the population at large. It may be wonderful for close-minded progressives to expect only books that agree with their politics to be displayed but they're going to have to pay for the privilege. A political monoculture is and ought to be an expensive luxury. And unfortunately this portion of the population has a decidedly anti-business sentiment and an expectation that such things as these bookstores ought to be provided to them just because by a society that ought to be grateful for their enlightened presence. That makes for lovely coffee-house rhetoric but it doesn't pay the light bill.