Borders went completely out of business here in the UK about this time last year, and a (smaller average store size, but same idea) competitor (Waterstones) has had the wobbles - not life threatening though. I've also seen a few reports here that some smaller, more specialist independent stores or niche chains who picked their locations well, who were able to survive the superstore onslaught, have been having a bit of an upswing lately.
So you can sort of see where its heading. And it is to a degree much like music and film. There will always be a market for physical copies. People do like having physical copies of albums from bands they love, or a physical, browsable film 'library', and I think with books especially, for many there's a bit of a relationship with the physical thing - a lot of people who love books, love books too.
So in the short term, Amazon kills the need for megastores - that should have been obvious pretty quickly. If you're main selling point is your big range and lower price, then you'll easily get trumped by someone who's selling point is abso-fucking-lutely everything available at an even lesser price.
In the longer-term, e-readers like the Kindle will eventually kill off a huge chunk of the physical market. As all things digital are everywhere.
But there'll always be a place for physical books, and there'll always be a place for small, smart, well placed, well stocked, intelligently staffed and run book stores.
And everyone is different.
I haven’t bought a CD in years. Don’t care.
DVD’s – similar. I don’t care for the physical, but I work in the film industry and get pretty much whatever I want on DVD for free, so I’ve got thousands of the fucking things.
But I can’t see myself trading physical books for a Kindle any time soon. Can’t really explain that, but I like… books. Definitely would if I was extensively traveling or something, but not day to day.