Bookselling

The bookstore is the retail level for distribution of printed products to end users. In Germany there are about 6,000 bookstores with about 120,000 employees and a turnover of 10 billion euros ( 2000).

Species

The most common type of stationary book trade is not specialized to individual areas range bookstore. It offers its customers a wide range, quantitatively or qualitatively sorted according to the specifications of the owner ( and always of the market).

The bookstore is aimed at a technically oriented audience (eg, lawyers, doctors, architects, accountants, theologians, etc. ) and performs a specialized range. It provides specialized competent service to their customers with special interests available.

A university bookstore right from their supply to the curricula of the local college and moved earlier publications often in collaboration with the University and its institutes and facilities. It is mostly a hybrid of technical and general assortment.

Children and Youth bookstores are special product ranges which offer a large and critical selection of literature in which are reflected the everyday life and the problems of families, children and young people in both of fiction as well as in Advisory shape. Parents, teachers, educators and social workers here often secondary literature and talk to an expert.

The train station bookstore provides literature for rail travel, travel guide and mostly magazines.

In comic shops, the customer is often not only a wide selection of comics and cartoons, but also to fantasy and science fiction. Sold are often being next to the primary and secondary literature devotionals.

Theology and religious bookstores often offer cross-community literature for their specially interested customers. These include not only the church and the Bible study group, but also all other socially committed people - even without reference to the church.

The antiquarian book trade sells used books and buying them. A bookseller is often highly specialized (navigation, cooking, heraldry, newspapers, etc.) and has a high customer retention.

Since the 1970s, numerous writers also participate as partners in cooperative- author bookstores that focus on "Literature as Art" and ambitious world literature. In addition, further differentiations and division stores like left bookstores, Women's Bookstore, esoteric book shops emerged in those years, primarily in the western German cities, where the corresponding clientele was available, inter alia,

A relatively new phenomenon in book stores that want to offer their customers everything " under one roof". Most are chains with many branches. Critics see this development as a step towards monopolization.

Crime bookstores carry virtually exclusively in their range crime novels. Parallel to the establishment of this crime bookstores have many of the major publishers set their partially classic detective series ( Rowohlt, Ullsteinhaus ). Detectives run since then under the heading novel. The market strategists of the publishers intend to become even readers who would otherwise buy a thriller. Conversely, it is difficult for Crime customers find their genre on offer to book tables in bookstores. In a Crime bookstore can be a fan assume that the range is first, larger, usually with English titles. Second, no other novels under mixed. There are now a dozen crime bookstores in Germany.

Distribution

Book outlets

Among the so-called book outlets include department store, supermarket, petrol station and newsagent / newsstands.

Partly as a dealer offer their customers on specific product groups the appropriate literature, for example, animal books in the pet trade, health counselor at the pharmacy or guide at the tourist office. Forefront of this development is the USA.

Internet

An important group of bookstores are the shipping bookstores. There is hardly a topic or subject, which does not devote at least a bookstore shipping.

Since it is the World Wide Web there is also a new form of shipping the book trade, the Internet bookstore. Either as an extension of an already existing business or even as a pure virtual bookstore, they can not offer the customer the experience of a "real" bookstore; for a targeted buying and comprehensive research often provides the Internet Bookshop very good options.

The classic bookstore sees itself threatened by the e-book and its online sales.