ABSTRACT
The independent bookshop is dead. A couple hundred years ago – or so I hear – it was killed by the bicycle. About one hundred years after that, it was the moving picture shows that did the awful deed. If the indie bookshop didn’t die when supermarkets began selling books, then it surely met its end when chains moved into its neighbourhood. It was killed once again by online retailers (this time almost fatally so), right before e-readers raised the final dagger.
