There’s no doubt that retail stores, not just book stores, will be pushing online sales harder and harder in the coming years.

I have bought about three books from a physical store in about two years, online, about thirty. It’s time consuming to go down to the store, find a car park, find the store in a shopping centre, find the book, line up to pay for the book, and then get back home again.

Online, I can search, pay, and wait a few days for it to arrive. Really, how many people are so desperate for a book, that it can’t wait a few days. With the big book releases around the world, like Twilight, you can pre-order, and usually have it delivered a day or two before the stores can sell it anyway.

The future profits from book stores will be online, and perhaps, a book store attached to a cafe, so people can read their new purchases (Eg. Milton book store).

It comes down to us useless Gen Y’ers. We’re lazy.

I recently bought a book from Borders online and payed about $10 more than I would have on Amazon, purely because I needed a quick delivery (I’m impatient, i know). Well, delivery is now well past the 7-10 days that Borders identify in their terms and the book still hasn’t arrived. I’ve come to realise Borders ship majority of their stock from overseas anyway, so the difference in delivery time between them and Amazon is minimal.

It’s also interesting that your experiment showed similar discounts between physical stores and their online counterparts. Makes you wonder why you would order from online book retailers at all (Borders, Dymocks, etc), when they are charging similar prices to the physical store, and you have to wait weeks for it to arrive!