Bookstores and the future

The Economist ponders the future of bricks-and-mortar bookstores in light of the ongoing troubles at Borders.

I am not as pessimistic as they are, but I think the future may lie with smaller bookstores in which part of the value-added is the selection of the books rather than in mega-stores that try to compete with Amazon. I enjoy Nicola's books in Ann Arbor for precisely this reason.