Okay. Harry Potter was cool for what we did but the lines were crazy. It’s 90 degrees and wall to wall people at each of the stores (oh what a merchandising heaven) and a 90 minute wait to get into Hogwartz, the ride – which wasn’t that bad – we were told. We made it 30 minutes and hit the stretch of line that was in the sun and gave up. We’ll do it another day. The butter beer was indeed excellent as was the breakfast at the 3 Broomsticks. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

Wingardium leviosa!  Sorry. I just had to say that.

Now onto the discussion of indi’s, B&N, Borders, and survival of the fittest.

So Jeff of Bound to Read Books in Atlanta gave me some insight into the real plight of indi bookstores in this age of ebooks. Now the age of ebooks seems like it’s an age that’s been here forever but it’s really only a couple of serious years old. But a lot has happened in two years. The Kindle took out the Sony Reader, and the Nook took on the Kindle and has established itself on the shelf next to it and the iPad is right behind trying to throw its apple muscle around to create some space for it. The Kobo – backed by Borders and we all know what happened to them – is far behind as are the Sony Readers and a few others.

What do the indi’s have? Nothing.

I mean bookstores are traditionally selling points for books. But that doesn’t mean they have to be hard copy books only, though, does it? Will bookstores change the way they look? How can they compete with electronic sales over the internet? Do they want to or even need to?

Amazon owns the Kindle and indi’s could sell the Kindle but what about the books that people read on the Kindle? Everybody goes to Amazon. Barnes & Noble has their own platform so they sell both the Nook and their own books, because they can too. But what about the indi’s? How do they get into the e-book market? Can they? I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this before.

Now I’m not saying ebooks are going to take over the book reading market. But they are and will take up market share and It’s a market share that’s growing and that indi’s can’t touch.

Jeff just shook his head when I asked him what he was going to do.

When I talked to Andy at the B&N in Gainesville store I asked him how B&N was doing now that Borders has kicked the bucket. He said they were good, then added. “We invested in the Nook. And it’s paid off.”

Indeed it has. Consumers Report rated it higher than the Kindle recently which was rated pretty high all by itself. Each product is different in it’s platform but gives a segment of the population something that it wants – a way to read books electronically.

But what about the indi’s? Does anybody know?

We made it to Universal. We did nothing but check out the grounds, hit the pool and game room, eat and go to sleep. We all agreed we were very happy to be out of the car.

Some interesting things we saw on the way down were a giant confederate flag a little north of Valdosta – and I mean giant, definitely a statement being made with that – and an incredible number of billboards for right-to-lifers and medieval times. You can take that for what it’s worth.

I 75 is long and straight and endless.

We stopped in Gainesville, Florida, to hit a Barnes & Noble there. Now don’t go all indi on me – there were no indi’s in the area and B&N was the closest to the interstate and we needed to find a book that two indi’s prior did not have. So we went and I pitched my book to the merchandise manager while I was there – a nice guy named Andy who indeed had heard of Captain Blood and Errol Flynn – always a good sign – who took Open Wounds and said I could follow-up with him to see if he read it in a couple of weeks. It’s something new I’m doing – asking if they mind if I follow-up. Anything that might make a difference is worth trying. Remember, it’s all about the relationships (yeah, yeah, I heard that before – okay… I’m just saying…).

The B&N in Gainesville has been there 18 years and seems pretty entrenched in the community. Andy said it’s one of only three small B&Ns left in the country. It doesn’t have a Starbucks café. It’s only books and although it’s a pretty good size – still bigger than any indi I’ve been too so far, it was smaller than the super stores. I had an interesting conversation with him about how B&N is doing compared to Borders – who clearly has lost the race to survive. More on that tomorrow because it links well to the conversation I had with Jeff from Bound to Read Books in Atlanta.