A Solution for the Dying Bookstore?

Nothing in the electronic universe we have created beat the experience of walking into a bookshop. The cover art, the interaction with other readers, and for the nostalgic the smell of books. With the dwindling number of brick and mortar book shops this experience is getting harder achieve. Their stores cannot compete with the massive online retailers and electronic book outlets. The need another revenue stream to stay in business.

When selecting a new book by an author known to the reader or looking at a potential new author is when the cover art and back cover verbiage come most into play.  The online experience cannot match the physical browsing experience.

Many of the online retailers have tried to recreate the experience in one form or another with varying results. Other retailers have tried to map the reader's preferences and present books that the reader should also be interested in again with limited success.

I would suggest that the merger of the two experiences is the future. If a reader could browse in a store and make their selection. Then decide whether they want the physical book right now (at a premium), receive it later by post (at a lower price), or the book in electronic format to their reader of choice (at the lowest price). Finally checking out with whatever payment method they wish; cash, credit, or debit. This way the bookstore could receive a portion of the sale no matter how the reader is going to read the book. This extra revenue stream will help the store front retailers in business.

Not knowing the business from the inside I'm not sure how one can keep the online prices for the physical book and ebooks the same as an in-store purchase. That will be essential for this model to work. 

I'm using my personal experience as anecdotal evidence that this could work. For example I was browsing my favorite section in a book store. Saw an interesting cover that someone at the store decided to face out among the hundreds of spines. Picking it up and reading the back I found the premise interesting I thought of buying it. But having just received an ebook reader I wanted to see if it was available on that first. It was and that is how I purchased it. No money went to the store even though it was the real sales route. Since then I have been think how that store lost business it created. The book was one of a series and I have purchased all of them in electronic format. 

Currently I am purchasing books almost exclusively in electronic format. I have even gone as far when rereading books I own seeing if they are available in electronic format at a reasonable price. If they are I have bought them. Regrettably I have been finding that the price of older titles in electronic format is even higher than the street price of paperbacks. More shocking is that some that were available in electronic format compatible with my reader have been withdrawn from the market place I need to use due to my ebook reader's manufacturer.

What I see as the possible future for store front book sellers in a combined model where a browsing reader contributes to the store's bottom line no matter how they select to get the book.