Store Closures Could Hurt Book Discovery

Bookstore closings is a bad sign for publishers, as book discover is still largely driven by store shelves. According to Peter Hildick-Smith, President of the Codex Group, who spoke on a panel of analysts at the O’Reilly “Tools of Change” conference yesterday, less than 2% of new book discovery comes from big digital media like search, Facebook and Twitter, while 30% comes from store discovery. “When you lose the store base, you lose discovery,” he said.