Why independent book stores are on the rise again

Independent bookstores rising: They can’t compete with Amazon, and don’t have to.:

The recent news of the opening of an independent bookstore on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was greeted with surprise and delight, since a neighborhood once flush with such stores had become a retail book desert. The opening coincides with the relocation of the Bank Street Bookstore near Columbia University, leading the New York Times to declare, “Print is not dead yet — at least not on the Upper West Side.” Two stores don’t constitute a trend, but they do point to a quiet revival of independent bookselling in the United States.