Independent bookstore

Big-box stores also expanded during this period, including Barnes & Noble (which also acquired Texas chain Bookstop), Borders, and Crown Books.

[15] In the 2000s, e-books started to take market share away from printed books, either published directly via the World Wide Web, or read on e-ink devices such as the Amazon Kindle, introduced in 2007.

Amazon continued to gain significant market share, and these competitive pressures resulted in a collapse of the chain stores in the 2010s.

A smaller Barnes & Noble, with its Nook e-reader was left as the only nation-wide chain, with the second-largest Books-A-Million operating in only 32 states.

A Harvard Business School study by professor Ryan Raffaelli attributed this increase to the buy local movement and success in curation of interesting titles and hosting book-oriented community events.

[21] By the 1990s, African-American bookstores earned significant attention from more politically moderate and business oriented media outlets such as the magazine Black Enterprise.

Prominent black-owned booksellers currently in business include Marcus Books in Oakland, the oldest black bookseller in the country, Everyone's Place in Baltimore, Hakim's Bookstore in Philadelphia, Eso Won Books in Los Angeles (noted as "a Leimert Park institution of black literature and culture"),[25] and Sankofa in Washington, D.C.[26] Prominent online black booksellers include AALBC.com (founded in 1998), Mahogany Books and Hue-Man Bookstore, which formerly had brick-and-mortar storefronts in Denver, Colorado, and in Harlem.

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings series, a variety of independent bookstores specializing in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and related genres (often mystery, comics, games, and/or collectibles), began opening.

[27] Among the first were Andromeda Books in Birmingham, England (1971-2002),[28] Bakka-Phoenix Bookstore in Toronto and A Change of Hobbit in Southern California, both established in 1972.

Two documentary films, Indies Under Fire (2006) and Paperback Dreams (2008), explore the difficulties faced by U.S. independent bookstores in the new economy.