Not surprised to hear this. I managed a couple of Walden's in the early 80's. the mark-up on books was about 50%. We purchased from jobbers at 40% discount & then sold books for full cover price, with a sale every now & then. When discount stores started adding books to their inventory, the slow slide started, becoming a steeper slide with the advent of Walmart, the big box super stores (Sam's, Costco), and most especially Amazon. With their ability to buy in bulk and discount deeply, stores couldn't get away with that kind of a mark-up any more. Unfortunately, this also pretty much exterminated the local private bookstores. Most of the ones now in existence serve a specialised niche market and that's how they stay viable but it's not a business that will make you a millionaire. The book industry has been lamenting the demise of the independent bookstores for years. Now it's come to the point that the sharks are eating each other. At some point, I expect to see only one or two whales...
The really sad thing is that when yo lose the smaller, independent stores, you also lose the incomparable service that you'd get from employees who care deeply about the product that they sell, know much about it, and love to share information about what's good and comparable.
"You've Got Mail" was really true, but without any kind of a happy ending in this instance.
So sad....
