Disruptive events are eruptive opportunities.

What is a record store? What is a bookstore? I blogged on the bookstore demise months ago and the death-trend is continuing. What is a record store? What is a bookstore? I blogged on the bookstore demise months ago and the death-trend is accelerating. It’s over for the bookstores. Amazon sold more eBooks last month than paper back books. Disagree? Check out the stock prices of Barnes and Noble and Borders. Investors are selling their shares faster than economists change opinions.

We used to have dedicated record stores too. They are gone. This event is an opportunity for someone. It is another disruptive event, the type that I that I have blogged about in the past. Where does your business fit in? That is your challenge. This event affects everyone’s business in some way.

Who will be first? First business to understand the challenge is the first to take advantage of the opportunity and to profit from this disruptive event. Amazon and Apple and a few others have already set the pace for their companies. And lest I forget, the profit margin, on eBooks for sellers like Amazon and for authors like yours truly, is double what a paper back book generates. With the price of eBook readers decreasing quarterly not to mention, iPads, iPods and laptops, paper books are history. Sure they will be around in boutique stores, but the big stores are on the way out. Disagree? Who remembers BusinessLand? It was 600 gigantic stores that specialized in computer sales. Gone. Then Dell happened and people ordered computers by phone. Not even Wikipedia has a definition for BusinessLand.

Employment impact you ask? Before the iPod, pre-2002, there were 75,000 people working in record stores. Now less than 21,000 people work in record stores. According to one source, more than 125,000 people work in bookstores, in my opinion, less than 20,000 will work there in 5 years. If you work in that industry now, it is not too late to head back to school. The niche book sellers will survive, but they will have to provide a service that justifies the additional price over the eBook business. StarBucks did it with coffee. If you are thinking that the demise of the large book store chains does not affect your business, then you are dead wrong.

The bookstore demise is only a symptom of a deeper disrupting event, that is, the Electronic Dissemination of all Information. EDI leaves no stone unturned as it rolls across the business landscape. Make sure you are not flattened.

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