A bookshop economy
Today I'm in Hay-on-Wye , a small town buried miles from anywhere on the Welsh-English border, with the highest number of bookshops per inhabitant of anywhere in Britain and probably the world. Can this possibly be an economically stable situation? Today, a mild springtime Saturday, there are plenty of visitors - and I'm sure they will all spend some money in several shops. But is this really enough to make a living? There are several characteristics which probably make this local economy more sustainable than one would expect: Books, especially second-hand books, are not commodities - for most books here, there's probably just a single copy in one shop. This reduces the competition between shops and allows them to maintain greater margins. There's an annual festival where 80,000 people come here and the bookshops - and everyone else in town - makes an absolute fortune. The existence of the bookshops the rest of the year strengthens the credibility of the festi...