@taiwan_girl said in Free shipping:
A long time ago, my idea for a bookstore business was for a bookstore to only carry 1-2 physical copies of a book, though have many many different books in stock. If you browsed and wanted a copy of a book you saw, there would be a high speed printer and binder that would make you that book in short time.
There used to be an iconic bookstore in Chicago, Stuart Brent Books.
From a story in the Chicago Tribune:
''Think about it,'' he says. ''Dalton and Waldenbooks aren't concerned with service. They aren't concerned with ideals. They're only concerned with economics. Let's cut the price. Look what they've done to the greatest thing in the world, books-denigrated them to the point where they're nothing but cans of beans.''
Even though Brent does occasionally discount books himself, customers could never confuse his operation with a bargain bookstore. The atmosphere is warm and congenial, resembling a large private library, with a tile floor, oriental rugs, oak paneling, classical music and framed photographs of Brent with such favored authors and customers as Saul Bellow. But no matter how elegant the furnishings, how soothing the environment, the bookstore`s chief attraction, the owner insists, is really Stuart Brent.
Though not stated in the article, Brent was a real codger. He was irascible, occasionally nasty, and had, supposedly, thrown people out of his store for being ignorant/obnoxious or simply unlikable.
In the mid 1980s, he came to the university for surgery (I believe it was colon surgery), and one of my colleagues, Carolyn gave him anesthesia. She went to visit him post-op and they hit it off (Stuart was now twice-widowed). To make a long story short, Carolyn and Stuart married about a year later, and the standing joke was hopefully, Carolyn would be the wife that outlives Stuart Brent.
She didn't. Carolyn died in 1995, at the age of 60.
Stuart died in 2010, at the age of 98.
