If readers won't come into bookstores, then perhaps bookstores will just have to go to them. The Age reported that Australian bookshop owner Andrew Ball "was struck by figures that showed only 18% of Australians would ever venture into a shop such as his, so he devised a way to take such shops to the remaining 82%."
His solution? A portable bookshop that, "like a market stall . . . unfolds in the morning and refolds at night." The first store in Melbourne "has been licensed to self-confessed classics fanatic Ross Matthews and Ball hopes once the project is refined, it will go further--a series of mobile bookshops taken to fairs, markets and even country towns too small to support a bookshop in their own right."
According to Ball, "The city used to have a lot of bookshops, but rising rents have forced them out. Also there are a lot of people out there who would like to run a bookshop but are put off by the upfront costs, which can start at $100,000."