The closing of Cody’s Books was a major loss of one of the leading lights of independent bookstores in the country. It begs the question, “Can bookstores catch up to the 21st century?”
“For decades, Cody’s Books was a Berkeley (Calif.) institution with an international reputation as a modern-day agora. From the start, the independent bookstore was about more than selling books—it was also about the ideas they represented and the people who came to read and discuss them… The story of Cody’s, says Michael Levy, a professor of retail and marketing at Babson College, “is sort of an epitaph [of the independent book industry] in a way.” Source: Business Week