Word: booksmiths
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...books from 21 popular classes, our reporters found that the Coop almost always charges the price listed in Books in Print, an annual publisher's guide. Searching the shelves of other major bookstores in the Square--Harvard Book Store on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St., Paperback Booksmith on Brattle St., WordsWorth on the corner of Brattle and Mt. Auburn, and the WordsWorth 2 discount outlet down Mass. Ave. toward Central Square--we found that, in almost all cases, the Coop is the only supplier of textbooks in the area...
...social sciences, the stores most competitive with the Coop's near-comprehensive supply are Harvard Book Store, where we found about half the books we were looking for, and WordsWorth, which stocked about one-third. In literature, those two, as well as Paperback Booksmith, had about one-quarter of the editions we sought...
Both Harvard Book Store and Paperback Booksmith follow the same pricing policy as the Coop: they sell at list price. But the two WordsWorth shops offer significant discounts. The Harvard Square outlet gives 10 percent off on paperbacks and 15 percent off on non-textbook hardcovers. The Central Square branch, which sells mostly publishers' overstock, gives a 50 percent discount on all prices...
...number of stores, we noticed a tradeoff between selection and price. For example, Paperback Booksmith carries 10 of the 13 books required for Literature and Arts A-19 "Fiction, Ideology, and Myth: The Novel in the Twentieth Century," but sells nine of them at the same price as the Coop, and one for a dollar more. WordsWorth 2 has only two of the 13 works--The Counterfeiters by Andre' Gide, and The Castle by Franz Kafka--but undersells the Coop by a combined total of $7 for the pair...
Reading International on Brattle St. was a haven for Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as they wrote the famous anthem. Paperback Booksmith, which is "dedicated to the fine art of browsing," is the Bermuda Triangle of Brattle Square-people don't buy books there, they just disappear...