Thursday night; late night shopping night here in Emerald City. There used to be two major bookstore chains in Sydney; Angus & Robertson and Dymocks. For a time Borders was a third major force, though it was sold to A&R's owners in 2008 so it became "same company, different format". However when the Centrepoint shopping centre closed for renovation along with the neighbouring Imperial Arcade and Skygarden, both A&R's and Borders' flagship stores were closed. There are still a couple of A&Rs in the city which are little more than "hole in the wall" establishments; nothing like the huge basement store that used to stretch the length of the Imperial Arcade. Even some of A&R's suburban stores have been hitting the wall of late, with the Burwood store (originally spread over 2 levels) shrinking back to 1 level a couple of years ago, then closing completely last year. It didn't help that the computer section, for instance, was perhaps 50 books covering the complete range of Office 2000 to Windows XP.

While A&R has always been a straight bookseller, Borders tried to be the "third place" (between home and office) in a far better way than Starbucks has done it (in this country at least) by offering a mixture of books, music, DVDs and coffee shops... even if the coffee shops were Gloria Jeans. (Don't get me started on them. And incidentally, have you ever tried to get one of the 6 seats at your average Starbucks here? "Third place" my muscular backside...)

Although losing the flagship CBD store (which was over 3 levels, if I recall correctly) Borders has retained five suburban stores (North Ryde, Parramatta, Bondi, Chatswood and Hornsby) though from its e-mails it also seems to be trying to make internet selling its second niche.

There's no sign of A&R or Borders returning to the city in a big way, though given the unadulterated mess that is the interior of the new Centrepoint complex it's possible that they're buried away in some nook and cranny where no-one will ever find them.

In the meantime Dymocks has been forging ahead unspectacularly but nicely with a combination of corporate and franchise stores. In the city its main competition is from boutique (if large) stores like the Japanese store Books Kinokuniya, and the Abbeys / Galaxy independents. It plays it pretty straight concentrating on range and service, though the city store does have a small café area. Dymocks is always my first choice for books, though being part of their Booklovers loyalty program helps with that.

The demand for Photoshop books can be gleaned from the amount of shelf space dedicated to them as shown here. Unfortunately the books by St. Deke McClelland aren't as prominent as they should be, but trust me, they're there. I do need to refresh my PS skills and plan to reenrol with Lynda to take on Dekester's gargantuan PS CS5 course. Tonight, though, although I shot the Photoshop section I was actually after a book on SQL Server 2008 R2. These shelves just worked better with the title that I'd decided on for today's PAD.