The Most Amazing Bookstores in the World

Shakespere and Co. in Paris. This legendary English language bookstore has served as a haunt for literary greats such as Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. The store is generously stocked with both used and new books, and features an eclectic collection of not for sale books that can be enjoyed in the reading room upstairs. Often flooded with tourists, the bookstore still serves as go to spot for readers and writers alike.

We seen other pics of bookstores around the globe before but these take the prize.
It's a difficult time for bookstores. Online booksellers offer seductively low prices and the convenience of ordering from home. eBooks are poised to change the business of publishing as we know it, allowing readers to bypass printed material altogether. There are news stories almost every day telling us about another independent bookstore that has shut down, a casualty of the changing book business.

Hay-on-Wye in Wales is known through out the world as 'The Town of Books.' There are more then thirty bookstores in the town, and it has come to be known as a center for second hand and antiquarian books.

However, we hope that there will always be a place for physical bookstores. Below, we have gathered some of the most amazing bookstores in the world (slideshow at link)-- the places that would make any reader shut their laptop, put aside their eReader, and go out to buy a book. From New York to Portugal to China, we've picked the most beautiful, impressive, and inspiring. Let us know what you think!
Slideshow of other great bookstores.