New York ? As the book world winds up its annual national convention, some retailers are wondering about the fate of a cultural institution.

It’s not a book or a publisher, but a customer – the old-fashioned bookstore browser who picks and pokes and doesn’t care about the critics or Oprah or the best-seller charts.

“I think people are less likely to just look around than they were five years ago,” says Margaret Maupin, a buyer for The Tattered Cover in Denver. “And they’re more impatient about getting a book. They come in and ask for it and if you don’t have it they go somewhere else.”

Nobody at BookExpo America, which ended Sunday, was predicting the demise of those idle, curious souls who think of bookstores as second homes. But booksellers and publishers agree that an accelerated society can’t help affecting an industry known for taking its time.

They speak of a more “focused” consumer who knows what he or she wants, which is often the same as what others want – what Simon & Schuster CEO Jack Romanos calls “the herding mentality.” The managers of The Book Stall, based in Winnetka, Ill., notice more people phoning in orders or double-parking out front while they hurry inside for a purchase.

“People are spending less time in the back of the store, looking through the philosophy section, and more time at the tables for ‘recommended books’ in front. They’re looking for someone to narrow their choices,” says Ryan Coonerty, vice president of the California-based Bookshop Santa Cruz.

Some familiar reasons are offered: the media’s emphasis on just a handful of books at a time, competition from the Internet, DVDS and other forms of information and entertainment and, most of all, increasingly busy lives.

“The idea that people have less time to spend in the bookstore rings true to me,” says Oren Teicher, chief operating officer of the American Booksellers Assn. “Every study shows how people’s time is at a premium.”

With an estimated 195,000 books coming out last year, it seems unthinkable that anyone could make up his or her mind about what to buy. BookExpo helps consolidate those choices, taking thousands and thousands of upcoming publications and, through the magic filter of “buzz,” reducing them to a manageable group of “must-reads.”

Some of those books, such as “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and Bob Woodward’s Deep Throat memoir, “The Secret Man,” were buzzed to the sky even before the convention.

Menghan Yum, 8, of Beijing, looks at the cover of a new Harry Potter book on the last day of BookExpo America in New York. Books such as Harry

Some caught on over the weekend, such as “The Tender Bar,” a memoir by J.R. Moehringer; Julie Powell’s “Julie & Julia,” in which the author works through the recipes of Julia Child; and “The Widow of the South,” a Civil War novel by Robert Hicks.

Oprah Winfrey added to the must-read list Friday by choosing three William Faulkner novels for her TV book club.

Business was fast at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, but the acceleration, and consolidation, of the book industry has been hard on independent retailers. Core membership of the American Booksellers Assn. dropped to 1,703 during the past year, about 100 less than the year before and less than half the total from the early 1990s. ABA vice president Suzanne Staubach called the news “not wonderful, although it’s not hideous.”

For some convention-goers, BookExpo America itself can seem a little too fast, a weekend of sales pitches and abbreviated conversations.

However, time permitting, the lucky browser will discover the strange, the obscure or the wonderful, such as Alfred Chester’s “The Exquisite Corpse,” a cult novel published in the 1960s and blurbed by Gore Vidal.

In the children’s section, The First Mom’s Club Publishing Company specializes in texts for the young entrepreneur.

“I think it’s important for kids to know the value of money,” says publisher Dianne Linderman, whose 10-year-old son makes up to $150 a day selling pocket knives. “Life is about the adventure and the journey and now my son has freedom to buy whatever he wants and become whatever he wants to be.”