So a while back we had a rousing discussion about the future of the book. Spawned by Steve Jobs’ comment that books (and technologies like the Kindle) are increasingly irrelevant since, he claims, “people don’t read anymore.” Well, an offshoot and related issue is: what use do we have for brick-and-mortar bookstores? I’m intrigued by this post from Ezra Klein, and I think I sympathize.
“I love bookstores, and spend a significant fraction of my time in them. When I go to Politics and Prose, I purchase books I don’t need, partially out of a desire to simply donate to the store’s continued operation. I keep trying to figure out a reason I believe bookstores will survive into the future, but it seems pretty clear that books will eventually be as mercilessly digitized as music, and most bookstores will close, just as most CD stores were shuttered long ago.”
I too love bookstores and, while I’m loathe to browse a clothing store or local mall, can spend hours looking around a good bookstore. But, inevitably, my frugality takes hold and unless I’m desperate for a new novel I’ll take mental note of a few titles that look interesting (after checking out a chapter or two in the store)…and then order them online from home, saving money and often finding a used copy. Online purveyors are simply more convenient, offer more options for saving money, and tap into a nearly limitless inventory that even my local Borders or Barnes & Noble can’t match, much less the locally-owned mom & pop shop. So, is there a point in clinging to bookstores? Might we be better off taking our own books (or Kindle!) to the local coffee shop, along with a laptop to browse new titles? What is it about bookstores–besides the rare occasion when a book is needed IMMEDIATELY and it happens to be in stock within a reasonable drive–that makes me feel some sort of sentimentality towards their very existence? I love what bookstores offer to me, but my way of using them is simply not profitable for them (apart from the $4 latte I’ll occasionally buy). As our generation grows older and a greater proportion of book buyers move online, how is this business sustainable? What are your thoughts?
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user polifemus.
The demise of the bookstore is not entirely the result of a diminished reading public. Bookstores are rendering themselves obsolete and irrelevant.
Fifteen years ago the number of books published in the USA was a five figure number. By 2007 that number has grown to 190,000 plus. I have been told that the average chain bookstore inventories between 25 and 30 thousand titles. If one factors in the bread-and-butter titles that stay in a store year after year, the numbers indicate that 160,000 to 170,000 new titles never appear in a bookstore.
The Harvard Business Review has indicated that the average title in a major chain bookstore sells 2 copies per year.
The bookstore computerized inventory sends a book back to the publisher if it has not sold a predetermined number of copies in a few weeks/months time. In todays world it takes about a year to get a buzz going about a book. By the time the buzz happens the bookstore has returned the title.
The current bookstore is less user friendly than the neighborhood library. In many libraries you can walk up to a computer and determine the availability of any title, go the designated shelf, pick up the book, and check it out. For some libraries you can do this from home. In a bookstore you have to browse (eye-ball the shelves), or ask a clerk. That is not 21st century marketing. In our busy, fast paced world who has time to browse?
Outside of the obvious categories like fiction and hammering nails one often wonders who made the decision to put this book on the shelf in this category. Yes, there is a picture of Teddy Roosevelt beside a downed elephant on the cover, but this book should really be in biography rather than nature/wildlife. Did anyone take time to learn what the book is really about?
Every publisher has stories of customers who went into a store to ask for a specific title, only to be told by the clerk that, “It is not yet printed,” or “It is out of print.” Or sometimes the reply is, “That book is not available to us.” Either some of the clerks don’t know how to use their software or they don’t take the time to get the correct information from it.
Perhaps the large mega bookstores are not the answer. If I want a book a building a wall in my garden I don’t go to Barnes & Noble, I go to Menards or Lowes.
I believe people like the feel of a book in their hand. When getting a book from the bookstore is as easy as ordering it from Amazon the fortunes of the bookstores should change.
Read an Ebook Week is March 2-8, people:
http://epublishersweekly.blogspot.com/2008/02/30-benefits-of-ebooks.html