It’s ironic that I read Peter Wood’s NAS article “How Will the Decline of Used-Book Stores Influence Scholarship?” in the café of my local Barnes and Noble. In his essay, Wood muses over the decline of bookstores amidst a marketplace of online sellers (e.g. abebooks.com).
Even as the owner of an eReader and as a frequent online book purchaser, I still fret about the future of brick-and-mortar bookstores. The Internet cannot replace the feel of a physical book, nor could it replace that wonderful aura of a quiet building filled with stacks of books. Furthermore, introverts who spend their time in libraries and bookstores are practically socialites compared to the people who are “isolated behind their gadgets, as Nathan Harden wrote last week.
The future of the physical bookstore faces a strong headwind; the movement to digitize everything is quite powerful.
If the bookstore does happen to go the way of the music store, it will be sorely missed. Here’s to hoping that the future is a world were hardcovers and epubs can coexist.
"For years I haunted the Avenue Victor Hugo bookstore (misplaced on Newbury Street in Boston) until the day the owner, with considerable bitterness, sold off his inventory at a pittance and closed his doors. That was about 2004, and he complained with good reason that he couldn’t compete with the online sellers. If one goes searching for a particular book, the odds are very good that somewhere in the world someone is willing to sell it cheaply."
Well duh, anyone who owns a used bookstore who does not ALSO sell his products online deserves to go out of business. Going online brings an entire world of customers to you!
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