Bookstore Obsolescence

I find this article on bookstore obsolescence from Three Percent. In the article, Scott Karp opines that

I realized today that the bookstore has begun its slow decent into obsolescence, just like every analogue media institution. The bookstore has been replaced by the Web as the place of wonder, and there’s no turning back.

Maybe it's just me, but I find statements like this ridiculous.

Let me take a step back. Over the past year I've been in an English-language bookstore roughly once. (This is by necessity, not choice.) My book-buying, such as it is, has been constricted to the web. So consider me Karp's guinea pig.

Well, here's my report: buying books on the web sucks compared to buying them in a bookstore. Having been restricted to browsing Amazon for my book-buying needs, would I ever trade that experience for the experience of actually touching books and browsing via a non-web interface? God no.

Yes, as Karp notes, it's really aggravating when I can't find what I want in a bookstore, and it's pretty much impossible not to find a copy of the book you want on the web. But therein lies the irony--often when I haven't found what I've wanted in a bookstore, I've continued to browse around and found something even better. (The same logic applies to those nifty book-espresso machines that are supposed to be coming along any day now.)

Maybe bookstores would be better off if they stopped arranging books by author and subject. I'm only half-kidding. In Harper's, Gideon Lewis-Krauss recently wrote a piece (not free online) about a library in San Francisco that arranges books according to the whims of its founders. The idea is to make browsing more exciting, to increase the chances of making thrilling discoveries.

Maybe that's not the best model for a bookstore (bookstore-owners want people buying, not just browsing), but it is kind of to my point: the web is great and it has a lot of cool stuff, but it's not going to replace the experience of being there. Bookstores and sites like Amazon.com are not mutually exclusive. neither are blogs and newspapers, or blogs and books, or . . . you get the idea.

Comments

[David]

You write a blog about reading yet you have only been in a bookstore once in the past year and have only bought books from the internet.

Yet somehow you don't see those facts as being diametrically opposed to the argument that you are trying to make?

[Scott]

Actually David, I haven't bought that many books on the Internet either. (I find "browsing" on Amazon so clunky that I just plain gave up.)

Frankly, with the number of books I bought back when I had access to bookstores, I could read for years without buying another book. Also, the one time in the last year that I was in a bookstore, it was a pretty memorable occasion, buying-wise. Also, there are publicists. They send me many books.

So, in other words, no.

[JMT]

I recently bought a copy of Ondaatje's Running in the Family online from an Amazon link - it arrived promptly, but defaced, with the name "JAKE" scrawled across the entire cover in permanent marker. (Jake, buddy, what gives?) I complained: no refund. The pleasures of bookshops, libraries, and thrift stores and junk shops with books are immense and incomparable.

[Dan Gregory]

There are and have long been a few book retail websites that actually encourage browsing and serendipitous finds over searching (such as www.prbm.com and our own site, www.betweenthecovers.com). And recently other sites, such as www.alibris.com, have improved their suggestion algorithms somewhat. Many web users still want to hunt for specific titles, and most book websites still make it too difficult to deviate from searching with blinders on. But there are booksellers out there who recognize the problem and are experimenting with making the on-line experience a little more like the in-store experience.