Unfortunately, profound shifts in how people shop and equally greatI can't help but think of that recent New Yorker cover showing two doors: at one, a man is locking the door to his bookstore; next door, a woman is signing for a package--it has the Amazon logo on it. That's it in a nutshell, because the past 82 years have seen multiple economic crises, but somehow Harry Schwartz has managed to weather them all. Once again, just as with newspapers (see my earlier diatribes), I think this comes down to not enough people who should know better doing the right thing. Maybe the Amazon crowd really doesn't care. But somehow I hope they feel at least a little bit of guilt today.
changes in the book industry left us and many other well-established
bookshops with dwindling sales.
Update: I just see that two stores are being taken over by Schwartz managers and re-launched under different names later this spring. One more chance for everyone to ask critical questions of their book-buying behavior; one more chance to start doing the right thing. Yes, this will cost a little, but at this point in the crisis everyone should understand that you can't get good things for free.
6 comments:
Very nice. Thank you. I will try my hardest to frequent the newly managed stores as much as my pocket book allows.
monad man was never the problem (as s/he well knows); and I think today there are very few people who have never ordered a book on-line somewhere; but we need a balance if we're going to have decent places to live and work; good luck
Always sad to hear of "independents" closing. These are hard times for booksellers - I recently read in the FT that even "Borders" is doing badly!
I'm sure for people in small, out-of-the way places, on-line book buying is a great thing; but if you have a decent bookstore nearby, that's different. Borders and B&N, that's tricky. I think they've put their share of independent bookstores out of business, but they're still bookstores themselves, and sometimes fulfill important roles in their areas.
I go to Borders to buy music - they have a good selection, and I like being able to listen to discs at their listening stations.
Of course, my young friends think that I'm terribly quaint for actually buying CDs.
Music, that's a related, but also different issue. I still go to music stores (and like Borders listening stations, although they used to have more options), but I guess that's really an old person activity now, and perhaps music stores never were the "pillars" of communities the way some bookstores still are. But I recently saw some numbers showing how few people actually pay for the sounds they put on their personal players these days--this can't be good for the people who write, perform, produce, and market music. Wonder how our young friends feel about that ...
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