Albert Mohler’s comments on the demise of brick-and-mortar bookstores begins,
“Book stores are going away.” That is the conclusion reached by Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of Idea Logical Co., a consulting firm based in New York. Shatzkin offered his ominous prediction to The Wall Street Journal as that paper was reporting on the expected bankruptcy filing by Borders, one of the nation’s largest book store chains…. Shatzkin offers a blunt assessment of the future: “I think that there will be a 50% reduction in bricks-and-mortar shelf space for books within five years, and 90% within 10 years.”,
[From AlbertMohler.com – The Marketplace of Ideas — Why Bookstores Matter]
Mohler does an especially good job of explaining what physical bookstores do for us:
For the last two centuries and more, bookstores and bookstalls have been centers for the dissemination of culture and ideas. The merging of the bookstore and the coffee shop brought two complementary cultural spaces together. Books are about ideas, and bookstores offer a rare context for meeting other people interested in ideas.
Being in a bookstore helps me to think. I find that my mind makes connections between authors and books and ideas as I walk along the shelves and look at the tables. When I get a case of writer’s block, I head for a bookstore. The experience of walking among the books is curative.
I learn a great deal just by being in a good bookstore — and often even in a bad one. I have learned much by visiting a Maoist bookstore in Berkeley, Jewish bookstores in Brooklyn, the old Communist Party bookstore in central London, Muslim bookstores in Berlin, and the eccentric book shops of the Left Bank in Paris. I know cities by their bookstores. To visit Oxford, England without a trip to Blackwell’s is unforgivable — as is a visit to Oxford, Mississippi without a visit to Square Books.
Call me optimistic—call me naïve if you will—but I cannot believe that bookstores are going the way of tack shops and livery stables. There has to be some kind of viable commercial value proposition in the kind of experiences Mohler describes here. It may look different than what we’re used to, but then, thirty-five years ago, who knew that bookstore/coffee shops would pop up in almost every shopping mall?
The alternative, should physical bookstores go extinct, would be a continued fragmentation of exposure; a limiting of our awareness of the rest of the world. When I shop Amazon.com, I do not walk past the feminist studies aisle on my way to the John Piper book I came for. There are no New Age titles on the screen next to Christian theology. Amazon.com helpfully informs us “People who bought this book also bought….” It never tell us,”If you really want to think that topic through, you might also want to read these contrary perspectives.” You could wander in and out of there all week and hardly even realize there are contrary perspectives.
What do you think? Is there a future for physical book stores? If so, then in what form? Will there be another new concept melded with book sales, as coffee shops were in the past few decades? Will book stores become more elitist? More regional (and possibly even larger? Will they morph into some other new form? Or will they just disappear?
February 17th, 2011 | 8:57 am | #1
I have suggested in a blog post elsewhere that bookstores should have a model like either Sam’s Club or gyms. One way or the other, you pay a fee to be in the place. And maybe that fee entitles you to substantial discounts on books. In any case, it gives you the right to hang around, use wi-fi, absorb the ambience, and sit on the furniture. Right now, regrettably, the bookstores are unauthorized showrooms for Amazon.
February 17th, 2011 | 9:02 am | #2
There will always be bookstores for used books. But new books are too expensive, and 90% of them (at least) are essentially worthless, at least in my judgment. I don’t remember the last time I bought a book in a Borders; I wouldn’t miss the chain at all.
But I don’t mind spending $50 or more for a book in a used bookstore, if it is the right book. A remaindered but new copy of a Fergus Kerr book on Aquinas–published in England at 30 pounds–in a used bookstore in Des Moines, Iowa–for 10 dollars? Yes, I bought it. Try to find that in Barnes and Noble or Borders.
February 17th, 2011 | 9:27 am | #3
I find that when I search for topic words on Amazon and/or read their reviews, I often get recommendations that don’t align with my initial views.
Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic had this to say on Borders’ demise (HT: Ross Douthat):
“[L]ike most writers, I like bookshops…. On the other hand, like most of the writers I know, I rarely go into bookshops anymore. Instead, the UPS truck stops at our house at least once a week, thanks to Prime, and more and more, I order Kindle books straight from my iPad. I know that I am missing something–the serendipity of browsing through the bookshelves–which I have never replaced at Amazon; much as I love the convenience of online shopping, I never find anything that I am not looking for.
…
“And it’s not just that I’m lazy, though there is that. The bigger problem is that while Borders lets me find things I’m not looking for, Amazon always lets me find the things that I am. In the good old days of local bookstores, I frequently went [away] without books that I knew I wanted, because it was such a pain in the butt to order them. Now if I know I want to read a book, I can do so in short order. Ultimately, this is a bigger boon than the occasional undiscovered gem–particularly since there are still libraries.”
February 17th, 2011 | 10:22 am | #4
“There are no New Age titles on the screen next to Christian theology. Amazon.com helpfully informs us “People who bought this book also bought….” It never tell us,”If you really want to think that topic through, you might also want to read these contrary perspectives.” ”
That’s exactly what the “people who bought this book also bought” function DOES do. Imperfectly, granted, but frequently that tool will reveal that people who read the book you’re looking at read opposing perspectives.
I’m not sure the imperfect way in which the “people also bought” function is any worse than walking past a stack of books on a particular topic, about which you can’t tell anything specific, or about the quality.
And there are still libraries, which have always been the best option for people who don’t want to spend $12 or more every time they want to know more about a subject, and satisfy pretty much all of the things that Mohler finds appealing about physical book stores — usually better, because brick and mortar book stores can’t usually afford to stock low-sellers with decades old copyrights.
I will mourn the demise of bookstores as well, but I don’t see a realistic way past it. I wish I thought the optimism was warranted.
February 17th, 2011 | 1:24 pm | #5
As much as I really love bookstores, especially Borders, I really don’t see an economic possibility of Borders ever really meaning as much as it once did. Especially since the creation ebooks, going to the library and spending precious time driving downtown and then looking through the bookstore, only to find that your book will have to be ordered by the store if you want it, is just too much of a pain when I can simply enter a search bar in Amazon, click add to cart, and then just wait a couple days until the book arrives.
On the other hand, I love the ambiance of bookstores. I have likely spent more time just picking up random books in the theology section and reading the prefaces than I have doing any other single thing. There is just something magical about stumbling upon a book and then realizing that this book was something that you should have been looking for all your life. The excitement of walking down the book aisles and just realizing that there are the thoughts of thousands of people just sitting compacted on a single shelf always makes me want to come back.
But spending that much time in the bookstore made me realize something. I noticed that every time I looked up, there was a different person looking at books next to me. So I would look around for the person that was there before, and they had bought their book and left. It seems that Amazon and other online book purchasing tools have set some kind of mentality, that a book just needs to be seen, bought, and brought home. It was unlikely that many of these people spent time to look at the opposing viewpoints of the book they came for, or that they even noticed the quiet ambiance of the place. A lot of people seem to have the same attitude in the bookstore as they do on Amazon.
It was likely the case that the people couldn’t find the book they wanted on Amazon, so they looked in Borders to see of they had it. And once they logged on the computer to search for the book in-store and realized they had the book, they found the exact section of the book, grabbed it, paid and promptly left.
I love spending time in Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Powell’s. But as far as price and time goes, it is just so much easier to order my book from amazon. I hope Borders will be able to make it back (luckily it is only chapter 11 and not chapter 7). I would love to be optimistic but I’m not sure if my optimism is justified. Although Dr. Baker, you make a good point about the experience of knowledge that can only be found in bookstores, I fear that that experience isn’t what most people look for. They only want the book that they came for, nothing else. Though unfortunate, this is likely the reason that Amazon has been so successful with books. They offer the simple ability to only see what they are searching for. Though the “what other’s bought” can SOMETIMES show opposing viewpoints, I found that it only found books with a similar thesis.
I hope Borders makes it, but I’m really not sure if they will.
February 17th, 2011 | 2:24 pm | #6
“Though the “what other’s bought” can SOMETIMES show opposing viewpoints, I found that it only found books with a similar thesis. ”
I agree with that, I was just a little taken aback by the assertion that one derives *more* useful information from walking past a shelf full of books that may or may not contain opposing viewpoints, than from an actual display of specific books that many people with a common interest in the subject have purchased.
February 17th, 2011 | 2:45 pm | #7
I do not think that opposing information is necessarily more useful, but it may contain more (additional) information that is (also) useful.
February 17th, 2011 | 3:01 pm | #8
I too find that being among collections of titles is both pleasant and useful to me. I have been trying to support Borders by buying a few things there every few weeks but let’s be honest: Amazon is almost always cheaper.
Once Borders is gone, it will be the library for me – and the problem with this is simply that libraries are like abandoned places in too many parts of the US.
In some cities, however, libraries have added cafes and gift stores, and are every bit as nice as bookstores.
However, the question of how things will (and should) be funded is a question that needs to be resolved – libraries are going to e-books, and that presents an as yet unaddressed (to my knowledge) economic problem: if books are moving from things we own hard copies of to merely things we purchase specific digital rights to, then why shouldn’t I just get my reading material through the library?
If a lot of people rediscover the joys of libraries, are the book publishers going to feel threatened and find some way to shut them down?
February 17th, 2011 | 4:10 pm | #9
“What do you think? Is there a future for physical book stores?”
Wow. Just asking the question speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
February 17th, 2011 | 6:03 pm | #10
Here in Canada we have Chapters/Indigo, which started out following the model of Barnes & Noble and Borders. They even succeeded in keeping the latter two chains out of this country. Nevertheless, over the past 15 years, its stores have stocked fewer books and more gift shop items. The selection has thinned out, and the more substantial offerings in, say, philosophy have been replaced by coffee table books and best sellers. Amazon is a lot easier to order from, especially since the books I’m looking for are unlikely to be found in a local Chapters store.
February 17th, 2011 | 9:02 pm | #11
Might see more Expresso Book Machines popping up in downsized bookstores. They print books on demand in just a couple of minutes. It allows for an endless inventory and immediate access, without a store having to tie up a lot of capital in stock and a large floorspace, with all the additional overhead.
http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/espresso-book-machine-now-generally-available-in-the-us-canada-to-come/
February 17th, 2011 | 9:27 pm | #12
Well, at least we’ll always have brick-and-mortar universities and we’ll always have professors in classrooms teaching us.
We gotta have our college football games and NCAA March Madness. Can’t electronically virtualize that!
February 17th, 2011 | 10:31 pm | #13
Tom, it’s not the “opposing information” as useful I’m questioning, it’s the relative usefulness of a pile of books siting there which you know nothing about, vs. a list of books that are actually known to have engaged the interest of others interested in the same subject.
Those other books just sitting there are only useful in providing further information if you pick up and read each one to see what they contain — otherwise, they’re just as useless as books you’ve never heard of. And nobody actually does that, just because the books are sitting there in view in the bookstore. On the other hand, the “people also bought” thing can send you off on a trail of related books from opposing viewpoints quite easily, with the bonus that you know that at least somebody thinks they have some relevance to the thing you’re interested in. You might have to click on a couple to see what people who bought *those* books also bought, but in so doing, there’s a wealth of information to be discovered that way. And I submit that people who have grown up with web surfing are just as likely to gain information by following that kind of link trail, as people are to gain information by noticing that there are some books there, each of which you’d have to read to find out what it was about.
February 18th, 2011 | 12:23 pm | #14
Is Barnes and Noble still going strong? It looks like Borders simply didn’t have a viable business model, since they oversold cds, didn’t embrace ebooks, and focused on uncommon titles that the fringe began to look for online.
So perhaps it’s not bookstores in general right now, but Borders, who are in trouble.
February 19th, 2011 | 6:23 am | #15
Stop buying from Amazon! It’s your fault that the bookstore died, because you valued cheapness over physical presence. Soon you are going to wake up and find out all you have in your area are walmarts, redboxes, and goodwills, and you are going to regret the lack of actual, physical presence.
You killed the video stores, you killed the record stores, and now you’ll kill the bookstores. It’s only a matter of time before the movie theaters are next. It’s a thing that angers me deeply, because I see what happens in my area: there is no center of culture, no place just to browse and make connections. Everyone just stays trapped in their own little houses.
I so agree with the tone of this article, and I think people need to rage more. Just being able to walk to a bookstore, browse, and find titles is a joy a whole generation will miss.
February 19th, 2011 | 2:02 pm | #16
Until this generation, most people used libraries for that sort of thing. Relatively few people could just afford to walk into a bookstore and browse and buy books. That’s why there WERE no Barnes and Nobles in every mall 25 years ago. I still remember my father thinking I was profligate for buying a paperback book instead of getting it at the library — in the late 80′s. So the death of the bookstore might mean little more than that we revert to way things were a generation ago, when people valued books quite as much, and were quite as literate, as we are now.
I’m always bemused when people think the death of the culture consists in losing one of the aspects of affluence we’ve been accustomed for oh, 20 years or so.
February 24th, 2011 | 9:18 pm | #17
Penta, I’d strongly disagree. Libraries flourished because they taught people to enjoy to read, but people then went and bought books voraciously. Loaning was supplemental for many, and bookstores flourished in the 80s, especially independent ones. I went to the library and bought books I loved, and compared to the prices of movies or videogames, or even recorded music, they were more affordable then than now.
It’s ironic though, that an agnostic like me thinks physical places matter and christians are so mundane. I’m sure if church buildings went the way of the dinosaur and you all could only get the host mailed to you while you did mass online you’d be bewailing the lack of it even if it was 10 times less expensive and easier to adminstrate.
February 25th, 2011 | 3:42 am | #18
In Salt Lake City, we have a wonderful little bookstore, called SAM WELLER’S ZION BOOKSTORE, and it contains, a wonderful used section, on philosophy, and theology. I cannot even start the fathoming process, that this store, may no longer exist. But the sad fact is, books must do battle, with the latest, in technology, and I’m not overly sanguine that, books will win, in the minds of those mesmerized by the newest cool devices.
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