Oh, man! I thought we might get a break here in the Boston area. It’s the Athens of America, right?
We actually got a NEW bookstore opening in Salem after the demise of the Derby Square bookstore. The new owners declared that “Salem needs a bookstore”, and, since the failure of Cornerstone Books, there had been only the ramshackle piles and tables held together by bungee cords of Derby Square. You can actually walk around in the new store, rather than shuffling sideways through the precarious stacks. And you can actually see out the windows.
I thought we were getting somewhere.
But then I went to Amersbury, went to where the used book shop that had migrated from Newburyport had gone, and found only a temporary campaign headquarters there. Turning the corner, I went down to the indy bookstore, where a flag saying “Books” fluttered. But when I got to the open door, I found the interior gutted and food service equipment being installed.
And to top it off, I learn that the used bookstore in Roxbury that specializes in fantasy and science fiction has closed. It even had a bookstore CAT.
Pretty soon all we’re going to have are the Barnes and Nobles squatting outside the malls*, and Amazon online.
*The only bookstore still inside a mall in Massachusetts that I know of is the Barnes and Noble at Prudential Center in Boston. And , aside from a couple of used bookstores, college bookstores, and Trident Bookstore/Café on Newbury Street, that’s the only bookstore I know of in Boston. In Boston, which not that long ago had a bookstore, it seemed, on every block.
It’s sad, isn’t it? Bookstores are becoming less and less of a thing. We have no more independent bookstores in my area (TX) either, and precious few chain bookstores - just B&N and Half Price Books, really. I console myself with the fact that my small town has an amazing library, and I go there for my “book culture”.
I closed down two bookshops this year. It is sad I suppose but then you don’t get too many people lamenting the lack of blacksmiths in most towns any more.
If you’re willing to cross the river we have a (seemingly) thriving small independent book store in Porter Square and the Harvard Book Store seems to be doing well (better selection than Porter Square)
Not a lot of people need horses shod, or square nails and boot-scrapers made, or tavern puzzles for Friday nights.
But I need my books, dammit. And everyone ought to be able to read. And despite what they say, our Nook isn’t filling the gap.
Open one, then. If there is a niche here that needs filled, then you could fill it and make a lving at it into the bargain. Quite likely, you can give me a whole list of reasons why you can’t. Everybody else has similar reasons.
Sunday’s Family Guy episode had the gang standing in a bookstore for a book signing and in the blink of an eye it turned into a clothing store. This was immediately followed by a commercial for Amazon.com.
Yeah you presumably have access to the biggest bookstore that has ever existed, as does anyone else on earth with an internet connection and a debit/credit card.
It’s terrible for browsing, though, and adventitious discovery, despite the use of Look Inside! features. And different stores stock and emphasize different books. Having only one or two online “bookstores” is like having only one or two bookstores.
Calm down… us Kindle users will get off your lawn!
Seriously though; who buys print books nowadays? They’re just inferior in almost every way to e-books, with one definite exception- you can’t lend them out like you can a printed book. Otherwise they don’t fade, they don’t get beat up, they don’t yellow, you can search in them, you can easily look up bookmarks, you can view them anywhere without having to lug dozens of books with you, they have built-in dictionaries, the indices are often hyperlinked, the tables of contents are usually hyperlinked, etc…
No reason I can see to deal with an actual printed book anymore, unless you’re some kind of neo-luddite.
See, I think bookstores are the ones that are terrible for browsing and adventitious discovery. I’ve been burned so many times in brick-and-mortar stores, paying full price for books that turn out to be duds. That rarely happens in online bookstores; I read reviews, I do research on the web, and more often than not, if I drop the cash, I like the book. Also, a lot of the time if I’m on the fence, the book is discounted down to so low of a price that I don’t really care if it turns out I don’t like it.
Contrast that with brick-and-mortars: I pay a lot of money for a book that I have nothing to go on except the cover blurbs. Blech.
I do agree with you on only having one or two online bookstores. We definitely need more diversity there.
One of the books on my Nook is a copy of the obscure Jules Verne Civil War novel North and South. They evidently used a version of computer scan and transcribe to convert the book to an e-book, and they evidently used a water-damaged copy, and no human oversight to correct errors, because the book will frequently devolve into vast black patches, fringed with bits of what look like LeetSpeak in place or normal printed English. The joy is in trying to interpret this Martian text into English.
Of course, it WAS free, so I guess you get what you pay for.
Or unless you live in a large city. Go ahead and Google the phrase apple picking space New York City.
I love my iPad as much as the next person, but I have not carried it on the New York City Subway for several years. I carry books. I love books. And nobody in their right mind would pluck a book out of my hands just as the subway doors are closing.
Then again I suppose I am a Luddite, because even at home I read printed books.
Huzzah for the Luddites !!!
