The Demise of the Bookstore

First it was the video store and now it’s the bookstore. eReaders herald the end of the bookstore. It’s just a matter of time before the bookstore as we know is gone. For good or bad we can thank technology. We’ve seen it coming for a couple of years now, and the pace of bookstores going away will only quicken with the continued advances in technology, and the pricing of the technology as well. I remember this bookstore in a mall that I use to visit. It seemed as though it was the size of a closet, but it had old wood floors and it had books on shelving stacked to the ceiling! It was well organized. You might have needed someone to climb a ladder for you to get a book, but for a book lover like myself it was almost heaven. Then there was the smell of the place. The cover of freshly printed books mixed with the smell of the wood floors brought  a sense of relaxation as one browsed over the selection of hard covers, and soft covered books. Forget the smell of coffee or the need to sit down and read. This was a place for the serious book lover who stood to browse over the selection. And then after an hour or longer you came out of there with your treasure only to run home, to cozy up in your favorite sofa or recliner to start reading through those wonderful books! For me there was nothing like having nothing to do during a major snowstorm except to read a good book with a cup of hot tea at my side. I don’t think I can write such things of an eReader. With the arrival of Barnes&Noble, and Borders bookstores in most major city and towns the small mom and pop book stores like the one I use to visit in the mall went out business. Then we had book stores with wide lanes, and big fluffy chairs and carpeting. Gone was the quaintness of the smaller bookstores replaced by these big retailing behemoths who were more interested in attracting customers with coffee, and pastry in order to sell their books. Yes at first the novelty of having a coffee shop in the book store was interesting, and in a way enjoyable. But then the novelty wares off, and you begin to long for the day of that old book store that you use to visit. Rather ironic then that these retailing behemoths are they themselves becoming obsolete by people taking advantage of the latest technology in the form of digital books on basically tablet computers. In my view I give Barnes&Noble maybe ten years before all their stores are closed, and they exist solely as an online purveyor of eReaders and eBooks.  All of this raises another interesting question. With the demise of books and bookstores what happens to public libraries?

Eric