Bookshops are not dead. Long may it remain so.
Basheera Khan writes that bookshops should die. Retreating slightly from her panegyric for digital readers, she falls back on the library as the alternative. I doubt that my local library stocks or is able to get hold of even a tiny fraction of the books I have next to my bed. One of her commenters points out that, without a market for book sales, there would be no libraries anyway.
Even without the library argument, I think she’s profoundly wrong.
A book is a guarantee of permanence, and of ownership. There is no DRM baked into the printed word, and nothing stopping me reading a book I own whether I am in the middle of the Sahara or on my sofa. There is nothing stopping me lending it to a friend, and I don’t need to worry whether their reader device supports ePub, or whatever format. Lord Mandleson isn’t going to be around with the heavies if I start using a site like BookCrossing to share unwanted purchases.
When I buy a book, I’m buying a physical, real world object that has properties that can be appreciated beyond the words it contains. It can be beautifully bound, use attractive design elements, have respect for typography, and use the physical properties of the medium as part of the content.
For this last, I direct you to the novels of B.S. Johnson, in particular The Unfortunates, which contains a tied sheaf of booklets that can be read in any order, and Alberto Angelo, which contains holes cut into the paper to reveal hints of the contents on later pages. Neither of these techniques can be replicated on an eReader. The binding and physical form of the book is an intrinsic part of its content, rather like the frame in a Howard Hodgkin painting. (Another example: James Joyce once made a fuss over the size of a full-stop in Ulysess.) You very much should judge a book by its cover.
Saying that a book can be reduced to a screen is the same thing as saying that a JPEG of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is as good as the original. Thank heavens when we won’t be made to traipse around a physical space, but can have master works beamed into our houses, eh?
Bash’s error appears to derive from a belief that a book is like other forms of consumable media. A CD can be copied, error free onto another CD, or stored on a range of other devices. To all but the trained sound engineer, there is no difference between these copies.
The same can be said of video: it can be transcoded and copied, burnt to disc and played back on your computer with little if anything to distinguish between the different versions.
Books are not just texts, though. As I’ve shown, authors have made their fiction around the idea of a physical object. David Foster Wallace deliberately wrote convoluted pages of endnotes so as to the disrupt the reader’s ability to maintain their continuum of thought while reading his masterpiece Infinite Jest. This aim is defeated if they are the tap of a hyperlink away. War and Peace, for example, should feel heavier in the hand than Heart of Darkness. But, as Bash points out, all books weigh the same on a reading device.
The experience of listening to vinyl, cassette or CD is essentially the same. The sound qualities are different, but in other respects it’s identical. But the experience of reading a book is fundamentally different from reading a text on a reading device. Many – and I’d contend that these are mainly people who are not compulsive readers – will not care about this distinction, but this is the market that successful booksellers are targeting.
Borders and Books etc are in trouble because they are not good bookshops. There is little to distinguish one shop from the next and, on the whole, their staff are not knowledgeable about the books they sell. They clearly don’t read reviews, or subscribe to major literary periodicals. Bash makes the mistake of assuming that because Borders’ business is in trouble that there is a fundamental problem with the concept of the bookshop itself.
But go to any one of a number of independent bookshops – Daunt Books and the London Review Bookshop are two excellent examples – and you’ll find that things are very different. In Daunt’s case, they have understood that many people buy books to take with them on holiday. They arrange their stock by country, using a fuzzy logic that says that The Third Man should be in the Austria section, while The Power and the Glory should be in the Central America section. Fiction is mixed with history, with economics, with drama and with art. The result is a wonderful place to browse, to uncover relationships between books and subjects that one did not appreciate before.
More than this, Daunt is staffed by people who are knowledgeable about books. A few months ago, I went into their Holland Park branch and enquired about a reissue of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. The guy behind the desk remembered reading a review in the London Review of Books, which was where I’d seen it. He looked it up on the computer, to no avail. Then he remembered that it had been published by the Folio Club, which only sells to members. No amount of searching on Amazon.co.uk or asking at Borders would have helped me here.
I buy hundreds, maybe thousands, of pounds of books every year. Nearly all of those pounds are spent in independent bookshops. The rest is split between Waterstone’s, a mega-chain that caters to both serious reader and non-reader alike, and Amazon. Amazon has the unique ability to put me in touch with second hand or specialist dealers who are sometimes the only way of getting hold of a copy of a book, and Waterstone’s are convenient. Very occasionally, I’ll buy a book I’ve never heard of from Waterstone’s because of their ‘Staff Picks’ displays. But the ’3 for 2′ tables are rarely of any interest; nine times out of ten, if there’s a book in the ’3 for 2′, I’ve either already read it, already have it or am not interested. But I recognise that these are an important part of Waterstone’s’ success.
There’s another reason that bookshops are different from other media shops. An online music or video catalogue can give you a genuine preview of the item you’re about to buy. A sample of a track or a clip from a movie are the same thing on the web as they are in person; in fact, you’ll be lucky to find a high street music or video store that lets you try before you buy. Again, this is not true of books. Bookshops are a place where you can wonder in, spend hours reading, thinking, selecting and relaxing, all the time using the stock for real. There are very few shops that are like this other than bookshops. Try wondering into to Gap and see how happy they are for you to strip off and wonder around the store sporting a new wardrobe for the day.
Most people don’t read seriously, and for them, these arguments will make no sense. But for the millions of people who do read compulsively, eReaders are not going to be universally welcomed. One day, a novelist will write a novel that can only be experienced on a digital device because it uses features that only such a device can provide. But even then, the entire history of literature will still be there, with a good proportion of it in print. And bookshops – good, well-staffed, well-run ones – will be with us for a long time to come.
19 comments
Must now get myself copies of The Unfortunates and Alberto Angelo just for the playfulness of the objects. And the Daunt Books’ staff member knowing all that about the LRB and Folio Club write-ups: mindblowingly impressive, and a commitment to the trade one wouldn’t expect to see nowadays.
On behalf of us readers: nice one, mate.
The Unfortunates is even more awesome: it comes in a beautifully made box that looks like it might contain chocolates.
Hear, hear! Nice post…
James, this is the most personally relevant blog post I’ve read in a good while.
It’s a relief to see someone nudging the whole ‘newspapers and magazines are dead’ argument into the books section — where we all knew it was heading — and then giving it a sound kicking.
Hell NO, books aren’t dead — just the same way painting wasn’t dead with the advent of photography (which of course, went on to become its own art form in a way I just can’t see the eReader doing, but that’s another discussion entirely).
It takes a real bibliophile to stand up and point out what is obvious to those of us who are, but clearly misses those who just aren’t: the written word isn’t only a means to an end.
For an enlightened few (alas, once a many), books aren’t just a way to consume information, but are also — and sometimes ONLY — something to carefully, lovingly consume in and of and for themselves. (I once bought a Russian book — not reading a word of Russian — for the heft of the pages and the embossed cover: to me, it was art.)
In fact, I think the eReader might just help the bibliophilic cause, in the long run, by splitting off the books-as-means people from the books-as-more. If nothing more, you can’t dog-ear an eReader. (Nor can you forever be struck off a bibliophile’s Christmas list for forgetting their prized first edition of David Foster Wallace’s ‘A Supposedly Fun Think I’ll Never Do Again’ on a bus… but I digress.)
So let them read Kindle. The rest of us know better.
I agree with you. I love to go to my local bookshop and watch magazines and books for hours. I even think this is so enjoyable that there’s this flip page mode on web so you can feel like it’s a real magazine your watching, even though they are hateful to read.
And you know what, it’s no just about the bookshop it’s also about the writers and designers behind a printed book. For example check this group called Kitschic, they are making some cool books.
Kitschic,
Wow..imagine a world without bookshops. How awful. All of those lovely hours spent browsing through the shelves, searching out a particular book or magazine or happily coming across new books and authors. And then the strange activity of actively seeking out and finding bookshops while abroad. A trip to the States is not worth knowing about without spending at least an afternoon indulging my passion (and often much longer!).
And it’s not just the bookshops. Ahhh, the amazing smell of fresh print, the joy of holding the printed word and being able to properly appreciate the cover design, right through to the excitement of a starting a new book – invariably in the bath…which is never, ever matched by a digital device.
And lastly, I agree – Borders and Books etc are in trouble because they are not very good. In the same way Woolworths and MFI were not very good.
First off James awesome for writing this and shame on Bash for wishing ill of bookshops and books.
Piles of unread books on your shelf or floor aren’t there to guilt trip you, they’re the promise of a new dawn, a new idea, a new story, a new conversation.
I’m not an e-reader hater – I’ve got stacks of bookmarks saved for when I get one, of long out of print texts that I really want to get stuck into but they’re things that I’ve searched for and found. One of the best things about bookshops is discovery, you go in to buy something but come out with something you’ve never heard of before, never knew existed.
You’re right on the money with the fact that Border etc are bad bookshops – places like John Sandoe where the books are piled up and hidden behind secret sliding walls – you never know what you’re going to find but you always find something amazing (mostly because they don’t try and thrust Katie Price’s new novel down your throat) – or Shakespear and Co in Paris – when you buy a book there they put a stamp in the front of it so for the rest of your life when you pick up that book you’re reminded of your holiday or whatever.
Books carry so much more than just the text too – my mum leant me a book on Jerusalem recently and it had her airplane ticket that she’d used as a bookmark from back in the 80s – and what happens to all those daydreams when you catch someone cute on the tube reading a book you love – not that I’ve ever chatted anyone up that way but you still imagine it!
Anyway – here’s to supporting your local ‘good’ bookstore.
If you haven’t read this book yet, you should…. http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Lighted-Bookshop-Memoir-History/dp/1555975100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259196955&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Lighted-Bookshop-Memoir-History/dp/1555975100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259196955&sr=8-1
A refreshingly straightforward and reassuring post for booklovers on both sides of the pond. Thank you.
For an analysis of the hype surrounding e-reader sales in the U.S., please see my piece for Paid Content at:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-why-e-reader-adoption-will-be-slower-than-people-think/
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-why-e-reader-adoption-will-be-slower-than-people-think/
Great post James.
I buy lot of books with my kids. Which is impossible online – too much choice and distraction. And tucking them into bed with a Kindle doesn’t have quite the same charm. They love anything with flaps or moving parts. Which, sounds trite but really excites them.
We’ve pretty much read everything they want to read at the library.
Have you seen Awful Library Books? – http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/ it’s quite reminiscent of my local library.
http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/
@grumblemouse Shakespeare & Co is one of my favourite bookshops. That little stamp that says ‘Kilometre Zero, Paris’ is wonderful. They also have a healthy Lawrence Durrell obsession and, most famously of all, were the original publishers of Ulysses (although they weren’t in that shop then – it was near l’Odéon, I think)
@LadyLavish: indeed, a trip to the States is all about books, for me. I particularly love McNally Jackson in New York.
McNally Jackson
As somebody who recently sold his house so that he could continue selling books, thank you.
Great post James.
A world without bookshops would be a sorry place. Like most other commenters here I love book shopping and could spend hours in a good bookshop. I’ve seen and tried a few eBook readers and there is no comparison to holding and reading a physical book.
As a frustrated author I can well sympathize with those trying to find books at the local library. For years I could never find what I needed to complete my research. I used to shop at my local science fiction bookstore Dangerous Visions, but it has closed its physical shop and moved online. I would love to be able to stock a bookshop myself but the cost of doing so would put me out of business. So that is why I sell my books exclusively online. And until most readers break out of the Amazon mindset, I am up against a great deal of competition. The only way you can find my books is online, and Kindle has not improved my lot in any way. My office is stocked with books, and it’s great to fall asleep reading one, which you cannot do with Kindle. And Kindle does not stock many illustrated books because of their limited palette. That is why I make the books available in printed form for those who like to leaf through.
Best post I’ve read in ages. Bravo James.
Well said James, though the original post on the Telegraph is truly idiotic, but then I guess you’d expect little more from someone who ‘writes’ for the Techcrunch.
This is indeed a very strong rebuttal to Khan’s ill-considered argument. I think we have to be very careful, however, not to fall back on any assumptions about what “REAL readers,” “compulsive readers,” “true bibliophiles,” etc, will and will not do. It shifts the discussion from the state of the industry to the authenticity of individual readers or classes of readers. And The incredible variety of reading behaviors makes such assumptions dangerous, offensive, and untrue.
Readers, perhaps especially obsessive ones, read every sort of text in every sort of manner. Some lovingly preserve their books while others aggressively dogear their pages, fall asleep on top of them, and wear them to bits. Neither is any more or less a true lover of reading, nor less committed to the physical nature of the book. Likewise, some voracious readers must own books, while others rely on libraries; finally, some readers read on their electronic devices nonstop, while others can’t make heads or tails of them.
To assume otherwise is to make the same mistake Khan makes: “every devoted reader is, will be, and ought to be just like me.”
For my part, I love electronic reading on my laptop or phone, I look forward to seeing how reading machines develop over time, and yet I would not part at all with my collection of physical books – some bought new, others used, and many borrowed from the library. I hope we can get to the point where e-books and paperbacks can exist in the same ecosystem in the same way that classics, mass-market mysteries, and oversize cookbooks do today. Each have their appeals, their distinct physicality, and none is any more or less legitimate for it.
Good read and I can see why Dead Fish awarded you Post of the Month for November.
The whole experience of the physicality of a book for me is summed up by the book Designing Design by Kenya Hara. Before you even open the cover you are in a world of experience that will never exist in the digital format.