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.
