I love books, and as a general rule, I love bookshops. To be truthful, I'm especially fond of secondhand bookshops, driven as I am by the desire to snag virtually any titles in particular editions of penguin-published books. Bookshops encourage browsing and a kind of curiosity; a searching for the new or unfamiliar. Even new bookshops have a musty warmth and earthy tactility that can only be felt in rooms where the quantity of ink and paper must be measured in tonnes.
I was somewhat saddened when I heard the news that the Borders and Angus & Robertson chains had been placed into administration. But the more I thought about it, the more I've come round to the opinion that this need not be a bad thing for lovers of the bookshop.
Many media pundits immediately began trumpeting the notion that these chains have failed due to the rise of online bookstores. At best, this is a half-truth. I love buying books online. I've bought more books that I'd care to mention from the wonderful "book depository" site, based in the United Kingdom. But I also buy books from my local Victoria Park book shop, Crow Books, too. Why? Because I like the browsing experience. Crow books is great! It has funky shelves, leather chairs and an excellent range. Well, to my tastes at least.
Whilst Borders tried hard, it offered, at best, a perfunctory browsing experience. In contrast, the browsing experience offered by A & R (and its red twin, Dymocks) is really quite ghastly. Now, I could put up with a lousy browse if the prices were competitive with those offered online, but they are not. And why aren't they? Poor business acumen is why.
I feel confident in this assertion, because of the continued success of the JB Hifi franchise. If it were really true that online retail were the natural (and superior) enemy of store retail, then surely JB's would be struggling financially. But it is not. Instead, JB's have continued to offer their merchandise at prices which cannot be matched by online stores. And they've managed this in the age of iTunes, which has yet to have anything resembling a comparable impact on the book world, as kindles and the like start to stake their market claim. So if JB's can do it, I am certain that bookshops can do it, too.
I have no doubt that the landscape for books is changing, but I find it hard to believe that there isn't a market for the bookshop anymore. No doubt, there is going to be some thinking, some experimenting, and some failures, but there will eventually be some successes, too. I'd actually like to hope that the demise of chains will bring back the independent bookshop, where entire stores are given over to particular genres or styles of literature.
When that happens, buying a book will once again become an experience which no online store can replicate. And I for one could easily be persuaded to pay a comparable price to be a part of that. Heck, if it came with a good cup of coffee, I might even pay a little more.
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