A Comment by Doug Draper
Will anyone mourn the death of bookstores? Maybe not.
The dying days of a Borders book store in Buffalo, New York. Photo by Doug Draper.
In a day and age when more and more people don’t seem to mind getting whatever they want – from books and pop music to their underwear – over the internet, who needs book and music stores any more. Well, call me retro, out of step or whatever, but I think we’re all eventually going to miss them when they are gone. And they are going out. That is for sure.
This past July 24, my wife, daughter and I made what will be one of our last trips to a Borders Book store in the Buffalo, New York area which has always been akin to a kid going into a candy store for anyone who enjoys searching tables, bins and shelves for books and music. And the magazine selection was pretty well beyond parallel.
Sad to say, all that is gone with the decision by Borders’ head office to close all its stores across the United States down due to growing numbers of people either ordering or downloading books and music over the internet.
Perhaps the internet is the fastest way to go for people who have no time beyond a 14-hour day at work and seek instant gratification around a particular book or song they want on their ipod or whatever it is. But where are we going to be when we can’t walk into a book or music store and possibly discover something interesting that we may not otherwise have known about. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has gone into a good book or music store and discovered something great – some great book or CD I never would have known about if I had not walked into that store.
When all of the book and record stores are gone, all we may have left is people cherry picking books and songs off the internet that corporate publishing companies spend multi-millions of dollars marketing to us. So we will all be reading the book equivalent of the last Harry Potter or the CD equivalent of Britney Spears or Lady Gaga. More independent writers and musicians can circle the drain until they are flushed down the hole.
Groups like The Beatles or a writer like Mark Twain probably never would have had a chance in a system like this. But celebrities on the scale of Beyonce or Oprah Winfrey would. Is that where we want to live, in a world where all we know about the new books and CDs and movies, for that matter, are marketed to us over a couple of chain media outlets who spend mega-bucks telling us what we want to read, hear and view.
Maybe it is. And all I can say is I want no part of it.
(Niagara At Large encourages you to share your views below on this commentary.)
Niagara At Large 
I wonder if Chapters is next?
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I will. Not so much Borders or Chapters and their ilk.
What a dinosaur, eh? I love independents like A Different Drummer in Burlington, and patronize them for all our Christmas giving….. I hate Chapters, which was once a Borders enemy. Nothing engages me more in my travels, than going to the local little antiquarian bookstore and buying a book on local history. Did that this last May in England, in David Cameron’s locality, more precisely Rebekah Brooks home place of Chipping Norton. Got a good deal, bartered, how old fashioned! and love to browse.
I truly am a dying breed.
Gail B
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Come to think of it, life recently led me into Coles, Seaway Mall, after a year’s absence. I was astounded to see that there seemed to be ~25% fewer books displayed – it was quite noticeable.
And then I saw the electornic books on the shelves at front of store, and realised … ‘the times they are a-changing’.
Will anyone mourn the death of the telephone book, as more people migrate to cell phones (which the CRTC stupidly allowed to be Unlisted, in either paper or online directory)?
Will anyone mourn the death of newspapers, and journalists?
Will anyone mourn the death of radio and TV?
Will anyone mourn the death of horses and buggies?
Will anyone mourn the death of buggy whips…?
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Don’t Burn Your Books Just Yet!
Do not assume bookstores are down and out for the count just yet! True there is a very real shift from hardcopy to electronic editions of books. I have written some of the latter myself and successfully sold them on the internet. However, just as I have a collection of vinyl recordings, eight-track tapes, and super-8 films that I play on “vintage” machines, I will continue to have and collect hard copies of books.
Bookstores, like record stores, and more recently DVD movie rental outlets will surely decline in number. Yet, for those of us who love the feel of the “real thing,” there will pop up in their places specialty stores that appeal to the bibliophile’s true nature to “have and to hold” real books. Similar stores exist for those who love the old recording disks in all their formats. Why there are those who still sell the cylindrical tubes Edison recorded upon for his gramophone. Indeed, those who have them relish the scratchy sound and the feel of something concrete, tangible, and historical.
I am not the only one who has a record player, an eight-track machine, and walls of bookshelves with which I spend many solitary moments in nostalgic communion with creative genius now passed from us or relegated to the vastness of cyberspace.
Electronic books have much to commend them. So, too, do the “real” books in hard or soft covers: those we can hold in our hands, feel their bindings, turn their pages, and carry with us absolutely – well almost absolutely – everywhere without batteries or an external power source of any kind. Moreover, the smell of a real book will never be duplicated electronically any more than artificial perfumes can duplicate the real thing that Mother Nature produces.
There will always be those among us who appreciate what had great value in the past. We will continue to value it today. New generations will also seek out the pleasures only a hard copy of the printed word can bring to a reader. Just look at how many are turning back to comic books for their art, clever stories, and may I say the feel of the real thing. They are not simply turning to e-comics!
I appreciate the convenience, accessibility, and economics of electronic books. However, to the feel of the real thing in my hand, what can compare to that! Nothing! Turning its pages, even the smell of a hold-in-your-hand book, computers will never replace that!
Bookstores will decline but books will find specialty outlets for those who appreciate the very best!
– 30 –
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What about libraries? A great place to go for books and magazines and it’s all free. Can’t beat that!
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Lorne
Indeed, they will mourn. Well, maybe not mourn but preserve and/or continue to use. Consider that some radio stations now, e.g., 740 AM set aside time to play old radio shows like “The Shadow.” There is still a market for buggy whips and for horses and carriages. We may remember them nostalgically, and we do not want to lose them — not entirely. Some people will always appreciate them and want them around.
Interestingly enough, some stores in England have a service that allows customers to come in, select an eBook, and leave the store with a bound hard copy in hand. They do not, however, stock the hard copies. They recognize that there is still a market for the “real thing.” Indeed, we have collectors who pay a premium for old books.
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Allow me to add to Pat Schofiled’s comment. As a librarian, retired/emeritus, she is on the money. Looks like Rob Ford (who says he doesn’t know who Margaret Atwood is, if accounts are correct) wants to shut Toronto library branches; we have a huge disconnect. Why purchase, when you can borrow for free? As a librarian, I have never figured this one out. You get a library card for free from your municipality, you borrow everything you want, for nothing. The library doesn’t have what you want? There is a system, called Interlibrary Loan (ILLO), which allows you to get that item at, wait for it, no cost. Not to you. Your taxes fund the public library system, just as your taxes fund your medical service, and on and on. It’s the Canadian way.
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Electronic books may just barely balance if not counter the long accumulating anti-literacy effects of television. Just the same I agree with Dr Gary Page – that holding (feeling and smelling) and reading a real book is best and cannot be imitated or duplicated. But, in the long run Doug Draper is most likely right and new paper books (at least for the ‘masses’) are on their way out. Then, used book stores and libraries will be filled with treasures constantly diminishing in number – both figuratively and literally.
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Hopefully, bookstores won’t decline. The small independents (like Hannelore Headley’s) draw people to downtown cores and help revitalize downtowns. They provide a sense of neighbourhood, and they are more accessible to starting novelists etc. who are hoping to generate an audience.
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Our Book Store in the Fitch Street Mall at Prince Charles Drive in Welland is independantly owned and operated – offering 25% to 40% off brand new books including best sellers – Employing three knowldgable people who go the extra miles for you and to promote local authors. Get by to say ‘Hi’ and buy new books at discount prices.
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Please tell me it is not possible, the demise of book stores that is. I simply cannot imagine a world with no real hard cover or paper back books to hold, smell, turn pages and actually read! Having worked in an independent book store for several years, I have experienced the wonderful comaraderie developed with people who frequent their favourite book store to not only buy a book but to engage in an excited, stimulating chat about the latest book they have read. The demise of book stores, “tell me it ain’t so.”
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Ray Harry
You do have a good little bookstore there and I appreciate your promoting local authors. Heaven knows that has not always been the case with the bigger, boxier stores!
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My Last Word on Bookstores
I have just put down my copy of Harry Emerson Fosdick’s “The Manhood of the Master.” I have the added pleasure of owning others in the series. These are original editions and are included among many other fine works from the 1800’s and early 1900’s on my shelves. While my readings of the period are mostly theological and therefore important to me, there is additional joy often in the knowledge that the books I hold and read have been in the hands of other readers who valued these works, too. That’s why they are still around and in such fine shape. The original owners loved them.
Even better are the occasional hand-written notes I find tucked among the pages, and the little notations previous readers have made in the margins. While these jottings may change the monetary value of the books, they only add to the cultural value and my personal pleasure in reading them.
We surely will not be able to say the same for eBooks! What a shame. Imagine looking at an electronic version of the Mona Lisa, believing the real painting is much bigger than it is. Or consider owning a Walmart “print” of this famous work, and thinking you are in possession of the handiwork of the Florentine artist Leonardo da Vinci. Until you see the real thing—sorry, you can’t touch!–you have missed the point and the pleasure of a visit to an art gallery, a real bookstore, or a library.
There is nothing like the real thing and Coke® isn’t it!
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I sincerely hope not.
I find if I read something on the computer for too long, my eyes start to hurt and my mind wanders onto something else.
Add in that I truly dislike e-book readers and iPads, I’m more then happy to stick with actual books.
Although unlikely, I hope I see the demise of tablets and smartphones before book stores.
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I would certainly miss bookstores. I enjoy Toronto and the World’s Biggest Book Store, as well as the university campus bookstores. I am a reader, mostly of non-fiction and if it is fiction, murder mystery. I can’t see myself physically being able to use a iBook or whatever to get what I want, even though I own an iPad, two smart phones and brand new computers at my office. I doesn’t even bank online, so why would I want to read a book online?
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How about my favorite, The Book Corner, on North Main St., Niagara Falls, N.Y., near the Whirlpool Bridge? It carries a large selection of both new and used books.
Paul Maine, Buffalo, N.Y.
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I was in Chapters (Fairview Mall, St.Kitts) last week and was amazed to learn from staff that in only 2 years, their sale of e-books now exceeds their sale of paper books. Although they haven’t reduced the number of physical books in the store, they have changed the store layout:
– reducing paper books’ floor space with higher shelves
– reducing the lounging area somewhat
– adding? a larger children’s section with both books & games
– adding? a larger gift section with various items
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