Once there was a bookshop …
Post by Gill Harrison
My Uncle introduced me to online book buying back in 1995. I hung on his every word but struggled to understand the abstract concept and strange new words. Downloads. E-commerce. Online stores. And something about underground optic fibers and David Bowie selling songs directly to his fans. But buying books and music from a computer? Surely not.
By the end of that same year Amazon.com launched its online shopping site.
I welcome progress. I buy the occasional book online, but I hesitate around new technologies. I like to poke a stick at them from a distance. I resisted mobile phones. I mourned the loss of newspapers. But why?
Nostalgia fuels a fire in my heart. My Uncle (ironically, the same Uncle who introduced me to the idea of buying books online) owned a second hand bookstore in the mid eighties. One of my earliest memories is me at 5 rummaging through the dusty books. I sensed magic lurking in the book shelves. It trickled through the pages of every pre-loved Enid Blyton book.
But more than a longing for the past is a love of the present. The boys and I visit our local bookstore most Tuesday mornings. Katie, the bookstore girl, offers the boys secret jelly beans before we leave. With jelly beans and books clutched in sticky hands we make our way to the park to read and eat. We reward ourselves on Saturday mornings with take away coffee and a wandering through a nearby book/music store. I love these slow rambling mornings. I love them now. Sure the same thought buzzes through my mind each time I hand over my credit card: These books would be soooo much cheaper online. But I swat the thought away before it stings me.
This story is not a new story. I’ve read many blog posts and online articles lamenting the loss of the sensory experience of flicking through real pages. Lovers of the printed word pledge their allegiance to the local bookshop. But what’s the point in resisting? The online bookstores provide convenience and good prices.
Are e-books better for the environment? Will the online shops and e-books always be cheap? This throws up so many questions for me, messy questions that go deeper than words and reading or nostalgia versus technology. For me, it is about deciding where my values lie and what life I want for my children.
I hope bookshops survive. Perhaps they will by embracing the very technology that threatens them. By adding e-books to their stock. By building their own online sales. By focusing on what they can offer over online stores. Community. Connections.
And jelly beans. Give me my e-books and my jelly beans. I’ll be happy with that.
Do you think the local bookshop is doomed?
Is there room in the new world for a balance between old and new book buying?
10 Responses to “Once there was a bookshop …”
oooh. A minefield
I am a book lover, and a book store lover. I also live in a place where it is an hour’s drive to get to the nearest book store. I use libraries, community book groups and recommendations from friends, and have done for years. For Christmas this year, a friend is buying my son and I a (amazon refurbished) kindle each. there are lots of things I like about digital books – paperless, instant downloads, light, take your whole library everywhere, environmentally responsible, broadening the publishing platform – and cheaper too. There is a lot of scope for fonts, colour and interactivity with books, which will go a long way to bringing children back to reading. I know what you are saying though. I have wonderful memories of browsing through book shops (and music shops and video shops!). But at the end of the day it’s the stories that count, not the vehicle. The vehicle that has carried stories has changed many times, and will change again 
Yes, the stories do count, absolutely. Online booksales and publishing are revolutionizing the industry and I think that’s exciting. But technology is moving us to a world where our senses are needed less and less. We learn and create via our senses. I can’t imagine a world without them!
Yes, and I think an urban lifestyle contributes to that as well. But there are other ways to nourish our senses so that we are still learning and creating. many other ways fortunately, as we live in such a wonderful world. You’re right, we are sensual beings, and our desire for sense experiences will overcome the limits of technology
I hope not! I love the smell of bookshops, and yes, the nostalgia. I used to love meandering through the second hand bookshops in Carlton, finding such random titles. And somehow felt at peace in Readings. I confess, I buy all my books now through Book Depository. Although I visit our local book shop, I can’t bring myself to spend $30 on a book when I know I can get it for $10.
Following Zanni’s comment, book depositories are interesting. We had a little field trip in my non-fiction class last semester to see how long the shelf life of new book titles was … it’s a tough industry, we’re talking 3 months maybe to get some sales and within 6 months you might find yourself on the remains table. This is why there are so many cheap books (plus online competition).
I tend to buy from my local independent stores, but for rarer stuff which needs to be ordered, I usually do it online through Booktopia (Australia) or Amazon for international.
Funny, I tried to buy one of Anne Manne’s books online the other day through an Australian online company, but they told me they’d have to get it from overseas (even though she’s an Australian author). It’s a funny old world.
Like you, I like the smells and the feelings books give me.
Is it dying? I hope not. Nostalgia is so tricky to manage. So few things ever stay the same. Surely there is a way to embrace what’s new and still maintain a love affair with the traditions of our youth. Look at vinyl records. After all these years, the industry is still seeing growth. If paper books become a hip, niche market that only a few hangers-on are really into (ie. me), I’m okay with that.
If irony were a strawberry, we’d all be having a lot of smoothies right now. If online bookstores force the local bookstore to become a place that only “a few hangers-on are really into” that will serve to highten the mystery and coolness of local bookstores and thus their allure. So the demise of the local bookstore might be the best way to ensure their survival
“Heighten”
Gosh, this really made me think. I love those local bookshops, which are unique and such a treat to go into. But I do think they are under threat.
Under threat maybe but hopefully there will be room for both in the future. I write this inside my local indie bookstore and there is a real buzz in the air, a bookclub meeting, kids, singles, young families. Complete strangers have recommended book titles to me. Of course this differs from the Tuesday mornings when we are the only customers…