Edward McClelland writes about the decline (to the point of bankruptcy) of Borders and other bookstores like it. I think it's a much simpler story than he makes it out to be. In fact, I think it's a one sentence explanation: It's easier and cheaper to buy books on Amazon. End of explanation.
Frankly, though I used to love bookstores, one of the things that put me off from them was this expectation some shops have that I should not just shop there but live there. You know…sit around all day reading, drinking coffee (I don't drink coffee)…maybe bring in my laptop and write there. I'm surprised some of them don't put in little cots so we can nap between pages.
The Borders near me (now closed) had a wonderful selection of books but the store operated at the speed of a glacier on valium. I always felt like The Flash as I scurried around, finding the volumes I craved. All I was doing was operating at the usual pace at which I live my life but it was way too fast for that Borders. The employees were all nice and they accepted the concept that I wanted to find the books I wanted, pay for them, take them home and read them there…but they ran the place for the folks who spent hours on the premises. They also never seemed to know where anything was…and that was a big, two-story building. One time, I had to go up and down the stairs around six times, checking different sections to find where they'd shelved Jeffrey Sweet's history of the Second City comedy troupe. I think I wound up locating a copy under "Self Help."
I'm not knocking that way of doing business; just saying that Amazon fits in better with my life.
I wonder if anyone has ever thought of combining online ordering with a physical retail outlet. When I was a kid, I went to Wallichs Music City at the corner of Sunset and Vine, which was then an "old-style" record store. I think they billed themselves as the world's largest such business and claimed that in their aisles, you could find every single album currently in print. That may have been so but you could only find one copy of each and those weren't copies you could buy. They were copies you could listen to as samples.
One wall of the shop was lined with little listening booths. You'd select records that interested you, take them into the booths and "try them on." There was some sort of limit…like no more than four records at a time and only twenty minutes in a booth. Something like that. Once you emerged, you'd carry the records up to a counter and indicate which ones you wanted to take home. A clerk there would dispatch two kids who worked there — one to the back room to get you fresh, unopened copies of the records you'd be purchasing; the other to refile all the samples in the bins. (Of course, you had the option of not buying any and perhaps finding more to test-drive.) They'd then ring up your purchases…and that was how most big record stores operated, once upon a time. I'm guessing it went out of style because of too many listeners who weren't buyers.
So now I'm imagining a big bookstore that has an incredible selection of books — maybe not everything currently in print but an awful lot of them, more than I find in the big Barnes & Noble near me. But they only have one copy of most of them…perhaps two or three of current Best Sellers. On your way in, they hand you a little handheld scanner device. You browse the shelves at your leisure, read as much of each book as you like…and if you like one enough to want to own it, you scan its barcode. When you check out, they take your scanner and your shipping address and you pay for what you've ordered. Later that day or the next, it's shipped to your home from some warehouse, just like Amazon. It would especially work well for print-on-demand books, which is where a large part of the publishing industry is heading.
Obviously, this principle could be applied to more than books but it would cause me to buy more books. And more other stuff. When I do go into Barnes & Noble, I page through books I'd never have ordered online and sometimes I think, "Hey, I want this." Also, last time I was in one, I played with a NOOKcolor, which is their e-reader. I don't think I'm going to buy one but there was zero chance of me considering it if I hadn't physically gone into the store. I rarely get out of a Costco without a couple of items I didn't plan on buying when I went in…and I'd probably buy more if my purchases could be delivered and I didn't have to haul them home. There's got to be someone out there who's thinking along these lines.