Bye Bye Bookstore; Hello Library

About 100 years ago, people were mourning the many, many downtown stable closings.
What shall the stable-boys do? And the horses! Dear heaven, how I will miss the horses! The pungent smell of piss, manure, and sweat, the flies, the tack, and the wonderful excitement of a runaway on a crowded thoroughfare! Why O why are people in such a hurry! Why must they close our stables?
The nostalgia surrounding failing bookstores is so much horseshit. People rending their garments and scattering ashes on their heads need to acknowledge the obvious: bookstores are failing because the business model is unsustainable, neither cheap nor convenient.
Consider:
• Bookstores keep about 90 percent of all books published invisible to readers;
• Bookstores accept payment for prominent near-the-door display;
• Bookstores when they offer to order a book for you not only duplicate a service you can perform for yourself, but do so at a higher price;
• Bookstores perpetuate secondary sales of used books and deprive writers of royalties;
• Bookstores accelerate the process of making a title go out of print because they do not stock idle inventories, reducing the shelf life of a book to less than a can of beer.
Creative destruction may in fact return us to civic communities. Make your public library community center again and get your town to fund the place adequately. Kids can attend story hour—without a sales pitch! Your civic group can meet—you’ll have to bring your own snacks. And your librarian! My o my: what a resource! True, the kid with five piercings at the bookstore may be more interesting to look at and might brew a better cup of coffee, but your librarian has a few skills, too.

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