6 ms·

Sadly, bookstores are a dying breed. When I visited Pittsburgh last year, I only found one (!!!) downtown. It was a small hole-in-the-wall, dusty, and a disorga

by dvt 6y ago

Sadly, bookstores are a dying breed. When I visited Pittsburgh last year, I only found one (!!!) downtown. It was a small hole-in-the-wall, dusty, and a disorganized mess — just how I like my bookstores to be. I bought a couple of books (I always buy books as souvenirs) and I tipped the owner, a young man, maybe in his 30s, an extra 20 dollars and he was surprised to hear that I wanted to support his store. I really hope it survives the pandemic. In West LA, where I live, bookstores are equally rare. With Borders shuttering it’s doors, and my local Barnes and Noble closing, there’s just one bookstore left in Santa Monica. This is sad, and maybe says more about our culture than it should.

commandlinefan 6y ago
I fear that, with bookstores, books themselves will go too. There don't seem to be enough of us that prefer printed books over "e-books" to keep the business model profitable.
- adrianN 6y ago
  On demand printing is pretty cool and wasn't really available in the past. The Internet also revitalized the used book market. I buy almost all of my books used.
  - spacedome 6y ago
    On demand printing has also been horrible for textbooks/monographs, Springer being one of the worst. Very few copies are printed, but they serve as an important means of preserving this knowledge, and books that do not survive a single reading do not instill confidence in the longevity of cheap print on demand. They aren't any less expensive now either. I also buy most books used, often to avoid these terrible newer printings.
- krisroadruck 6y ago
  Mass market paperbacks (and maybe trade paperbacks) could go away soon, and I don't really see anything wrong with that. It's super wasteful to print and ship these effectively disposable copies. I think hardbacks have a better case for hanging on longer.
  - powersnail 6y ago
    Do people really throw away paperbacks? I like paperbacks much more than hardbacks. They are easier to read, store, and move. Hardbacks are pretty, but less practical for me.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Not that I buy a lot these days but I certainly donate many of them (and many of those probably end up thrown out). Yes, they're more compact than hardcovers but I still have limited space in my house.
    - cgriswald 6y ago
      > They are easier to read, store, and move. I have the opposite experience in every category. Read: For reading, I much prefer hardcover. The print is generally larger, and the book doesn't usually just collapse in on itself. (Sometimes a hardcover will be too stiff, but unless I'm willing to break the spine, a paperback is always 'stiff' in this sense.) I can't read fiction as easily in bed with a hardcover, although it's doable (and this is exactly why I've replaced paperback with the kindle version anyway). Store: You can certainly store more paperbacks in the same space, but in my experience, it's messier and can quickly become unmanageable. I'm a big believer in quality over quantity. My library shelves are full. When new books come in, old books go out. The limited space makes me be more critical about which books I buy and which books I keep. That they're essentially all hardcover means I can literally see every book I own without getting up from my desk. They're all easy to access - just pull them right off the shelf. If I had less space, I think I'd rather have less books. Move: I gave up on paperbacks because I was moving every six months or less for a period of about six years. Having these large boxes of books that I kept mostly 'just because' became tedious. I eventually just gave them all away. Granted, having an equivalent weight of hardcover would have been just as tedious, but they'd likely have had more value to me. Most of those paperbacks I would never have read again. > Do people really throw away paperbacks? I'll throw away hardcovers if I can't find another home for them. It's uncommon, but it happens. This book really changed my relationship with books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book It taught me to have expectations of books beyond just asking myself, 'Do I like this or not?.' It's mostly for reading non-fiction, but it's useful for fiction too. Along with that change, I also decided if a book is worth owning a personal, physical copy of, it's worth making sure that copy is high quality.
wolco2 6y ago
Books, newspapers, magazines. Old physical medium is slowly phasing itself out. It's sad time is moving on but if you told me in the 90s I can have a single flatsheet off paper that will get the latest news from the internet daily I would be amazed. With phones I have a flatsheet that gets new pages by touching a screen. A virtual keyboard appears. I feel like I'm in the future. Maybe we shouldn't look down on the progress we all tried so hard to make. It's not bad..
- gedy 6y ago
  But it opens the door to centralized censorship and control of the present and past unlike ever before.
  - wolco2 6y ago
    Before the web, centralization meant you couldn't get published unless you made a one sided deal if you were lucky with a publisher. You would have to buy 2,000 copies yourself and try to sell that out of a car. When amazon opened that up it allowed anyone to publish and now we have other smaller sites like smashworlds that offer similiar. Things are now so much more open as a publisher. On the selling side you had smaller book stores being pushed out by Chapters. Chapters bought up many book chains and pushed out many smaller shops with better prices. When Amazon came in they were fighting against the big box stores and they won. Things appear centralized with Amazon but you can sell your ebook from anywhere (from your site/app/newsletter) you couldn't do that before. Everyone wants easy Amazon sales.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  For all the advantages of reading with a screen, it hasn’t yet supplanted all the benefits of a printed book. For instance, flipping back and forth between two or three pages is much easier and faster with a printed book. Put your finger in the book, read, flip back, read. Versus, say, a reader app: Bookmark the page. Go to the other page (perhaps by “Go to page...”), bookmark that page. Now click “bookmarks” and select the first page, read, click bookmarks, select the second page, read. And that assumes you don’t already have so many bookmarks that you have to scroll. I can write in a book. I can forget it behind and it’ll probably be there (and if not, it’s probably cheaply replaced). I can lend it. etc I love my e-reader, but I still need (and love) books.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wenc 6y ago
> When I visited Pittsburgh last year, I only found one (!!!) downtown. To be fair, my impression of downtown Pittsburgh (that is, the golden triangle -- this was a few years ago, so things may have changed) was it didn't have much residential density. Things seemed relatively quiet after 5 and the area didn't seem to have much foot traffic. I also was given to understand most Pitt and CMU folks (the intelligentsia of the city) don't tend to live downtown. I did manage to visit a comic book store. Brick and mortar bookstores do require a certain amount of foot traffic to be economically feasible. Although Amazon Prime is hard to beat for sheer size of inventory, below MSRP prices and fast/free shipping, booksellers still have a few cards up their sleeve. The booksellers near me that were doing ok pre-COVID had great browsing experiences (well-curated collections, nice furniture and adjoining cafes) and frequent book events by authors. Sadly with COVID these advantages were lost. (also, I hate to say this, but customer service in a bookstore generally doesn't really make or break it. I rarely interact with the staff.) Since March, I've bought a couple of books from Bookshop.org out of principle. The books were pricier (closer to MSRP), shipping was more expensive and slower, and there was no other value-add, but I knew I was paying their true sustainable economic cost. I guess the real problem isn't that Bookshop is expensive, but that Amazon is so cheap (and convenient). (also, despite what purists say, Amazon's b&m bookstores are actually really good -- the curation is excellent because it's based on analytics. So Amazon is encroaching on b&m booksellers' territory in that way too.)
908B64B197 6y ago
What I've noticed is most bookshops are now coffee shops that happen to sell books.

by dvt 6y ago

commandlinefan 6y ago

I fear that, with bookstores, books themselves will go too. There don't seem to be enough of us that prefer printed books over "e-books" to keep the business model profitable.

adrianN 6y ago
On demand printing is pretty cool and wasn't really available in the past. The Internet also revitalized the used book market. I buy almost all of my books used.
- spacedome 6y ago
  On demand printing has also been horrible for textbooks/monographs, Springer being one of the worst. Very few copies are printed, but they serve as an important means of preserving this knowledge, and books that do not survive a single reading do not instill confidence in the longevity of cheap print on demand. They aren't any less expensive now either. I also buy most books used, often to avoid these terrible newer printings.
krisroadruck 6y ago
Mass market paperbacks (and maybe trade paperbacks) could go away soon, and I don't really see anything wrong with that. It's super wasteful to print and ship these effectively disposable copies. I think hardbacks have a better case for hanging on longer.
- powersnail 6y ago
  Do people really throw away paperbacks? I like paperbacks much more than hardbacks. They are easier to read, store, and move. Hardbacks are pretty, but less practical for me.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Not that I buy a lot these days but I certainly donate many of them (and many of those probably end up thrown out). Yes, they're more compact than hardcovers but I still have limited space in my house.
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    > They are easier to read, store, and move. I have the opposite experience in every category. Read: For reading, I much prefer hardcover. The print is generally larger, and the book doesn't usually just collapse in on itself. (Sometimes a hardcover will be too stiff, but unless I'm willing to break the spine, a paperback is always 'stiff' in this sense.) I can't read fiction as easily in bed with a hardcover, although it's doable (and this is exactly why I've replaced paperback with the kindle version anyway). Store: You can certainly store more paperbacks in the same space, but in my experience, it's messier and can quickly become unmanageable. I'm a big believer in quality over quantity. My library shelves are full. When new books come in, old books go out. The limited space makes me be more critical about which books I buy and which books I keep. That they're essentially all hardcover means I can literally see every book I own without getting up from my desk. They're all easy to access - just pull them right off the shelf. If I had less space, I think I'd rather have less books. Move: I gave up on paperbacks because I was moving every six months or less for a period of about six years. Having these large boxes of books that I kept mostly 'just because' became tedious. I eventually just gave them all away. Granted, having an equivalent weight of hardcover would have been just as tedious, but they'd likely have had more value to me. Most of those paperbacks I would never have read again. > Do people really throw away paperbacks? I'll throw away hardcovers if I can't find another home for them. It's uncommon, but it happens. This book really changed my relationship with books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book It taught me to have expectations of books beyond just asking myself, 'Do I like this or not?.' It's mostly for reading non-fiction, but it's useful for fiction too. Along with that change, I also decided if a book is worth owning a personal, physical copy of, it's worth making sure that copy is high quality.

wolco2 6y ago

Books, newspapers, magazines. Old physical medium is slowly phasing itself out. It's sad time is moving on but if you told me in the 90s I can have a single flatsheet off paper that will get the latest news from the internet daily I would be amazed. With phones I have a flatsheet that gets new pages by touching a screen. A virtual keyboard appears. I feel like I'm in the future. Maybe we shouldn't look down on the progress we all tried so hard to make. It's not bad..

gedy 6y ago
But it opens the door to centralized censorship and control of the present and past unlike ever before.
- wolco2 6y ago
  Before the web, centralization meant you couldn't get published unless you made a one sided deal if you were lucky with a publisher. You would have to buy 2,000 copies yourself and try to sell that out of a car. When amazon opened that up it allowed anyone to publish and now we have other smaller sites like smashworlds that offer similiar. Things are now so much more open as a publisher. On the selling side you had smaller book stores being pushed out by Chapters. Chapters bought up many book chains and pushed out many smaller shops with better prices. When Amazon came in they were fighting against the big box stores and they won. Things appear centralized with Amazon but you can sell your ebook from anywhere (from your site/app/newsletter) you couldn't do that before. Everyone wants easy Amazon sales.
cgriswald 6y ago
For all the advantages of reading with a screen, it hasn’t yet supplanted all the benefits of a printed book. For instance, flipping back and forth between two or three pages is much easier and faster with a printed book. Put your finger in the book, read, flip back, read. Versus, say, a reader app: Bookmark the page. Go to the other page (perhaps by “Go to page...”), bookmark that page. Now click “bookmarks” and select the first page, read, click bookmarks, select the second page, read. And that assumes you don’t already have so many bookmarks that you have to scroll. I can write in a book. I can forget it behind and it’ll probably be there (and if not, it’s probably cheaply replaced). I can lend it. etc I love my e-reader, but I still need (and love) books.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wenc 6y ago

> When I visited Pittsburgh last year, I only found one (!!!) downtown. To be fair, my impression of downtown Pittsburgh (that is, the golden triangle -- this was a few years ago, so things may have changed) was it didn't have much residential density. Things seemed relatively quiet after 5 and the area didn't seem to have much foot traffic. I also was given to understand most Pitt and CMU folks (the intelligentsia of the city) don't tend to live downtown. I did manage to visit a comic book store. Brick and mortar bookstores do require a certain amount of foot traffic to be economically feasible. Although Amazon Prime is hard to beat for sheer size of inventory, below MSRP prices and fast/free shipping, booksellers still have a few cards up their sleeve. The booksellers near me that were doing ok pre-COVID had great browsing experiences (well-curated collections, nice furniture and adjoining cafes) and frequent book events by authors. Sadly with COVID these advantages were lost. (also, I hate to say this, but customer service in a bookstore generally doesn't really make or break it. I rarely interact with the staff.) Since March, I've bought a couple of books from Bookshop.org out of principle. The books were pricier (closer to MSRP), shipping was more expensive and slower, and there was no other value-add, but I knew I was paying their true sustainable economic cost. I guess the real problem isn't that Bookshop is expensive, but that Amazon is so cheap (and convenient). (also, despite what purists say, Amazon's b&m bookstores are actually really good -- the curation is excellent because it's based on analytics. So Amazon is encroaching on b&m booksellers' territory in that way too.)

908B64B197 6y ago

What I've noticed is most bookshops are now coffee shops that happen to sell books.