5 ms·

A trip to a bookstore, for a large section of the book-loving populace, is indeed something of value beyond just "curation" – the experience of browsing shelves

by hullo 12y ago

A trip to a bookstore, for a large section of the book-loving populace, is indeed something of value beyond just "curation" – the experience of browsing shelves, randomly finding or remembering something you wanted to read, seeing new releases on a table and judging the quality of the paper or the binding or appreciating the rag of the edges – none of this can be reproduced online. While you certainly don't have to appreciate them personally, many folks do.

x0x0 12y ago
borderlands empirically demonstrates that is not a very large populace, or perhaps that populace was enjoying serendipity at borderlands then buying from amazon ps -- some of that serendipity is available online too; see eg the big ideas -- authors talking some aspect of their novels -- on John Scalzi's site. Of the fiction books I've read in the last 3 years, probably 80% of them have come from reading these posts. http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/
- hullo 12y ago
  from the OP: "2014 was the best year we've ever had". Serendipity yes can be found online - no recommendations I've seen have ever approached Amazon's (once I fed my data into them), especially a quickly-shuttered (too creepy?) and now not-remembered program that harvested recommendations via pairing you with folks who'd rated/owned/purchased similar things. That said, it was mostly the experience of physicality that I was referring to, although there is something distinct about browsing physical shelves, a hard-to-capture mix of weight, quality, and visual-imprint – spine design and relative length of titles being nearly invisible online; anecdotally one can see reports of authors captive to Amazon's self-publishing ecosystem writing shorter and shorter books in order to capitalize on per/title payments from their Prime lending program.
  - x0x0 12y ago
    Ah, I see what you meant. There's still the Strand, but perhaps thats the kind of thing that can only exist in nyc. While I buy math books in paper, for fiction I only buy ebooks. The backlight for reading in a shared bed without a lamp on is a killer feature for me and probably many others.
    - cfallin 12y ago
      The Strand in NYC, Powell's in Portland, and a number of more local ones at a smaller scale. New/used bookstores definitely aren't dead, they just survive in areas with more bookish populations (the entire city of Portland would riot for days if Powell's ever threatened to close). I like the "treat it as a cultural institution and charge admission" solution, if that's what it takes to avoid closing. A few dollars would totally be worth it for an hour-long leisurely browse.
walterbell 12y ago
Maybe bookstores could charge a pay-what-you-want admission fee, like museums.
sre_ops 12y ago
Reality disagrees. If there was a value in that those "many folks" would have paid for that by buying the books at the bookstores at the inflate prices. I like restaurants with great food made by fantastic chefs. I cultivate my connections that let me drop $500 for a tasting menu which provides me the same kind of nutrients that I could get for $20 in different places. These chefs cultivate connections with people like me which allows them to be slammed while peddling $500 meals that anyone who does not like such experience would consider to be $480 dollar overpriced. The restaurants owned by these chefs do very very very well because there are actually enough people like me who think the same way and put their money where their mouth is. If the small book stores had value they would have similar clients who would gladly pay for it.

by hullo 12y ago

x0x0 12y ago

borderlands empirically demonstrates that is not a very large populace, or perhaps that populace was enjoying serendipity at borderlands then buying from amazon ps -- some of that serendipity is available online too; see eg the big ideas -- authors talking some aspect of their novels -- on John Scalzi's site. Of the fiction books I've read in the last 3 years, probably 80% of them have come from reading these posts. http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/category/big-idea/

hullo 12y ago
from the OP: "2014 was the best year we've ever had". Serendipity yes can be found online - no recommendations I've seen have ever approached Amazon's (once I fed my data into them), especially a quickly-shuttered (too creepy?) and now not-remembered program that harvested recommendations via pairing you with folks who'd rated/owned/purchased similar things. That said, it was mostly the experience of physicality that I was referring to, although there is something distinct about browsing physical shelves, a hard-to-capture mix of weight, quality, and visual-imprint – spine design and relative length of titles being nearly invisible online; anecdotally one can see reports of authors captive to Amazon's self-publishing ecosystem writing shorter and shorter books in order to capitalize on per/title payments from their Prime lending program.
- x0x0 12y ago
  Ah, I see what you meant. There's still the Strand, but perhaps thats the kind of thing that can only exist in nyc. While I buy math books in paper, for fiction I only buy ebooks. The backlight for reading in a shared bed without a lamp on is a killer feature for me and probably many others.
  - cfallin 12y ago
    The Strand in NYC, Powell's in Portland, and a number of more local ones at a smaller scale. New/used bookstores definitely aren't dead, they just survive in areas with more bookish populations (the entire city of Portland would riot for days if Powell's ever threatened to close). I like the "treat it as a cultural institution and charge admission" solution, if that's what it takes to avoid closing. A few dollars would totally be worth it for an hour-long leisurely browse.

walterbell 12y ago

Maybe bookstores could charge a pay-what-you-want admission fee, like museums.

sre_ops 12y ago

Reality disagrees. If there was a value in that those "many folks" would have paid for that by buying the books at the bookstores at the inflate prices. I like restaurants with great food made by fantastic chefs. I cultivate my connections that let me drop $500 for a tasting menu which provides me the same kind of nutrients that I could get for $20 in different places. These chefs cultivate connections with people like me which allows them to be slammed while peddling $500 meals that anyone who does not like such experience would consider to be $480 dollar overpriced. The restaurants owned by these chefs do very very very well because there are actually enough people like me who think the same way and put their money where their mouth is. If the small book stores had value they would have similar clients who would gladly pay for it.