Palimpsest

But say you don’t care about local cultural experiences. Say you just care about books. Well, then it’s easy: The lower the price, the more books people will buy, and the more books people buy, the more they’ll read. This is the biggest flaw in Russo’s rant. He points to several allegedly important functions that local booksellers play in fostering “literary culture”—they serve as a “gathering place” for the community, they “optimistically set up … folding chairs” at readings, they happily guide people toward books they’ll love. I’m sure all of that is important, but it’s strange that a novelist omits the most critical aspect of a vibrant book-reading culture: getting people to buy a whole heckload of books.

These days I buy pretty much everything on Amazon. I occasionally walk into bricks-and-mortar bookshops but I usually wander out without buying anything as book shops really are nothing more to me than expensive places where you can get your hands on (some) books without having to wait for postage.

However, what drew me to this article is the fact that it raises an eyebrow at the claim that bricks-and-mortar shops form a part of literary culture and that by putting them under economic pressure, we might be damaging the culture as a whole. Simply stated, this is not my experience of book shops. I have never encountered a book shop that was part of any kind of ‘literary culture’ with the possible exception of the LRB Bookshop near the British museum and even then, I’ve never been to any of the talks they host.

I’ve also heard this argument wheeled out in favour of protecting games shops but I am equally sceptical of those arguments as again, my experience of games shops as central to some local community is limited to the point of being non-existent.

My agreement with the article thus flow from two places:

Firstly, I don’t believe that bricks-and-mortar bookshops do form a part of a literary culture beyond their capacity to distribute books.

Secondly, even if they did form a part of that literary culture, I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay a premium for that service. I’ve never been to a talk in a bookshop and I’ve never relied upon a recommendation from someone working in a bookshop so why would I pay 30-50% for the books they sell? Hmm.