Are bookstores dying? This was a subject that really started taking off last year (although has been in discussion for far longer), and the question only gets more fraught now.
Let me be clear–I love bookstores. I practically grew up in bookstores. I love browsing and sampling books, finding something new and unexpected. At the same time, in their present form, the are as dead as traditional publishing. Why do I say this? Once enough people prefer to read an ebook, the economics do not support a physical store to sell books. For one thing, the cost of printing may only be a dollar or two per book for large volume print runs, but the cost goes up when far fewer people want the physical book and the print runs go down. The resulting higher cost drives more people to the ebook. In addition, when people can make an impulse purchase and get a book in seconds at midnight at home, how often are they going to wait until the next day to drive to the bookstore, find parking and journey into the bookstore to see if their favorite book is in stock?
There is way out for bookstores, however. Bookstores can, and I hope do, survive once they realize that they are not selling physical products. They are selling an experience. They are selling being part of a community. They are selling access to curators of culture, people of like mind with great expertise.
Here is how I imagine the thriving bookstore of the future. It will have physical books for browsing, but these will not be for sale or may be for sale at a higher price for paper purists. For the most part, these physical books will be like model homes–much like the home you are going to buy, but also have extras to give you a sense of how they fit into your life. Bookstores will be more like museums, hosting engaging displays that draw readers into the world of a particular book. The author talks will continue, and in fact play a central role in the survival of the bookstore–these are intellectual communion, where readers come together to hear the sermon and pose questions, and to meet and talk with each other. The bookstore employees and speakers are our jungle guides in the overgrown, fecund hothouse that is the modern information ecosystem. They steer us to things we like, and help us connect with others of like mind.
Readers will buy ebooks, but they will do it through their bookstore (even when they order from home) because of their affinity with that group, with that community. The nice part for bookstores is that customers don’t have to ever visit the physical store. Someone in Maine may feel a great affinity for the jungle guides at Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park (where I like to go) and link their purchases to that store. Actually coming to the store might become an occasional treat, a pilgrimage.
There are many ways that bookstores have to change if they are going to survive, but they can do it–I hope they do.