In Australia, the parent company of book retailers Borders and Angus & Robertson went into receivership today. Borders in the USA went into receivership days ago.
From the US, a timely opinion piece from Albert Mohler (who owns and reads more books than the average bookstore holds as floor-stock) about the future of book stores and the impact that their disappearance would have on wider culture.
An excerpt:
Some go farther, and suggest that the demise of the bookstore is a signal of the demise of the book itself, at least as a printed product with pages between covers. That dystopian prophecy is almost surely overblown, but the book’s survival in printed form does depend, to a considerable extent, upon the survival of bookstores.
The reason for this is simple. Printed books are physical objects that cry out to be handled even before they are read. The physicality of the book is important to the experience of the book itself. The arrangement and order of the words is supreme, but the appearance of the book and the feel of the book in the hand are also part of the reading experience.
Furthermore, the experience of handling the book is revealing in other important ways. The cover and front matter of books tell us something. We are informed by the “blurbs” on the cover and by the reputation of the publisher. We can open the book and thumb through its pages, checking the Table of Contents, the index, the preface and the dedication.
Mark Coker, chief executive of Smashworks, an e-book company, told the Journal that when the physical space on the shelves of bookstores disappears, “it’s gone forever.” He added: “If you remove books from our towns and villages and malls, there will be less opportunity for the serendipitous discovery of books. And that will make it tougher to sell books.”
Read the rest here: AlbertMohler.com – The Marketplace of Ideas — Why Bookstores Matter.
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