Let's reinvent the bookshop

I've bought over 100 books in the last 6 months. Maybe more. I wouldn't step foot into any of the bookshops proposed here.

70% of so of my books are from a local thrift shop. We go every week and buy a stack of books at a time. There's stuff here that you don't find anywhere because it's coming from people cleaning out bookshelves that are decades old.

I think the Internet has made the printed book even _more_ important, largely because so many people are ignoring it. Information is only valuable if it's asymmetrical: the ease and abundance of online information makes you feel informed, but usually just results in me-too thinking.

Jonathan Franzen notes in an essay that people used to wait for the next great novel like we wait for summer movies. I believe he goes on to lament the fact. I think this change is for the better; the book has transmuted into a source of arcane information that's of real consequence in business, writing, or, best of all, just living.

With that in mind, the bookshop shouldn't emphasize what's popular, "curated", or recommended. Give me things no one else is reading. I want Zafon's Cemetery of Forgotten Books, not "Yo! Sushi".

A few specific responses to the article:

Recommendations: Amazon's recommendation engine never gives me good suggestions. I think it's because once you've read something you like your thinking evolves and you want something _different_, not something similar. For that reason, I would be really skeptical of the digital suggestion features these proposals tout.

Social: reading is anti-social. Period. It should enrich your ideas and conversation without people noticing. Nobody is impressed that you're carrying around _Infinite Jest_.

e-books: the materiality of a book is crucial. I can often remember spatially where something is in a book. Underlining physically helps attach ideas. When you flip through the book, the lines don't flow to different pages each time you read (very annoying when trying to dig up quotes later). You're not going to read that many books in your life, the expense of physical books isn't really a good excuse.

This is probably all really terrible business advice for booksellers.

I still think that these truly interesting visions wouldn't save a bookshop. Apple Stores - mentioned in the article - were revolutionary because they were selling electronics like nobody else ever did. They proved to be a long lasting success, so great that it actually shaped a big chunk of Apple public presence and perception by customers.

So, I can probably envision a revolutionary approach to the bookshop by Barnes and Nobles or other big names in the industry of distribution, but I really can't see it working for a single, low capital independent bookshop.

To run a place like that you still have to hire a lot of well motivated and dedicated people, though, and you need to invest A LOT in planning and building the actual shop. Then you'll have to turn a profit from a core business of selling goods at a very low margin, if you want to somehow be competitive with the ease of buying the same exact thing from Amazon or even other online retailers.

Apple Stores still sell highly priced exclusive products with hefty margins, designed and produced by the very company that is selling that to you. That's a control over the complete customer experience that you'll never have for the majority of stores out there, let alone bookshops.

What stops me from joining the experience of such an interactive bookshop to discover some new exciting title, just to purchase the book or ebook later at home from my device at a very steep discount?

You can do the same with Apple products in the Apple Store - try the product live then buy it off of the Internet. Many people do that, but in the end you're still buying an Apple product and Apple is still turning a profit, thanks to its brick and mortar presence. Apple Store per-store revenues show that's not even a problem, though, since they're incredibly profitable on their own.

The fact that Amazon is a fucking leviathan already would fit perfectly in the discourse, but I will let that out, since the whole bookshop 2.0 idea has its own flaws even without dragging Bezos and co. into consideration.

P.s. I find it very amusing that my iPad changed Bezos to bozos automatically, even if that doesn't reflect my personal views on the Amazon founder.

As a kindle owner, I have to chime I'm and say that the Kindle can read and display books that aren't drmed and can load any mobile file. So, yeah the Kindle can only take books in the Kindle format, but any digital retailer could sell them.

"Bookshops are closing down like nobody’s business"

Except that they aren't.

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/260752911.htm...