In a recent Regina Leader-Post story about the imminent demise of his 30-year-old bookstore, Book & Brier Patch co-owner John Cress is quoted as saying that, “Any bookseller that thinks there is a hope is dreaming.”
Is he right? Is there really no hope? Do dedicated booksellers have no choice but to lock the doors, open a long-saved bottle of wine and wait for the cultural tidal wave to wash them away, aged feline store mascot and all?
Pessimism is often thought to be bred right into the genes of booksellers, who, after all, often watch helplessly as their charmingly shabby neighbourhoods go upscale, dragging rents up with them, or as the building they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars maintaining is rendered obsolete by behemoth online retailers who need never worry about either leaky plumbing or unsold stock. Even worse, they must listen as the very item they have handled, recommended, sold and loved for so many years – the bound book, the gift of Gutenberg – is given its terminal diagnosis over and over again. No one wants to be the last store specializing in 8-track tapes.
| This is the fifth article in a series on the future of books. |
| Part 1: The book is dead. Long live the book! |
| Part 2: An industry in re-covery |
| Part 3: The collectibe future |
| Part 4: Would you like to read that book, or play it? |
For her sake, Ria Bleumer – who will soon open Vancouver’s newest (and largest) full-service bookstore, Sitka Books & Arts – is sick of the doom and gloom. Bleumer, who managed the beloved Duthie Books for 16 years until it closed last February after more than half a century in business, says that the flurry of recent stories about smaller, independent bookstore closings has resulted in people walking into their neighbourhood store asking, “Well, why are you still here?” This despite the fact, that, from her own experience, bookstores are selling more books than ever. (Duthie, Bleumer says, was having no trouble selling books; what it couldn’t do was keep pace with rising rents.)
One source of Bleumer’s optimism is the “ferocious” level of reading she sees going on among young people. Those ferocious readers will be the regular book buyers of the future. What stores need to do, she insists, is not only focus on old-fashioned face-to-face customer service, but also remain flexible enough to adapt to whatever comes along in the years to come.
Christopher Smith, manager of Ottawa’s Collected Works, agrees with the notion that independent stores must evolve or die. He sees two streams of bookselling emerging. In one, bookstores will “transform themselves from mere book purveyors to cultural emporiums or meeting places.” Each store will be a “place for minds and activity. … In a way, the bookstore could be become the new ‘salon’” – albeit a salon that offers not only books, but art, music, gift items, coffee and maybe even food and wine. In the other stream, he sees a “new breed of small, specialized book retailers. Bookstores selling books and books alone. Stores that focus on the ‘classic’ notion of what a bookshop is. Bespoke bookselling, so to speak.”
Which isn’t to say Smith doesn’t have an eye on the e-horizon. He says he daydreams “that in the future I will finish a hand-sell by asking my customer, ‘And how would you like that – hardcover, paperback, audio or e-book?’”
