What Does the Future of Bookstores Look Like?

It has been nearly three years since I last entered a bookstore with the intention of making a purchase. By no coincidence, it has also been nearly three years since I first joined Amazon Prime; where I have too often experienced the thrill of selecting the “1-Click” button, thus summoning a stack of books to appear on my doorstep, at a discounted rate, in two days time. The internet is great. However, yesterday, on my way home, I decided to stop at a Barnes & Noble and do two things: 1. Buy some books. 2. Assess the life expectancy of the retail chain. In buying my books, I set three guidelines: 1. I couldn’t buy any of the dozens of books that are currently on my Amazon Watch List. 2. I couldn’t look up the prices of any books. 3. I couldn’t spend more than $60.00. As I walked across the parking lot and into Barnes & Noble, I expected the store to be nearly vacant; for its only clientele to be individuals who didn’t know how to turn on a computer, much less order something from Amazon. To my surprise, however, the bookstore was buzzing. People were enthusiastically searching high and low for books, talking to their friends, and asking for the advice of store employees. There was even a line at the register. (Did I mention that this was at noon on a Tuesday?) After this initial shock, I began walking around the bookstore, observing the clientele and looking for books that either caught my interest or had yet to be moved to my Amazon cart. One of the first things that I noticed while perusing through the store was that I was one of the only customers shopping alone. Everyone else seemed to be with a friend, spouse, or child, and they all seemed to be there to accomplish the task of finding a book together. People were debating which books to buy, sharing anecdotes regarding the literary merits of a certain book, and bemoaning the fact that a book was out of stock or not yet available in paperback. It reminded me of the last time I can remember buying a book at Barnes & Noble. ______________________ In 2013, a friend and I found ourselves at a conference, bored to death. We went to purchase a coffee from Starbucks and decided to further delay our return to whatever workshop session we were in with a trip to B&N. As we walked around the store, examining and discussing the books, we both found ourselves itching to buy something to read. Talking about the merits of a given novel, subject, or author made the desire to make a purchase even greater; it made searching for a book to buy with a friend an experience; it recreated the feeling of being a little kid, traveling through the maze of bookshelves, judging a book by its cover and buying it because it looked funny, cool, or scary. As we wandered through the maze of novels, a stout paperback caught my eye: Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. I picked it up and handed it to my friend (a self-proclaimed conservative) who, after saying that he had been meaning to read it for some time, decided to buy it. (At that time, the 2012 election season was finally over, and I figured that I should try to understand the political and economic philosophy of now Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.) So, I decided that I too would purchase the novel. We walked back to the hotel lobby, found two armchairs, and began reading. I share this story because it illustrates what I have already outlined as one of the main benefits of a bookstore: the ability to discover books with other people. ______________________ The most cliche criticism of the "Internet Age" is that it has made it easier for people to be antisocial: No one talks anymore, they all have their ear buds in!; No one goes shopping anymore people just sit on their couch and have stuff delivered! And while these criticisms are (to some degree) fair, they ignore the fact that, as billionaire investor Chris Sacca recently pointed out on an episode of "The Bill Simmons Podcast," people still want to do things together. We still find ourselves going to the movie theatre, filling stadiums, and frequenting amusement parks together. The recent success of Periscope and Facebook Live, as Sacca rightly argues, shows that we still want to experience the latest developments in politics, sports, and television together. It is this want of doing things together, the want for an a treasure-hunt-like experience, that is the great differentiator between bookstores and Amazon. The experience of scanning the shelves, wandering through the aisles, and holding a new book in one’s hand is simply not the same as clicking the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” arrow. If bookstores want to be around in a few years, it is this feeling that they need to capture. And while I love Barnes & Noble, they have done a terrible job capturing this feeling. There are hardly any books that aren’t hits or classics. (If an alien were to visit Barnes & Noble, they would think that JK Rowling, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, and Bill O’Reilly were our planet’s four greatest literary minds.) This makes it hard to have that same experience that we often feel when entering a bookstore that is packed to the brim. We want to discover something and make it our own. As a recent article on LitHub pointed out, this is partly why Indie Presses are starting to open up bookstores. “Perhaps this is the new reality for publishing,” writes Jon Sealy. “As New York publishers and tech companies continue to vie for market share and boost quarterly returns, local literary communities are taking matters into their own hands, building unique book cultures across the United States and continuing the old-fashioned task of bringing together writers and readers.” (Emphasis mine.) Of course, this is not where Barnes & Noble is now, however, they should start getting there. It’s time to ditch the CD and DVD section, ditch the long table with “Must Reads” sprawled across it, and replace them with big, overflowing bookshelves to emulate the feeling of a used book store, and turn the process of buying books back into the aforementioned adventure. People will pay slightly more for their books (like I did) for the same reason they spend money going out to eat, or seeing “Star Wars” three times in theaters instead of just buying the Blue-Ray: the experience. And while Barnes & Noble is not a cool, metropolitan used-bookstore, I still had a fun time spending my 60 bucks. Here’s what I bought (click the titles for pictures): The Book of Basketball By Bill Simmons I’ve been meaning to read this book forever. As a self-proclaimed Bill Simmons fan, it’s kind-of embarrassing that I haven’t, but I will now! On one of Simmons' more recent podcasts, he spoke with his friend Malcolm Gladwell (who wrote the book's forward) about the sport, and the multiple references to the mammoth of book reminded me of my need to read it. When I saw a lonely copy sitting on a bottom shelf in the Sports section, I new I had to buy it. Price Paid at Barnes & Noble: $20.00 Price I Could Have Paid at Amazon: $13.59 Hamlet By Shakespeare Before people jump all over me in the comments, let me just say, yes, I have readHamlet --several times. I bought this because I love the cover and I firmly believe that one can never have enough Shakespeare lying around. Also, the only other copy I have of the play is in The Norton Shakespeare, which weighs more than the bookshelf it sits on. Price Paid at Barnes & Noble: $7.95 Price I Could Have Paid at Amazon: I kind of cheated on this one. It’s part of the Barnes & Noble Shakespeare Collection, and thus can only be bought used on Amazon. I didn’t know this at the time, I swear. Down and Out in Paris and London By George Orwell Down and Out in Paris and London is a two-part memoir by Orwell that chronicles his travels as a poor man through Paris and London. Some time ago, I heard Louis CK reference this book as an inspiration for “Louis,” and meant to add it to my Amazon cart but, much to Barnes & Nobles' benefit, I forgot to do so, and didn’t remember my desire to read it until I saw it sitting on the shelf. Price Paid at Barnes & Noble $14.95 Price I Could Have Paid at Amazon: $10.83 A Confederacy of Dunces By John Kennedy Toole As you may have guessed, it was the cover art that caught my attention. Toole’s posthumously published novel about Ignatius Reilly is one that I have also had on my “To-Read” list for awhile, and had I not come across it at the store, who knows how long it would have taken me to add it to the abyss that is my Amazon cart. Price I Paid: $16.00 Price I Could Have Paid on Amazon: $9.52

What Does the Future of Bookstores Look Like?