Canberra Times, 18 Jun, 2011 12:00 AM
''When we find ourselves living in the perpetual present, books become the furniture of eternity.'' James Gleick
The Minister for Small Business, Nick Sherry, would have done well to listen to the words of New York writer James Gleick before he rashly predicted the imminent death of bookshops this week.
Gleick's closing address on the future of the book at last month's Sydney Writers Festival (broadcast recently on ABC Radio National) was a wise, warm and life-affirming treatise about why books and readers will never disappear.
He wasn't talking about bookshops, specifically, but about the role of books in society, the relationship between books and readers, and the enduring appeal of books as physical items.
And within this discourse, he made the point that booksellers physical, human ones, who have shops containing tangible, touchable reading matter of the ''dead tree'' variety play a vital role in the literary ecosystem, a role that Amazon and the Book Depository have yet to replicate.
But Senator Sherry, if we are to take his comments this week at face value, seems to be looking over the heads of all those delusional luddites who still enjoy buying books from shops, and gazing into a future only he can see.
''I think in five years, other than a few specialist booksellers in capital cities we will not see a bookstore they will cease to exist,'' he told those gathered at a launch in Canberra on Tuesday of a private sector initiative designed to encourage small business owners to enhance their online presence.
The comment left independent booksellers reeling not from the visionary, crystalline truth of the utterance, but by the sheer lack of forethought and understanding behind the words. Books are having a rough go of it in the media of late. With the spectacular downfall of the neon-lit book emporiums Borders and Angus & Robertson the same megastores that were supposed to have sounded the death knell of independent bookstores years ago many are blaming the rise of online book sales and e-readers for the failure. Some, like Sherry, are taking this demise to mean the death of the bookshop altogether.
Those who like books and bookshops say that this is a misinterpretation. Borders failed because of its supermarket-style business model, and because, like the US coffee chain Starbucks before it, it fundamentally misread the Australian market before trying to muscle in and change our ways. Surprise! No one wanted mucky, American-style coffee in a fancy paper cup when there was world-class espresso available at the cafe next door. And no serious book reader, given the choice, would opt for the impersonal chain store over the intimate bookshop, especially not when the product costs the same.
But like Starbucks, Borders had a novelty value at first. Reading matter as far as the eye could see! Comfortable chairs, all the magazines you could flip through, for free, while waiting for your coffee. Its intention was clear Borders was there to wipe out, or at least overtake, independent bookstores. And, in the very beginning at least, things were looking shaky for the independents.
But it didn't take long for real book devotees to see through the razzle to the limited range and non-bookish staff beneath. They retreated back to their preferred local independent booksellers, where the lighting was softer and the staff knew what they were talking about. Books, in other words, are not like the items you pile into your supermarket trolley during the weekly shop.
Full piece at Canberra Times
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