Books as Experiences, not Things

Books as Experiences, not Things by Marcus Greville - The Read, Booksellers NZ The landscape of retail has been changing significantly over the last seven or eight years, essentially since the global financial crisis of 2008. The art of consumption has been shifting away from material possession towards the experiential; meaning people are placing more value on what they have done and how they have done it rather than the shiny object that now lives third draw down in that old desk in the spare bedroom. Ironically, it seems consumers are moving from the physical to the substantial. Photo  Mark Tantrum - the next generation of consumers In a piece in the The Atlantic, James Hamblin noted that “over the past decade, an abundance of psychology research has shown that experiences bring people more happiness than do possessions.” Apparently happiness is awesome. If experiences are the new shiny, then this begs the question: where do books and bookshops live on the spectrum of the experiential and the material? Read on