Starting in the caveman days, only a few were literate, and books were hard to come by. This went on for years, maybe longer. Then the printing press was developed. The availbility of printed material and literacy increased. Time elapsed. And then other entertainments came along. First the wireless, then the moving pictures, then that great destroyer TV. People who were reading because they had no other choice were able to find other diversions. The peak of the printed word is in the past. (John Cheever figured if he could live decently if he sold three short stories a year. Try doing that now.) Video didn't just kill the radio star.
While the dumb never read, and it's not supriseing those in the middle would follow their middlebrow inclinations and abandon books, what's interesting to me is how umimportant literature is to the highly educated these days. It's not just that they don't read literature, they don't care that they don't read it. Those that do read know that there was a time in the past when people were embarassed about lacking culture. Not any more.
As mentioned before, I work at a used book store myself (check out the Tucson East link for pix), so I've seen one model that works up close and personal. This doesn't mean it's the only way to run a book store, or that everything I've learned would apply elsewhere, so take any absolutist sounding statements with a little grain of salt.
Are there plenty of readers in the world? Hell yes. On a slow day, the trade counter will see about 2-3,000 books, and over 5K on the weekends. We take about a thousand to 1,500 books a day, and sell about 1,200 books a day (450 nonfiction units, 550 fiction, and about 200 kids books), so the balance of incoming vs outgoing merchandise is about even, at least in theory. (97% of the stock comes from trading, with a few remainders filling out the corners.) Clearly, this is not your corner book store, with the owner sitting there with a couple cats for company. I don't know how those kinds of places pay their rent, much less make a profit. Anybody who has worked for a store like that chime in, because it's a real mystery to me.
Do people read what's "good for them"? Hell no. Not only do I get to see what people buy, but also what they have bought: trashy fiction, books about the paranormal and UFOs, sex tips, alternative medicine and healing, scads and scads of Christian living books of dubious worth, and self help fads going back for decades. When I read things like "reading is down 5%", I can't say this bothers me nearly as much as it would have before. Snooty? Elitist? I don't think so, but YMMV. All I know is that after seeing the contents of bookshelves for five years, I am no longer enamored with the idea that reading is a good in and of itself.
That said, I still can't get behind publicity stunts like this. The publishing industry isn't acting like a business on its way out-- on the contrary, the sheer volume of new books can be overwhelming. Pick up a catalog or three, and count the new releases in History and Biography alone. If authors and their fans are having trouble getting attention, it's not because of a lack of backing from publishers, but rather a very large surplus, staggering even.They may not be titles and authors of whom Tom Wayne approves, but that doesn't mean there's a lack of folks buying books.
Can used book stores survive in the age of "big box" new book stores and the Internet? Sure. Used stores can act as supplements to new stores, instead of competition: not every past title by an author is always in print (the old Dana Fuller Ross books are an excellent example), and a customer may not be willing to lay down full price for it anyway. (We have several customers who have lists, some very long, of back titles from authors old and new, from Robert E Howard to Jill Churchill.) British mysteries are especially popular, because many aren't printed in the US, and shipping is prohibitive. As to the Net, shipping is a key factor; our pocketbooks are about 50 cents to a dollar over what shipping would cost, even if the book cost a penny-- yet we're right there, and condition isn't a crapshoot like it can be with Amazon. And you can sit and read the first chapter for free, if you like . . .
The problem with this is that you have to reserve a lot of judgment about what people read. It took a long time before I could reconcile with the popularity of the cat mystery, and the cozy mystery in general. Not easy for someone teethed on Raymond Chandler, but now I gladly lead folks to their books with crime solving nuns, and can name more Nora Roberts titles from memory than is probably healthy. "Michael Savage? Right this way . . ."
Sorry, this is running long, but knowing how many of you probably shop at used bookstores, I thought a glimpse from the other side of the register might be interesting. It's certainly very entertaining work, and there's always a dozen new titles to try and learn every month, so there's a mental challenge as well. Now if only we could get the crackheads to stop selling us crap from dumpsters, it would be a righteous gig :)
Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras
It was great publicity. Hell.. this guy's place is a couple of miles from where I work. It's a decent used bookstore, but nothing I'd go out of my way to visit or anything...and I am always looking for books.. I probably go though 50 to 75 a year.
Having said that I go out of my way to not watch the local news or read much of the local newspaper, and I still heard about this on the day it happened.. seeing coverage of it at my local watering hole on Sunday night. If only his inventory management skills were as good as his marketing. The Half-Price Books near me doesn't seem to have this problem for some reason (and it's in the brain dead suburbs, not near the urban core where all those culturally literate types live, right?)
Oh, and people who pull publicity stunts and call them "works of art" piss me off. Call a spade a spade dude... it's OK. You have a business to run... we understand.
aren't much better than watching TV, or whatever. Take the venerable Harlequin Romance books. These things are churned out by poorly paid hack authors, cheaply printed, and sold for $5 a pop or more at your local grocery store. Do they have literary merit? Not in the slightest. Is it a tragedy that people aren't reading this sort of book anymore? Probably not.
Isn't that kind of backwards for a place named "Prospero Bookstore"?
(is 3fingerspointback)
...and failed at its "book club" attempt and I know a CD is a lot quicker to listen to than a whole novel is to read but a book exchange might be kinda neat. I mean, I for one, have all sorts of awful old books that I'd feel bad burning but would feel perfectly peachy sending off to someone else. And after we read it, we could give it away to a homeless person or something like that. But it'd be a bitch getting everyone to finish them anywhere near the same time and we probably don't have quite the readership to do it properly unless spam bots read. So, pretty all-round awful idea. Anyone up for it?
make it rain you nappy headed ho's
