Are Books Becoming Obsolete?
- Thread starter ReflectiveAcuity
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New Zealand.
I think a lot of people go into bookstores to physically hold a book, look through the Table of Contents, and maybe read the first chapter. This is something some people have to do before buying the book online.
I think a better question is.... Are bookstores (not books) becoming obsolete? Back in the 80s, in southern California, we had LOADS of bookstores (B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, Borders, other). Today, B&N acquired all the aforementioned, excluding Borders; they only bought their client list in the liquidation of Borders. Sadly, this is how B&N must compete against Amazon.
Bezos, owner of Amazon, is the second wealthiest man alive. He'll soon pass Bill Gates. I think the last Forbes list had Bezos at $81.5 billion; Bill, $89.5 billion. If you load Relentless.com, it links to Amazon.com. Bezos had his Amazon store originally planned for relentless.com (friends/investors asked him not to be too obvious about his goals).
Books will never go obsolete. Bookstores? I do not know.
I think a better question is.... Are bookstores (not books) becoming obsolete? Back in the 80s, in southern California, we had LOADS of bookstores (B. Dalton, Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, Borders, other). Today, B&N acquired all the aforementioned, excluding Borders; they only bought their client list in the liquidation of Borders. Sadly, this is how B&N must compete against Amazon.
Bezos, owner of Amazon, is the second wealthiest man alive. He'll soon pass Bill Gates. I think the last Forbes list had Bezos at $81.5 billion; Bill, $89.5 billion. If you load Relentless.com, it links to Amazon.com. Bezos had his Amazon store originally planned for relentless.com (friends/investors asked him not to be too obvious about his goals).
Books will never go obsolete. Bookstores? I do not know.
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Barnes & Crap may be in trouble (it's in trouble) but while in some places it's the only option, it's not the archetype of a bookstore, in any sense. Bookstores are doing very well.
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It would be a sad reality if B&N goes down. Maybe not in your opinion, but many would think this of the chain. End of an era of chain bookstores in America, and what not. Similar to NetFlix helping to bankrupt Hollywood Video and Blockbuster. Oh, and numerous indie video-rental stores.
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I don't think that books will become phased out. Almost everybody I know who's turned to devices like the Kindle have told me that it isn't the same - they still crave the touch, texture, the smell of a real book.
The day they can simulate the smell of a new or old book the print industry may be in trouble, but I don't think that is priority #1 for anybody!
So long as the print industry in general (all forms of print) continues, there will be a demand for physical books.
The day they can simulate the smell of a new or old book the print industry may be in trouble, but I don't think that is priority #1 for anybody!
So long as the print industry in general (all forms of print) continues, there will be a demand for physical books.
Absolutely not. The regular means of buying books in the book store, perhaps. Since People can buy online through amazon among others, Can buy ebooks, or just download books from free websites. But books, I mean the actual item, the paper per se will never disappear. It is literally the greatest invention ever made by humankind.
I don't think books are going out of style more as book stores. The only book store I ever see packed anymore is Barnes and Noble. Tattered Cover is always dead silent (which is great for writing I might add) and second hand book stores generally sell everything not just books and their book section is almost always the quietest part of the store. This has nothing to do with books though. It has more to do with online shopping existing and people not wanting to leave their homes anymore.
I admittedly did not read everything that people wrote here so I may be repeating something that someone else said but I think one of the biggest reasons behind failing bookstores is the price. If you think about it in a bookstore that for the most part is specific to books and forms of media there are operating costs cost of getting those products and cost for advertising. there is also the issue of demand of customers and the reason that is an issue is because for example people that live in Pittsburgh are not going to travel to Chicago for a Barnes & Noble. the point I'm making in that statement is a customer base is limited to the size of the community or surrounding communities that it exists in. Amazon is so successful because it has an international Outreach and it does not have to have facilities in every major city in the country in order to do so nor do they have to have facilities in a bunch of other International countries. their products are also not limited to books in the forms of media but very widespread. But in regards to books on Amazon somebody already did mention it you also have the Kindle Fire or whatever their latest tablet might be that gives you the capability of downloading books straight to that device from Amazon and you don't need to go to a store to do it. I to order a lot of things online But it has a lot to do with price because I can go to the store and see something I really liked there but before I buy it I will search online to see if I can find that item cheaper and typically I can. For authors who are writing books my advice would be to make your book available both in a hard copy and in digital form for purchase because you would be widening the customer base for sales
While it is a sad time where bookstores (at least chain bookstores) disappear, books shall never die (not in our lifetime). I come from a family of avid readers and have been surrounded by books all my life; none of that has changed since I was born, books are still everywhere. Bookstores may fall to the wayside, but books shall endure, in part to people like those found on this site, whose passions for the extraordinary, the unbelievable, and the imaginary; those that love to share stories and to travel to wondrous lands not our own. I'm sorry if this is a tad preachy, but I've heard this fear before, and it always saddens me, the thought that books may disappear. So long as humanity craves stories and wishes to imagine, books shall remain. Vive les livres! (Sorry to any french speakers; just a quick google translate)
I like books. I like buying books from local small businesses.
But...
One of the biggest problems society has today is filling up space with ever more crap. While I don't personally like e-readers and would rather have as many paper copy books as possible, I understand the utility, especially for travelers (found this out the hard way on a trip last year). Technology relentlessly changes and that will never change.
Another is an issue that a lot of readers and writers don't think about, pointed out to me by a public intellectual in one of his YouTube lectures, that recently radically altered my opinion of both e-readers and mediums like graphic novels and audio-books (or graphic audio-books). For 50,000 years, humans didn't read or write. Literacy has only become common over the last century.
I'm waiting on a microphone to arrive from Amazon. I will be turning all of my writing into audio format myself.
But...
One of the biggest problems society has today is filling up space with ever more crap. While I don't personally like e-readers and would rather have as many paper copy books as possible, I understand the utility, especially for travelers (found this out the hard way on a trip last year). Technology relentlessly changes and that will never change.
Another is an issue that a lot of readers and writers don't think about, pointed out to me by a public intellectual in one of his YouTube lectures, that recently radically altered my opinion of both e-readers and mediums like graphic novels and audio-books (or graphic audio-books). For 50,000 years, humans didn't read or write. Literacy has only become common over the last century.
I'm waiting on a microphone to arrive from Amazon. I will be turning all of my writing into audio format myself.
I gotta say I agree. I have at least 6 boxes filled with books I don't have shelf space for. They are marked "already read" and "to-read." I used to keep books around to refer to or re-read in time, but now I also see the wisdom of keeping an electronic copy for later referral when writing an essay on an author or whatever.
I'm praying that Barnes & Nobel hangs in there. They are in trouble. Anybody know anything about the status of Books a Million? Is that a Canadian distributor only? I'm only selling to presses that furnish paperbacks. I want everything in physical book print for my stupid and only legacy on this Earth.
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POD technology might be a viable future.
No bookstores-- instead ordering your books. They can do it via computer storage (for the POD technology) so that the cost is viable.
Hmmm, anyone else know anything about this likelihood?
No bookstores-- instead ordering your books. They can do it via computer storage (for the POD technology) so that the cost is viable.
Hmmm, anyone else know anything about this likelihood?
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I don’t believe books themselves are in trouble. The way we preview, read, and discuss them is of course the big change taking place. I watched an interview with Philip Roth recently in which he said the novel as we know it will likely disappear. With the emergence of novels in verse, flash fiction, graphic novels, and cross-genre works, he may have a point. However, I know many young people in my family and otherwise who love to read novels despite the presence of so many other forms of entertainment. In my lit classes, we discuss and research the present state of literature, compare it to other forms of storytelling, and explore how lit may change in the near future. It’s an interesting set of questions for sure.
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Wow I didnt know that! Well, say what you want, but Bezos is a good businessman. If were supposed to happy about that is another thing.
In my country we have bookfairs, where secondhand books are sold and the proceeds go to charity. The prices are ridiculously cheap, like 1-3 euro’s a book. Those fairs are crowded and bring in a lot of money for the chosen charity. So I tend to agree with what Ive read a few times here: the price is important. When books are cheap, people love buying them. And ofcourse e-books are so much cheaper.
Same here. It's my favorite place to buy books. I think books will be around a long time but the business of publishing will evolve. I understand that audio books have boomed in recent years and of course ebooks but the print book will still around for a while I believe.
Saw this via one of my email drres today, and thought of this thread, so here's another perspective on the topic of bookstores:
https://unmistakablecreative.com/why-bookstores-still-matter/
https://unmistakablecreative.com/why-bookstores-still-matter/
Wait, I'm wondering if the author of this article browsed the bookstore, made a list, and returned home to order the books online from Amazon. I hear this happens a lot, and it is one of the biggest frustrations of the B&M bookstore owner.
I’m not sure but the way I read it, the author went to B&N, browsed through and then bought books they otherwise would neither have found or bought through Amazon...
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I'm with Triceratops here. The author's browsing bookshop shelves and then ordering from Amazon.
If it was in the bookshop, where did he have to order it from?
He doesn't seem to buy from anywhere except Amazon, and the links go to Amazon too.
So the bookshop here is just used as a catalogue and picks up no money from sales.
If it was in the bookshop, where did he have to order it from?
He doesn't seem to buy from anywhere except Amazon, and the links go to Amazon too.
So the bookshop here is just used as a catalogue and picks up no money from sales.
That is very common--finding books in bookshops, then buying from Amazon where there are often good deals on the prices.
It's infuriating for bookshops, which still have to buy stock in and pay their staff and rent.
It's also something to think about when wondering why books from trade publishers routinely sell more copies than self-published books. Trade publishers tend to have better bookshop coverage than self publishers, and this could well explain at least some of the sales differentials.
It's infuriating for bookshops, which still have to buy stock in and pay their staff and rent.
It's also something to think about when wondering why books from trade publishers routinely sell more copies than self-published books. Trade publishers tend to have better bookshop coverage than self publishers, and this could well explain at least some of the sales differentials.
I know people do that, and it has to be frustrating for the bookstores.
I also know that many, many times I've gone looking for a book - or even Book 1 of a series that's otherwise stocked - only to come up empty-handed in the store. If there's a physical book in front of me, I'm more likely to buy it for the immediate gratification than wait for an order at a small discount. But if the book is not there...
(Tangentially, I do a lot of my "shopping" while working at the library shipping center - books that catch my eye, ones that get long-term heavy circulation, etc. Amazon's suggestions are nice and have pointed me to some good titles, but there's no substitution for the serendipity of stumbling across a new shiny object in the flesh.)
If people do that, they need to make a compensatory purchase, because otherwise, they are exploiting the professional skills of the book store employees, who have carefully chosen the books for sale based on their knowledge of books and their local community.
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Yep. It's really exploitive.
Oh wow, I totally misread that then. Yeah, not cool. I feel the obligated to buy something when I use a restroom in a gas station. If I went to a bookstore and found a book, I’d just buy the damn book. Now I feel bad for even posting the link 
ETA: The worst part is the site operator is allegedly an author themselves. You'd think they know better...of course the comments are closed, but am going to fire off something in their comment form.
Copy of my comment:
I am writing in response to the article that appeared on your site about why bookstores still matter: <redacted>
In this article, the author writes that they went to a bookstore, found a book they were interested in, then left and ordered the book online. That's pretty exploitative to use the bookstore like that. It's people like the author that are a threat to bookstores in the first place, because they do their searching there, then purchase elsewhere. If you're going to use that venue to shop for books, at least make a compensatory purchase of a notepad or something.
The price for that first book on Amazon was $18.30, and the B&N price was $16.99 so they didn't even save any money. What's wrong with this picture? Are you really condoning practices like this? As an author and a creative, you should have more respect for your fellow creatives and even if the prices were reversed, buy the book locally.
This only hurts the bookstores (and the authors) in the long run...Please re-think letting posts and activities like this become the norm...now some people are going to see this as an acceptable and normative behavior when it's not. The author of that post should be ashamed of themselves.
ETA: The worst part is the site operator is allegedly an author themselves. You'd think they know better...of course the comments are closed, but am going to fire off something in their comment form.
Copy of my comment:
I am writing in response to the article that appeared on your site about why bookstores still matter: <redacted>
In this article, the author writes that they went to a bookstore, found a book they were interested in, then left and ordered the book online. That's pretty exploitative to use the bookstore like that. It's people like the author that are a threat to bookstores in the first place, because they do their searching there, then purchase elsewhere. If you're going to use that venue to shop for books, at least make a compensatory purchase of a notepad or something.
The price for that first book on Amazon was $18.30, and the B&N price was $16.99 so they didn't even save any money. What's wrong with this picture? Are you really condoning practices like this? As an author and a creative, you should have more respect for your fellow creatives and even if the prices were reversed, buy the book locally.
This only hurts the bookstores (and the authors) in the long run...Please re-think letting posts and activities like this become the norm...now some people are going to see this as an acceptable and normative behavior when it's not. The author of that post should be ashamed of themselves.
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