No Starbucks For Mt. Olympus
In a piece entitled “Bookstores Begin Slow Descent Into Obsolescence,” Scott Karp eloquently describes the growing sense I’ve also felt over the past few years while browsing record and book stores.
It strikes me – at first with amusement but increasingly with a sense of frustration – each time I’m in a particular kind of store (book store, music store, video store) looking for a particular item. I have money in my pocket, ready to purchase an item and therefore help the parent company’s bottom line. If the corporate gods could look down upon me a la Clash of the Titans, they would be rooting me on saying, Come on Eric, lay down that green on the register, more money for us to help build a Starbucks outside of the Olympic Palace!
But very often, the store doesn’t have the item that I want. For example, I was at my local Borders the other day when it struck me that there are a bunch of bands that I would love to add to my collection, Citizen Fish and Frank Black and Brother Ali among them. Now, granted, Borders music sections don’t have the world’s largest selection, but I figured I might catch a sampling of these eclectic but fairly well known acts. But alas, it was not to be, zilch across all fronts. Sure, Borders would have been more than happy to try to dig this stuff up for me and order it (at hefty shopping mall retail rates) but the bottom line was that I had to leave the store with money still in my pocket. No Starbucks for Mt. Olympus.
There’s some level of human service and social interaction that brick-and-mortar stores will always provide, which is partly why I think adding coffee shops to bookstores has proven so popular. But the Internet is just too efficient, too scalable, too useful, and too relevant to allow bookstores and music stores to have any hope of competing on an even footing.
Corporate chains like Borders and Virgin may have wiped out a bunch of mom-and-pop shops, but Amazon and iTunes will wipe out the corporate chains.
Scott Karp also does a great job in looking at the eventual demise of many kinds of print books, particularly non-fiction and business books. I love this line:
Instead of writing this blog over the past year, I could have written a business book — but how much less interesting that would have been.
Absolutely right. I love Scott’s Publishing 2.0; it’s like a college course in online publishing and advertising that rolls out in digestible snippets each day. If he did write the business book instead, it’s very unlikely that I would ever stumble across it, and more than likely it would be far less relevant as it would have had to get filtered and delayed through a lengthy editing and print publishing and print media distribution process.
Scott says that he’s done with bookstores, particularly because he’s not that into fiction. I do still enjoy browsing the fiction stacks every now and again, and in fact just picked up a large and old John Le Carre tome (The Honourable Schoolboy, I think it’s called) along with a newer literary thriller that looked interesting just yesterday.
But more often than not I use Amazon to buy books.
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August 27th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Hi Eric,
actually, lots of people out where I live use bookstores for socializing–not necessarily to buy books like Dave’s. At both small single-owner shops and large chains, people gather for book groups, knitting circles, poetry readings, author meet-and-greets (which are acutally better at the small stores.) And if you happen to be single, meeting someone new for coffee at the cafe in the local big chain has loads of advantages–namely that it’s really public and there are usually lots of people there. Heck, if you’re seriously paranoid, you can ask a friend to hover by the magazine rack and keep an eye on you (and then let her tell you what she thought of the guy you were with…)
So, perhaps to some folks bookstores are obsolete, but to other folks who value f2f interaction, and love f2f discussion (vs. Twitter or IM) local bookstores are hardly obsolete
August 27th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Tish, I totally agree that coffee shops in book stores are great ways to socialize and help to keep the book browsing / selling part vital… for the time being. The social events you mention are also important. In terms of the pure commerce component though I do feel that brick-and-mortar stores simply can’t compete with the efficiency, ease, and selection of online shopping.
Maybe we’ll all go to book readings at Amazon stores and go to gigs at Apple stores one day
August 27th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
hmm..now you’ve got me wondering if the commerce that exists is a byproduct of the social element. we do indeed live in an interesting world….
August 27th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
They should take the initiative. They should say, sorry we haven’t got it in-store, would you like me to order it online for you? Then they should take your money, offer you a free coffee, (keeping you in there to browse again) and order the book from their “store” - Amazon or wherever they can get it cheapest - and pocket the inevitable profit, having it delivered on their account to your address by Amazon. You have a coffee, and get the book the next day or the day after. Or something. I mean, why is it they can never get the book in anything like soon? They need to wake up. I only go to bookshops to browse, socialise and buy magazines and stationery these days, apart from Art books, which need to be seen first and bought now because they’re irresistable to me. /rant
August 27th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Tish — I think that’s true in part these days, at least to some small extent. That’s why you see so many of ‘em these days!
HH — Yeah, I agree, but even if they *could* do that (which as we know they won’t) I think online shopping for media still comes out on top. You bring up another big seller at book stores though… non-books! i.e. stationary, novelty items, magazines, and so on.
August 27th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
I must be a dinosaur because I still prefer the brick and mortar store compared to amazon. The wife and I used to go to Borders all the time, practically ever weekend as it was our default destination. When we were bored on a weekend we’d usually wind up there just to have something to do.
I think where the online stores fail is in the ability to really browse. There is nothing like walking down an aisle full of books and being able to pull one out and turn the pages. Or even sit in a big poofy chair and read it for awhile.
As much as Amazon tries to recreate the browsing experience, even with scanning the first few pages of a book, it just isn’t the same.
I shop at Amazon around Christmas to avoid the crowds of a real store, and when I’m looking for something very specific or fairly obscure. But I still make lots of off-the-cuff purchases at Borders.
August 27th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
There’s much to be said for that Mat, which is why Borders and the like won’t be going out of business tomorrow. I miss the tangible feeling of browsing through a print newspaper every morning, for instance, as I would find my way to stories that I would not have otherwise. Social news sites make up for this kind of discovery in part but as you note it’s just not the same.
I wonder if the next generation will feel the same way, though.