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We been living in a golden age of sorts. For what, you ask. For books. When I was a kid, bookstores weren't all that common outside of long-established city areas in this country. In fact, I'd never been in a bookstore before I was about 12 when I was visiting my sister and her husband at college. You could buy books in several places, of course, including department stores. But, bookstores in just about every sizable shopping area are something that sprang up from the mid 1960's on. Having a real bookstore open up in the new giant shopping mall (actually it wasn't an enclosed mall till years later) when I was in high school was like a dream come true. For the first time I had so many choices, it was like a library, and I didn't have to return the books. Heck that first bookstore was closer than the library.
I don't suppose that bookstores will go away entirely in my life time, but the new electronic readers are really going to hurt the business. Most sales in bookstores are best sellers, and throw-away mystery, romance and western novels, which frankly will sell just fine through the readers. Bookstores have to make money somewhere. I mostly buy books that don't sell as well, topics that the store probably wouldn't order much of a variety if there wasn't someone they knew was buying them actively in their particular store. Many of the books I buy wouldn't play out that well on the current readers, though it wouldn't take long to fix some of the problems. No one would want to flip one page at a time through a Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, for instance, but a truly user-definable search function would be fairly simple to include. Multiple bookmarks could be implemented across multiple books, something any researcher would need.
But you just can't browse an electronic book the way you can a physical one. I can tell in an instant in a bookstore that a particular book isn't what I'm looking for. Even with sample pages, it would take longer with an electronic book. Browsing is half the fun of books for me. I don't look forward to having to drive a long distance to a library or a bookstore to have that privilege. Like it was in the old days.
I don't suppose that bookstores will go away entirely in my life time, but the new electronic readers are really going to hurt the business. Most sales in bookstores are best sellers, and throw-away mystery, romance and western novels, which frankly will sell just fine through the readers. Bookstores have to make money somewhere. I mostly buy books that don't sell as well, topics that the store probably wouldn't order much of a variety if there wasn't someone they knew was buying them actively in their particular store. Many of the books I buy wouldn't play out that well on the current readers, though it wouldn't take long to fix some of the problems. No one would want to flip one page at a time through a Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, for instance, but a truly user-definable search function would be fairly simple to include. Multiple bookmarks could be implemented across multiple books, something any researcher would need.
But you just can't browse an electronic book the way you can a physical one. I can tell in an instant in a bookstore that a particular book isn't what I'm looking for. Even with sample pages, it would take longer with an electronic book. Browsing is half the fun of books for me. I don't look forward to having to drive a long distance to a library or a bookstore to have that privilege. Like it was in the old days.
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