Marilyn Thiele

If ever there was a week when I might seriously question what I’m doing with my life, this was it. It should have been a great week. Spring finally arrived: the doors to the store could be left open, shoppers were out, business was good, and people were smiling and stopping to chat in town. Yet it seemed that every time I picked up something to read or browsed on the computer, there was doom and gloom.  I don’t mean the normal news, always depressing enough. This week, in addition, I was bombarded with reports about the death of the book.

It started on Sunday. The back page of the New York Times Book Review had a full page ad sponsored by James Patterson with the headline: “Who will save our books? Our bookstores? Our libraries?” On Tuesday, Publishers Weekly arrived with the same ad, spread out over the front and back covers, inside and out, the four prime advertising locations, lamenting the demise of the printed tome. On Wednesday at a doctor’s office, I picked up the current issue of Reader’s Digest. There was another full page, not an ad but a brief article headed “Digital Trend: Bookless Libraries” and displayed as if on a screen with the logo “kindle” at the bottom. Even Facebook was at it; I got a post from Book Connections linking to an article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel “Loss of printed books means reading won’t be the same.”  I decided to take a break and clean up some of the piles on my desk. Among the items set aside because I thought I might do something (what?) with them at some time was a page from the Times Book Review of November 25, 2012, with two brief articles, one about John Grisham’s concern about the future of his favorite independent bookstore and others like it, and one about Larry McMurtry, hero of used book dealers, having auctioned off two-thirds of his inventory because he feels the book culture is “fading.”

Wow! Maybe the gods are trying to tell me something. Should I get out while the getting is good and someone might actually buy my inventory? Should I turn my shop into a museum so that children can come and see how reading was done in the “olden days”? Must I accept the reality that the one pleasure that has been consistent throughout my life, while other hobbies and interests have come and gone, will soon no longer exist? My answers: No, No, and NO.

There’s no denying that sales of printed books are down and those of electronic books are up. The question is whether this trend will continue until the paper book is no longer produced, and Jeff Bezos’s dream comes true (yes, he has said this!). A look behind the scary headlines tells a different story. The “Bookless Libraries” article points to a recent Wall Street Journal article indicating that e-book purchases skew heavily toward the “light entertainment” novels you can pick up easily in grocery stores, drug stores or discount department stores. It mentions a Pew Research Center survey showing that 90 percent of digital readers also read physical books. It also talks about “bookless libraries” that folded because the patrons wanted physical books. But if you only read the words “Digital Trends: Bookless Libraries” as you scanned the magazine, you would think that the end is near.

My real fear is that these scary headlines and the propaganda of those who want the reading world to be all digital will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who love the printed word on paper will acquiesce to what appears to be inevitable, feeling that there is nothing that can be done to stop the march of technology. Is there anything to be done? Not to stop the advance of technology. But one can  embrace the new without trashing the old. It’s not an “either/or” choice, as the attention-grabbing headlines would have us believe. We don’t have to revert to a print-only world to save the book. Instead, we need to increase awareness of what a world without the paper book would be like.

I applaud James Patterson for spending what must have been a great deal of money to voice his concern so prominently. In his ad, he implies that there should be government intervention at some level to save books, in the way the banks and auto industry were saved. I question the wisdom of this approach, and, politics aside, the efficacy of it. The loss of books, bookshops and libraries will not bring down the American economy, at least not in the short term. It will bring down the level of literacy and the marketplace of ideas, which may be more disastrous in the longer term. How will this happen if the written word is still available, only in a different format? An easy comparison is the music industry. This week I also saw a news report on how iTunes killed the album; buying only a single song for 99 cents allows one to pay for only what one (thinks) one wants, instead of many songs that are not “the best” (as decided by popularity or critics). Who hasn’t had the experience of buying an album for one song, and finding an unexpected treasure elsewhere on the same recording? Compare that to buying the latest bestseller for your e-reader, versus visiting a book shop or library and finding unexpected treasure as you browse the shelves or get a recommendation from the bookseller or librarian.

Patterson ends his Publishers Weekly ad with: “Spread the word about our endangered books! Peel off this wraparound cover and share it with a friend or post it at your local bookstore or library.” All good as far as it goes. There is probably not a bookseller or librarian who is not concerned about the loss of the printed book and who hasn’t spent a great deal of time educating her patrons on the issue and the loss to the reading world that seems imminent. A few months ago, two dear ladies who meet in town regularly for lunch came in to my shop. They announced (nicely) that they did their reading on their K*****s, and that they were just browsing. They wanted to chat, and seemed receptive, so I explained that there might soon be no stores like mine to browse in, that I, too, enjoyed my electronic reader (deliberately using the generic term), but that if no books were purchased in paper format, there would be no stores and no books. This concept was a revelation to them. Could their behavior, buying both their paper and digital books from A*****, cause them to lose the opportunity to delight in a cozy little book shop? The end result: they each bought a book, and come back whenever they lunch in town to buy one or two each. They were in my shop this week, a happy contradiction to all the gloom I read in the media. They understand that their support is important to keeping book stores viable.

I am sure that this type of encounter occurs regularly in every book store in the country. It is an educational effort that takes time, and still reaches only a few people who are receptive. Posting Patterson’s ad would not do much more. The placement of the ad in The Book Review and Publishers Weekly is preaching to the choir. (If it appeared elsewhere, I am not aware of it; if anyone knows, please let me know.) He asks at one point “Why are there no impassioned editorials in influential newspapers or magazines?” Here he finally gets to what really needs to be done, a larger effort to contradict the negative, attention-grabbing headlines that don’t tell the whole story and which are speeding the demise of the book by suggesting that it is inevitable. His ads would be better placed in mainstream magazines or even on-line media where they would be seen by a broader group of readers, those like my ladies that lunch. Those of us who are already making an effort at bucking the trend could do more. Authors are extremely supportive of independent bookstores. Perhaps they can do more in interviews and articles to point out what the loss of books, bookstores and libraries would mean to everyone, not just the publishing world. Those readers who are already aware of the problem could write “letters to the editor” or bring attention to the issue through social media. (When this information is broadcast by booksellers, it sounds a bit like sour grapes or self-promotion; the readers who don’t want to lose their books and bookstores need to speak up.)

I have just two more anecdotes from my week. 8-year-old Nick, the son of another business owner in town, came in for his typical hour-long browse. He knows what he likes, but loves to spend time looking at what seems like every book in the store, not just the children’s section. This week, he wanted something about “all kinds of animals” and selected a field guide to the northeast U. S. I wish every customer would handle the books with such reverence and replace them so carefully! Later the same day, a 5-year-old came in with his Dad, selected two early readers, and stretched his hand up as high as it would go to hand me his money. Such intensity as he watched me count his change back to him. Such gravity as he said, yes, he would like a bag. Such a smile as he held his very own books. Let’s save the books so these boys can have them to love for the rest of their lives.