A book in the hand is worth a dozen in an internet store

[pbray]

Today I visited a bookstore for the first time in two months. Lest anyone think that I was deprived, let me hasten to point out that during my home confinement there was 1 Amazon care package, and 6 BN.COM orders placed and delivered.

But the experience of shopping for books in a store is wholly different from shopping on the internet. Finding new releases can be tricky if what you're looking for is not a featured title, and if you do a search by pub date the interesting items are often buried in clutter. I did manage to find two new (to me) authors, but finding them took longer than it would have in a store. Browsing lists and thumbnails of bookcovers just doesn't do it for me. I want to have the book in my hands, to be able to flip open to a random page to see if the writing grabs me. To know at once if it is a doorstop fantasy or a quick read.

No thumbnail is ever as eye-catching as the real bookcover, nor does it convey the information I can get at a glance from the physical book, where things like publisher and cover quotes are readable without having to "select" the book from the list, view the entry, then back out and look at the next item.

Yes the internet is fabulous for buying books from authors I already know and love. Assuming, that is, that I realize they have a new book out. But as for finding new authors? For me the old-fashioned way is still the best.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Our last remaining decent bookshop chain is under threat here, because the uber owners want More Big Profits. It's heartbreaking. Once upon a time, I lived in a city with one of the best bookshops in the UK. Then it was sold to a chain who mistreated it. Two new chains arrived, though, and helped fill the gap. One of those we lost last year, and the other may also go. This is not the city it used to be.

[mtlawson.livejournal.com]

I wish bookstore owners would stop trying to shoehorn the selling of books into the same mold as selling toothpaste. It doesn't work.

Here in the States, the Baldwin Piano Co. was destroyed when the ailing company hired an executive from a major corporation to run the show. She knew how to sell things for profit, but she had no idea how to work in the music industry. Consequently, all her cost cutting ideas and sales initiatives flopped, and the company went into bankruptcy.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Sigh. We're down to one chain store here, and a tiny independent that caters to the literary crowd. I'd like to think that there's enough business to keep the chain store going, but even decent local sales can't help if the monkey running the corporation make stupid decisions (aka Borders).