My rant on the death of bookstores

A news story about the closing of the B. Dalton bookstore chain triggered varied emotions in me. Throughout the 80's, I worked in bookstores as a clerk, a buyer, and a manager, and later when I was in graduate school I continued clerking part-time through the mid-90's. Most of that time was spent in local independent stores, but for a few years, I worked for Pickwick Books, a discount chain which was a division of Dalton's, and when they went under, our store was transformed into a B. Dalton. Like most people who gravitate to working in bookstores, I loved books and reading, and at times, especially early on, it felt like I was getting paid to hang out in a place where I would be anyway and chat with regular customers who wanted my recommendations.


But like everything else, retail bookselling changed. For years, local stores co-existed with chains like Dalton's and Walden's, but when the megastores (Borders and Barnes & Noble) moved in, the landscape changed. Even while I was working part-time at a local indie, I would visit Borders frequently because they had so much stuff: the bestsellers of course, but also mid-range literary titles, small press and university press titles, and deep backlist. But soon Amazon.com and other online sellers began offering such a huge selection, even a big store like Borders was finding it hard to compete.

I tried for years to be loyal to my brick-and-mortar stores, but even the biggest stores now rarely have what I'm looking for, and I don't necessarily mean odd, esoteric titles either. Borders is the worst; there's a huge Borders near me and I can rarely find what I'm looking for, even when it's a relatively big title which has been featured in the New York Times Book Review. When their computers tell you they have the title, and even narrow in on the shelf it's supposed to be on, but I (a former bookstore clerk) can't find it, and then a clerk (often a sneering, hipper-than-thou type, which frankly I would have loved to have been back in my youth) can't find it, there's something wrong. This happened to me so often, I've finally skipped Borders almost altogether. Barnes & Noble is a little better, but I refuse to pay for their discount card and I get irritated when the clerks keep pressing me to get one.

I guess what I'm saying is that, except for specialty stores (mystery, SF, academic), maybe it's time to kiss the physical bookstore goodbye. Online is the way to go. Yes, I miss the activity of looking through books to find serendipitous surprises, and that's something that online bookselling will never be good at, but I'm always happy with my shopping experiences at Amazon. They have what I'm looking for, it's almost always discounted at least a bit off of the list price, and there are no clerks to sneer at me or babble at me about their discount card.