The Future of Books? Small-scale

When Borders first hit trouble earlier this year, then went under, much ink was spilled about What This Means For Books. Theories abounded. "This is a sign of the times. People download e-books to their iPads, they don't leave the house to buy some clumsy dead-tree product," some said.
"Chillax," said others. "Borders was a poorly run company, and this is what happens when you do a bad job, even if your product is a home run."
"Nuh-uh. You wait. This was just the first round. In ten years, we'll download them directly to our brains."
This article at Business Week Magazine has another theory as to what we may expect post-Borders, a theory to compete with "direct-to-brain downloads" and "just one less shitty company in the world." The article posits that as large corporations get out of bookselling, mom-and-pop business owners will get back into it, and we'll see things return to a smaller, saner size.

It's a nice thought, very nice. It's harder to determine if it will happen. I think there's been a lot of backlash against the whole concept of e-books right from the start. Many people just love the idea of books, the way they smell, and feel. As this article points out, people don't like giving soulless downloads as gifts, and may not plan ahead enough to use an online retailer exclusively.

I don't think e-books and e-readers have a clear advantage over books. You interact with them entirely differently. The Sedentary Vagabond bought herself an e-reader with birthday money, and has pointed out that you can't tell where you are in a book at any given moment. If you hold a 300-page book in your hand and open it up randomly, it's easy to determine if you're almost done, or jsut starting out. I'd assume, too, that you have to keep an e-reader charged, that they will (or can) break if you drop them, and that you can't take them into the bathtub with you.

Of course, I can see their appeal. I like the idea of being able to obtain any book you want instantly. It's also nice that they won't clutter up your home, although they will clutter up your machine and you'll have to start making some hard choices at some point. But another thing about books is that they're oddly social in a way. When you read something good, you want to talk about it. Even when you read something bad, you may want to tell the world how terrible it is. Bookstores are places set aside for books, with frequent author readings, book club meetings, and just a good atmosphere, and I think that e-books can never entirely kill them off for that reason.

This bookstore, and everyone in it, is disposable

By now, it's all over the Internet, all over the evening news, all over everywhere: Borders has filed for Chapter 11. Stores will close and people will be out of work. As a book-lover, I should have 'feelings' about this. I guess I do have some. I used to frequent Borders when I was younger. They have a terrific classical music section, or they did back then. The coffee bar in the store was a novelty back then, and sometimes I'd stop in just for a drink. Honestly, I always found their book section sort of lackluster and diffuse, good if you wanted something off the NYT Best-Seller list but not so hot if you're looking for something more off-beat or localized.

If the entire chain goes under, as it seems to be in danger of doing, that would be A Bad Thing for sure. Between them and Barnes and Noble, they virtually killed off indie bookstores in the country. Buying books will be reduced to the click of a mouse for many people. They'll miss the serendipity of the remainder table, of the interestingly-titled book that wound up on the shelf next to what they were going for, or the tantalizing history book they happened across when they accidentally wandered into that aisle. They'll miss the communal experience of having a place to go and feel less alone, the surge of validation when they ask at the counter for an author they were sure NO ONE ELSE had ever heard of, only to be told they were all sold out. If the bookstore was really good, the bookseller might even add, by the way, the store has a book discussion group on that genre, if you want to come.

Many commentors on stories about the fall of Borders have sunk to schadenfreude. It's certainly tempting: you opened your mega-store across from my favorite indie bookstore, they were out of business in a year, how's it feel, motherfuckers, how's it feel? The problem is that the people that stand to be hurt the most by this, as always, aren't corporate suits. They're little guys. Like Manny, Roz, Nicolette and Jackie from Last Night at the Lobster. Kids putting themselves through college, single moms, retirees forced back into the workforce, veterans who came home and couldn't get better jobs. And, increasingly, people who played by life's rules, attended college, and wound up with little more to show for it than a job at a failing bookstore.

The first round of closings will affect an estimated 19,500 people. I wish all of them a soft landing.