When I was a kid, we went to the library to browse books. I had no particular idea what I was looking for; I just loved walking up and down the aisles finding the unexpected. Over the years, it was how I discovered "Runaway Ralph," "Are You There God, It's Me Margaret," among countless others. I continued going to the library through college, where my life was graced with encountering James Dickey's "To the White Sea" and "Alnilam"—a brilliant work of art (from the man who wrote "Deliverance")—and his poetry. Lots of Dorothy Parker and Sylvia Plath, Yehuda Amichai, and Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment." When I moved to Philadelphia and was working several jobs, I always had books out past the due date. Buying books was suddenly the answer. I could keep them.
I remember my first tour of Borders. It was like Candyland. I kept picking up books and putting them back. There was too much too choose from. Ultimately, I always managed to choose, not one, but usually two or three books. Between Borders and Barnes & Noble, I covered most of Dostoevsky's collection, reread Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (one of my all-time favorites) several times, discovered several of my other all-time favorites, explored the life of the Dalai Lama, and the Kabbalah … you get the idea.
Amazon: Not Browsing-Conducive?
I've spent hours in independent bookstores in Philadelphia, New Hope and elsewhere. I also have bought books I knew I wanted from Amazon.com (is that cheating on the brick-and-mortars?), especially gifts for friends, but I've never "browsed" Amazon. (And I was thinking of the brick-and-mortars the whole time, I swear.) It has never led me to discover an author or a book, despite its "customers who bought items in your recent history also bought …" feature.
Bookstores, whether Borders, Barnes & Noble, or independents, or even the library, were more like friends. They helped me find things I liked, and I spent hours lost in time with them as I skimmed book jacket after book jacket and section after section.
As Jack McKeown suggests in the cover story, with Borders closing 225 stores—in 200+ cities—"Hundreds of markets are potentially without a bookstore for the first time in 40 or 50 years." This an absence greater than I think many of us can truly comprehend. (Though many publishers who relied heavily on Borders for retail sales are aware how significantly they'll be impacted.)
But, while many point out the list of mistakes Borders made to lead it this far down its financially challenged path, it also may mean opportunity—not for Borders, but for independents to step in and fill the void. "In this supply vacuum, the demand is not going to go away, but it won't be there forever before people migrate in frustration [with no local options] to [online options]."
But will indies step up? They have been embattled in recent decades with their own store closings, loss of audience to big-box bookstores and retailers. Still, many have survived. Will the industry get behind a movement to help push them forward, such as funding the proposed Neighborhood Bookstore Development Bank?
Will print-on-demand and short-run printing provide the modern bookstore (indie or not, frankly) with access to an inventory of thousands of books without the overhead of shipping and storage, shelf space, the cost of returns, etc.?
The Harvard Bookstore already has such expanded access with its Espresso Book Machine and Google's partnership with Harvard's Widener Library (see the cover story).
Will online shopping master the "browsing" quality of the brick-and-mortar? Will lack of local options force us online? Will a more Netflix-like model truly become our new book-shopping "friend"? After all, online migration has already begun to meld into our way of life—if even I, a lifelong friend to the brick-and-mortar bookstore, have shopped on Amazon.
I'm sure many of you have your own predictions as to what lies ahead on the retail path. And I'd love to hear them. (Comment on this story online or send me an e-mail.) For now, with the dust still settling, I'll simply bid a sad farewell to 225 Borders stores with a pit in my stomach, but hope fluttering around me. Oh, wait, that's just a moth—couldn't see with all the dust. … Oh wait. Now I see it.