Will Britain’s Bookstores Survive? We think so.
Posted on March 5, 2010 by Vanessa
In this week’s Scottish edition of The Big Issue is a feature about the likely future for brick-and-mortar (as opposed to on-line) bookshops. It draws heavily on an interview with Andrew Bentley-Steed, manager of The Edinburgh Bookshop and you can read it here.
Andrew speaks for all of us when he says that he thinks that independent bookshops are a growing force to be reckoned as booklovers become disillusioned with the limited range in supermarkets and the inceasingly mainstream offerings in chain bookshops. As he says, the book is “old technology, more than than 500 years old, and it’s lasted so long because it works. It’s a very private experience. All the feedback I get from customers is, ‘I like the feel of paper, I like the smell of bookshops, I like the sound a hardback makes when you crack it open’.”
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2 Responses to “Will Britain’s Bookstores Survive? We think so.”
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March 5th, 2010 @ 9:25 pm
How many of us use books as intrior decoration too? Interior decoration consisting just of an e-reader would not have the same visual appeal. Committed readers have a need to be surrounded by books they know and love. They need indies because supermarkets cannot feed their addiction!
March 18th, 2010 @ 2:16 pm
Independent bookshops suffer from a slightly similar problem to supermarkets. Supermarkets display a limited range of bestsellers or books being promoted by publishers (or the dreaded Richard and Judy). Independent bookshops display a small range of material in quite a narrow field (genrally modern fiction for example). Most independent bookshops are too physically small or not well enough resourced to keep a broad range of titles. This is where Waterstones larger branches have an advantage over the supermarkets and the independents.