Goodbye to the Small Bookshop
Archive: Online bookselling
From an article in slate on the vanishing of small bookshops:
Unfortunately, many virtues of the new order are relatively invisible. Consider the used-book market. It was much easier to find a good used bookstore 20 years ago. Yet it has never been easier to buy a good used book, with the aid of, among others, Abebooks, a superb central depot for used booksellers.
What Are Independent Bookstores Really Good For?
Feel free to share your feelings about Goodbye to the Small Bookshop. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted.
This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard
1 · Posted by: Jamie on May 16, 2006 03:35 PM
It's interesting, in my town with a population of about 350,000 when combined with the city across the river (kinda like Dallas/Ft. Worth), there are about 12 or 13 independent used bookstores. I remember in high school I used to spend all day some Saturdays visiting each store—you could indeed go from one to another all day without visiting the same one twice.
A few have closed down since then, but still, for a city of its size, the number of independent book stores was/is amazing.
What attracts me to such stores is the prices, because the chain retail stores have prohibitively high prices… I wouldn't have the book collection that I have today without having access to so many used bookstores….