another endangered species takes a step closer to extinction

[15_the_circle]

[OT from cottage renovations]

habitat loss and economic climate change are continuing to take their toll on independent bookstores. 

Comments

Independent bookstores

[(Anonymous)]

Well, there's still Powell's, formerly of Hyde Park (Chicago) and now in Portland, OR. But it's not really the fault of B.Dalton or Barnes & Noble. Americans don't read much, and for those of us who do, anything we want can be easily ordered from Amazon or its many competitors.

So unless you want to sit in an armchair with a cup of tea (and you can do that at home), there's little reason to visit a bookstore anymore.

There's not a lot of demand for typewriters, anymore, either. Times change.

re: Independent bookstores

[15-the-circle.livejournal.com]

not much demand for railroads, either, and I miss them (particularly their socioeconomic relevance) too. 

small bookstores, small drugstores, small lumberyards and hardware stores, stationery stores (remember them?); all are subject to the same habitat loss and economic climate change.  by way of one anecdotal example, here in the Grove the Woman's Club publishes a directory every three years (one should have come out in '06 but for a variety of reasons that didn't happen).  looking quickly through the list of advertisers, about 40% have gone out of business since the last edition.  that's a lot of churn in the small retail sector of our local economy, a sure sign of change though I don't pretend to know what it means nor where things are headed. 

looking further afield, the one exception seems to be agriculture: preserving family owned and operated farms is held to be a worthy goal.  I don't know how effective it's been (production seems to be shifting to agribusiness or overseas and farmland is increasingly being repurposed to exurban sprawl) but the farmers have cabinet-level representation in our government.  booksellers don't. 

Re: Independent bookstores

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, farmers do indeed have their own Cabinet member (Sec of Agriculture). There is no Secretary of Books, AFAIK.

But then there's also a joke about the Agriculture Department. Supposedly a visitor passed an office and saw its occupant sobbing, with his head down on the desk. He asked the Ag Dept. official he was with, "What happened to him?" and was told, "His farmer died".