Monday, November 22, 2010

The New Bookstore


Recent statistics on bookstores do not paint a rosy picture of their future survival. With the advent of Kindle, IPads, and the giant Amazon.com gobbling up everything under the sun, many are decrying the survival of the bookstore as a foregone conclusion. It's difficult to imagine, but the day may soon arrive when you won't be able to buy a book while holding it in your hands. You may have to opt for a photo of the cover and some contents, or download the whole shebang onto a portable device that will soon be the size of a shelled peanut.

Still, bookstores are trying. The larger ones have recreated the bookstore into a meeting place for coffee, breakfast, or lunch. Most have music and DVDs, too. (But music and movies are themselves suffering from the same online malaise as publishing. Easy access. Free. No need to purchase it at a store.)

But I want to do my part. Here are three options that might work for saving the bookstore.

1. Turn Port-O-Lets into Port-O-Bookstores. You can peruse a small batch of books while you sit and wait. When you flush, you make your selection and purchase. Selections could be tailor-made for the Port-O-Let crowd, with heavy emphasis on NASCAR coffee table books and State Fair cookbooks. Who wouldn't want to buy a book on deep-fried Twinkies if it were readily available at a sitting? Authors could even be available to sign when the doors open. This could be a 24-7 option, as the doors never close.

2. Why don't we turn doctor's offices and hospital emergency rooms into bookstores? Heck, who wouldn't buy a book if they didn't bring reading material for the four hour wait? Got a cerebral hemorrhage? Plenty of great titles out there that could help, and many books can provide triage care that would be more efficient than the Doogie Houser interns.

3. Use parking garages as bookstore kiosks. Picture this: you park your SUV, and as you walk away you come face-to-face with a vending machine containing many great self-help titles like, Grand Theft Auto, The Parking Garage Strangler, or How to Make a Spare Ignition Key.

Come on, folks. We can't let bookstores die. Let's use our imaginations!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Dude, you are seriously warped!
Keep it up.
Ken Wells, Knightstown

Mike Oles III said...

i love bookstores, especially independent bookstores. my favorite is seminary book co-op in chicago, which i think is probably the greatest bookstore in the country.

bookstores ar fantastic gathering places and important for intellectual and spiritual formation. if bookstores are going to be killed off by amazon and the ipad, I wonder if there is a role for churches to play. can churches host bookstores that allow space for spiritual formation and imagination?

if not, the port-o pot idea might work!