[LINK] "How to Quit Amazon and Shop in an Actual Bookstore"

[rfmcdonald]

Blogging at Esquire, Stephen Marche makes a four-point argument in favour of buying books not online but in bookstores.

The movement to boycott Amazon has been picking up speed for several weeks now. In the wake of strong-arm tactics in its negotiations with Hachette publishing, Amazon has managed to offend the actual writers whose books Hachette publishes, including Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, and JK Rowling. That wouldn't matter so much if one of them wasn't Stephen Colbert. He has promoted stickers that viewers can download from his website, which read, I DIDN'T BUY IT ON AMAZON. Amazon has responded by telling customers that anybody inconvenienced by the battle with Hachette should buy books elsewhere.

Until publishers decide to start a competitor website selling books, which eventually they are going to have to do, anyone wanting to follow Colbert's or Amazon's advice ought to venture into actual physical bookstores. Unfortunately, by now, purchasing print books in a brick-and-mortar building is something of a lost art, like taking snuff or drinking brandy after dinner. Which is not to say that it's not worth doing. Quite the opposite. Buying books in a bookstore is one of life's great, quiet pleasures. It leads to the purchase of better books. It leads to a deeper relationship to reading. It is a joy in and of itself.

[. . .]

A good bookstore isn't just a place to buy books. The really good ones are bespoke tailoring for your narrative impulse. And that experience, it's worth pointing out, is available in every town, and it's free. The real problem with Amazon isn't that it's strong-arming Hachette; it's that it leads readers to buy books that they've already heard about. When you pick out a summer novel for yourself online, you're going to pick the book that everybody else is reading, almost automatically. But the book that you want probably isn't Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. It probably isn't another James Patterson. A good seller in a bookstore is infinitely superior in every way to a personalization algorithm. Even by entering a bookstore, you're faced with literally a thousand choices that you've never been faced with before. Somewhere in there is something that's entirely fresh to you, and will reward your soul by exposure. That's what good books do, and good bookstores, too. They let you step out of your algorithm.