Books Without Borders- My Life at the World's Dumbest Bookstore Chain

blogfrombookstores:

“The heartbreaking thing is that this fall, over 10,000 bookstore employees across America will be out of work. The way the publishing industry is going, many of those people won’t be able to find jobs that are even tangentially related to books anymore; they’ll go on to work in movie theaters and grocery stores and as secretaries and child-care providers. They probably won’t be able to spend their days being obsessed with books, and that’s a bad thing for books, which have a hard enough time battling for attention in popular media.”

This is a great read and it also goes really well with my own little rant about Borders.

[via Scribner Books]

Amazon, eBooks, and the demise of Borders and bookshop culture

Because I like bookstores – large and small.  I like browsing.  I like wandering the aisles and touching the books.  Picking them up and feeling their weight.  I like to pick an edition based on the way the pages feel in my hand.  For me, buying a book is a tactile experience. 

I like to browse books by subject – to get lost in the non-fiction section discovering biographies on obscure yet fascinating subjects.  I like to be able to compare a book to its fellows.  Rarely do I go into a book store with a specific purchase in mind.  Through looking (and touching) I find the book that’s right for me at the moment – a book that fits my mood, my budget, my plans for the rest of the day.

Precisely.

(via blogfrombookstores)