There once was a writer in a bookstore /
Of her novels, she wanted to see more. /
Up on the shelves /
She wanted them to dwell /
But first she had to do more than adore.
Tag Archives: bookstore
Haiku and photo: “ONK reads”
Old North Knoxville Reads
Union Ave., thank you. /
Our Little Free Library /
Holds new adventures.
.
.
#oldnorthknoxville #poem #haiku #davidebooker #unionavebooks #poem #poetry #writer #writing #littlefreelibrary #books
062919
Filed under 2019, haiku, photo by David E. Booker, Poetry by David E. Booker
19 Beautiful Bookstores You Need To Visit In America
Bookshop road trip, anyone?
Source: 19 Beautiful Bookstores You Need To Visit In America
The real question is: Can you ever have too many beautiful bookstores in your life? Yelp identified the best bookstores in the country by looking at both the number of reviews and the star-rating, then hand-selected the most dazzling stores from that list.
So here are 19 incredible bookstores you need to see for yourself, as told by the Yelp users who love books and ambiance just as much as the rest of us.
The return of the printed book
Books are back. Only the technodazzled thought they would go away
The hysterical cheerleaders of the e-book failed to account for human experience, and publishers blindly followed suit. But the novelty has worn off
by Simon Jenkins
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/13/books-ebook-publishers-paper?CMP=fb_gu
At last. Peak digital is at hand. The ultimate disruptor of the new information age is … wait for it … the book.
Books are back
Amazon has opened its first bookshop.
Now the official Publishers’ Association confirms the trend. Last year digital content sales fell last year from £563m to £554m. After years on a plateau, physical book sales turned up, from £2.74bn to £2.76bn.
They have been boosted by the marketing of colouring and lifestyle titles, but there is always a reason. The truth is that digital readers were never remotely in the same ballpark. The PA regards the evidence as unmistakable, “Readers take a pleasure in a physical book that does not translate well on to digital.” Virtual books, like virtual holidays or virtual relationships, are not real. People want a break from another damned screen.
What went wrong? Clearly publishing, like other industries before (and since), suffered a bad attack of technodazzle: It failed to distinguish between newness and value. It could read digital’s hysterical cheerleaders, but not predict how a market of human beings would respond to a product once the novelty had passed. It ignored human nature. Reading the meaning of words is not consuming a manufacture: it is experience.
As so often, the market leader was the music business. Already, by the turn of the 21st century, its revenues were shifting dramatically from reproduction to live. This was partly because recording and distributing music became so cheap there was no profit margin, but it was largely because the market had changed. Buyers, young and old, wanted to witness music played in the company of like minds, and were prepared to pay for the experience – often to pay lots. Soon the same was true for live sport, live theatre, even live talks. The festival has become king. The money is back at the gate.
Books must be the ultimate test. Admittedly some festivals now give away books for free and charge instead to hear the writers speak.
But just buying, handling, giving and talking about a book seems to have caught the magic dust of “experience”. A book is beauty. A book is a shelf, a wall, a home.
The book was declared dead with the coming of radio. The hardback was dead with the coming of paperbacks. Print-on-paper was buried fathoms deep by the great god, digital. It was rubbish, all rubbish. Like other aids to reading, such as rotary presses, Linotyping and computer-setting, digital had brought innovation to the dissemination of knowledge and delight. But it was a means, not an end.
Since the days of Caxton and Gutenberg, print-on-paper has shown astonishing longevity. The old bruisers have seen off another challenge.
Filed under 2016, book publishing, books
The return of independent bookstores
Indie Bookstores Are Back, With a Passion
by Francis X. Clines
Independent bookstores making a comeback.
The decades of trauma suffered by independent neighborhood bookstores — damage from bargain megastores, the ascension of the e-book and Amazon’s flash delivery of cut-rate reading — hardly hindered Chris Doeblin’s search for the right place to open his fourth independent bookstore in Manhattan.
In fact those serial threats across 30 years in the business drove his search for his next “indie” locale. “We are pushed from behind and driven ahead by the pull of the future,” Mr. Doeblin said last month, explaining why his three Book Culture stores are not enough. “I have 10-year-old kids. You have to reinvent yourself.”
A reader might find his determined search a noble but counterintuitive escapade after years of watching the lights sadly go out on small neighborhood bookshops where social warmth was such a part of the browsing. But the good news is that the indies are quietly resurging across the nation, registering a growth of over 30 percent since 2009 and sales that were up around 10 percent last year, according to the American Booksellers Association, the indies’ main organization with more than 2,200 stores.
“Existing stores are selling once more to a new generation of owners,” said Oren Teicher, the A.B.A.’s chief executive officer, noting that such stores could never be resold during the gloomiest years, when they were under threat from Barnes & Noble and then later, Internet sales. The indies now find that readers are looking for life beyond their computer screens. They want to embrace books in all three dimensions and to select them in a tactile, less anonymous marketplace. Booksellers are fellow readers who converse knowledgeably and jot down their current favorites on helpful bookshelf notes.
“It’s a more holistic consumerism,” says Mr. Doeblin, describing the bookstore resurgence as part of the explosion of the localism movement that finds young new farmers delivering fresh produce to Main Street markets. “The computer screen just hurts; you need a real book in your hand,” he says. “People become antisocial through technology and social media.”
Mr. Doeblin relished opening his third Book Culture store in 2014 on the upper West Side only a few blocks from a Barnes & Noble that was reportedly struggling to survive in the face of Amazon. He had giant advance notices emblazoned on the windows announcing: “You’ve Got Mail, New York! You’re Going to Get Another Independent Book Store!” He was delighted to find eager customers when it opened, and now has 15,000 people registered for discounts. The store holds various social activities and sells plenty of products like stationery, greeting cards, children’s games and toys, even backpacks — all part of the merchandise of most successful bookstores nowadays.
Mr. Doeblin has no idea what form the competitive threat will take next — Amazon drones delivering books to Broadway apartments? But he’s been walking through assorted neighborhoods, convinced that a fourth Book Culture store can hold its own among the sorts of customers who savor true community as much as a good read.
***
Amazon Killed the Bookstore. So It’s Opening a Bookstore
Store opening in University Village in Seattle, WA. Twenty years after Amazon started selling books online.
by Issie Lapowsky
Source: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/amazon-killed-the-bookstore-so-its-opening-a-bookstore/
Bookstore owners already loathe Amazon for gutting the cost of books online and driving so many brick and mortar shops out of business. Now, the online retailer is both beating them and joining them, with the opening of its first physical bookstore today in Seattle.
Amazon Books, as the new store is called, will be like any other Main Street bookstore (remember those?), except that Amazon will use the troves of data it collects from its online customers to stock the shelves. That means its book displays will feature real Amazon book reviews, and the store will showcase books that have amassed the most pre-orders online. The books will also come with Amazon’s trademark low price tags.
It can afford those cut-rate prices, of course, because Amazon Books is as much a bookstore as it is a billboard. Amazon’s not suddenly betting big on the bookstore business, and it certainly doesn’t need the store to be a success in order for Amazon to succeed. It’s better to think of Amazon Books as a giant advertisement. If it makes a little extra money for a $294.7 billion company, all the better.
The one silver lining for the book enthusiasts forced to watch their industry turn into a gimmick is that, according to the Seattle Times, Amazon is hiring from other retail stores and libraries that may be struggling. Well, silver lining for those hoping for Seattle-area book store jobs. For Seattle-area book store employers, it’s probably not pleasant watching their employees get poached.
For now, Amazon says the store won’t be serving double duty as a warehouse or pickup center, and the vice president of Amazon Books, Jennifer Cast, tells the Seattle Times the company doesn’t yet have plans to open a second location. “We’re completely focused on this bookstore,” Cast said. “We hope this is not our only one. But we’ll see.”
Additional article: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-opens-first-bricks-and-mortar-bookstore-at-u-village/
What Not to Say to Bookstore Employees
Source: http://bookriot.com/2015/07/03/what-not-to-say-to-bookstore-employees-2/
Avoid bookstore faux pas like the following while speaking to the overworked bookstore employees with their smocks and helpful head nods:
- How much does this cost on Amazon?
- How can you work here when Amazon Prime exists? Are you on Amazon Prime?
- I’m a writer and I don’t want to waste my time, so which of these should I actually read?
- I only read signed copies. Where is the signed section?
- I don’t need help. I just come by the bookstore to hit on the smart people buying Ulysses for light, fun reading.
- I don’t need help. I just want to write down all of Giada’s recipes.
- I don’t need help. I’m just figuring out where my book will be shelved once I finish it, get an agent, sell it, and get it stocked here, in this location.
- I don’t need help. I’m just writing notes on page fifteen of every book. I’m creating a treasure hunt for the bookish.
- Which of these is going to be a movie? I want to judge the future movie by the past cover.
- How many teens die in this one? I only respond to mass numbers of teen deaths.
- If I just spilled my coffee on the hardcover book of swimming dogs, should I tell you about it?
Rest of the list at: http://bookriot.com/2015/07/03/what-not-to-say-to-bookstore-employees-2/
Retitled
This Guy Created His Own Hilarious Book Sections At A Local Bookstore
Source: http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-accurate-book-section-names/
Tired of having to look at boring and often misleading book sections at his local bookstore, one guy decided to create his own alternative sections that would describe the books more accurately. He carefully placed them all around the bookstore, photographed the results and quickly got away before anyone noticed.
For example, the culinary section is now called “Meals You Intend To Make, But Never Will” – which we have to agree is a much more accurate description. Also, instead of looking for romance novel section, girls can now ask the store manager to show them where the “Dudes who lost their shirts” section is.
Finally there’s some order in the book world!
Section titles include:
Dudes Who Lost Their Shirts
Meals You Intend To Make, But Never Will
Great Places To Poop
And others.
To see photos and read more about it, go to http://www.boredpanda.com/funny-accurate-book-section-names/
The Bookstore Strikes Back
The Bookstore Strikes Back – Ann Patchett – The Atlantic.
Parnassus Books
by Ann Patchett
Author opens an independent bookstore to fill a need.
Address: 3900 Hillsboro Pike, Nashville, TN 37215
Phone:(615) 953-2243
Two years ago, when Nashville lost its only in-town bookstores, the novelist Ann Patchett decided to step into the breach. Parnassus Books, which Patchett and two veteran booksellers envisioned, designed, financed, and manage, is now open for business and enjoying the ride.
In late February I am in my basement, which is really a very nice part of my house that is not done justice by the word basement. For the purposes of this story, let’s call it the Parnassus Fulfillment Center. I have hauled 533 boxed-up hardback copies of my latest novel, State of Wonder, from Parnassus, the bookstore I co-own in Nashville, into my car; driven them across town (three trips there and three trips back); and then lugged them down here to the Parnassus Fulfillment Center. Along with the hardbacks, I have brought in countless paperback copies of my backlist books as well. I sign all these books and stack them up on one enormous and extremely sturdy table. Then I call for backup: Patrik and Niki from the store, my friend Judy, my mother. Together we form an assembly line, taking orders off the bookstore’s Web site, addressing mailing labels, writing tiny thank-you notes to tuck inside the signed copies, then bubble-wrapping, taping, and packing them up to mail. We get a rhythm going, we have a system, and it’s pretty smooth, except for removing the orders from the Web site. What I don’t understand is why, no matter how many orders I delete from the list, the list does not get shorter. We are all work and no progress, and I’m sure something serious must be going wrong. After all, we’ve had this Web site for only a week, and who’s to say we know what we’re doing? “We know what we’re doing,” Niki says, and Patrik, who set up the Web site in the first place, confirms this. They explain to me that the reason the list isn’t getting any shorter is that orders are still coming in.
You may have heard the news that the independent bookstore is dead, that books are dead, that maybe even reading is dead—to which I say: Pull up a chair, friend. I have a story to tell.
The reason I was signing and wrapping books in my basement is that more orders were coming in than the store could handle, and the reason so many orders were coming in is that, a few days before, I had been a guest on The Colbert Report. After a healthy round of jousting about bookstores versus Amazon, Stephen Colbert held a copy of my novel in front of the cameras and exhorted America to buy it from Amazon—to which I, without a moment’s thought (because without a moment’s thought is how I fly these days), shouted, “No! No! Not Amazon. Order it off ParnassusBooks.net, and I’ll sign it for you.” And America took me up on my offer, confirming once and for all that the “Colbert bump” is real. That explains how I got stuck in the basement, but fails to answer the larger question of what a writer of literary fiction whose “new” book was already nine months old was doing on The Colbert Report in the first place. Hang on, because this is where things get weird: I was on the show not because I am a writer but because I am a famous independent bookseller.
Let’s go back to the beginning of the story.
Two years ago, the city of Nashville had two bookstores. One was Davis-Kidd, which had been our much-beloved locally owned and operated independent before selling out to the Ohio-based Joseph-Beth Booksellers chain 15 years earlier. Joseph-Beth moved Davis-Kidd into a mall, provided it with 30,000 square feet of retail space, and put wind chimes and coffee mugs and scented candles in front of the book displays. We continued to call it our “local independent,” even though we knew that wasn’t really true anymore. Nashville also had a Borders, which was about the same size as Davis-Kidd and sat on the edge of Vanderbilt’s campus. (In candor, I should say that Nashville has some truly wonderful used-book stores that range from iconic to overwhelming. But while they play an important role in the cultural fabric of the city, it is a separate role—or maybe that’s just the perspective of someone who writes books for a living.) We have a Barnes & Noble that is a 20-minute drive out of town without traffic, a Books-A-Million on the western edge of the city, near a Costco, and also a Target. Do those count? Not to me, no, they don’t, and they don’t count to any other book-buying Nashvillians with whom I am acquainted.
In December 2010, Davis-Kidd closed. It was profitable, declared the owners from Ohio, who were dismantling the chain, but not profitable enough. Then, in May 2011, our Borders store—also profitable—went the way of all Borders stores. Nashvillians woke up one morning and found that we no longer had a bookstore.
The rest of the story at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/12/the-bookstore-strikes-back/309164/?single_page=true
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