The Book Trade is Alive

I was talking to a man I know in the bookselling industry, and I had asked him about the difference in sales of books versus electronic products. Anecdotally, he remarked that only five or ten percent of his sales came from e-books and e-readers.  I was surprised to learn that a major portion of those sales was attributed to older readers who needed large print editions.  So, while the advertisers would have us believe that those sleek tablets are most often snapped up by young, hip, movers and shakers, in fact, it’s more likely to be Grandma who can’t see without her glasses.

This was all a lead in to the obvious fact that the paper book industry is by no means dead.  One had only to wander the shelves of the book store to see the incredible diversity of literature on nearly every topic imaginable.  I was happy to see a healthy, even burgeoning, science fiction and fantasy section.  An illustrated version of the Tolkien classic “The Hobbit” (somehow tied in to the new “The Desolation of Smaug” film) was prominently displayed. It was big and golden and glossy and even when displayed spine first, seemed to pop out and say “take me out and look at me -- then you will be MINE!” Nearly every next volume on the shelf had that same “you MUST own me” quality.  Only my deeply rooted Scottish miserliness and my occasionally disregarded Midwestern common sense saved from returning home with a pile of books and a bewildered cry of “where am I going to PUT them all?”.

There were sections that led me to different feelings, depending on their content.  One such was a ‘classic literature’ display, which implied that your home library was deficient if you did not own the complete works of Conan Doyle, the Iliad AND the Odyssey, not to mention Proust, Maupassant, Jane Austen, and, if necessary, both Brontes. There will always be SOMETHING you are missing, so you had better get to it and buy the lot.

Then there were the quirky titles, like the one that wanted to help you discern such things as the difference BETWEEN the Iliad and the Odyssey. If you thought you were just fine, there were lots of books to prove you wrong.  Diet books abounded, telling you to cut out fat, gluten, preservatives, sugar, and anything else worth eating. Who knew there were 1,500 ways to serve seaweed?

Of course, if you just couldn’t bring yourself to buy another book (or more likely, couldn’t decide which one to choose) there were games, gift sets, mugs, book lights, candles and other cultus of the middlebrow literati. Nothing quite assuages the guilt of buying for oneself than purchasing extravagances for someone else.  

I think one of the reasons book buying will never die is that there will always be a segment of society that likes to look well read, and is willing to pay a premium to do so.