I like writing about bookshops. In fact I wrote about ‘the perfect bookshop' for the Sunday Observer when I was a teenager. It was my first time 'in print'. I've not seen a copy of the article for years and can't remember what I wrote. I like to think that I described a bookshop with sofas and cups of tea and that I was years ahead of my time and that I invented Waterstones.
Can bookshops survive?
But how are these ‘bookshops of the future' faring now? In the US, according to the latest statistics, publisher revenues from digital products have outstripped those from traditional ‘bricks and mortar' shops for the first time. Revenues from downloaded audiobooks, for example, were up almost 20% in 2013.
Other changes in digital reading
The US is also experiencing a decline in the dedicated e-reader market. People are increasingly reading on their tablets or smartphones and are not using dedicated e-reader devices. Multi-feature devices are killing off the specialised ones - and this is a problem for publishers. Writing in New York Magazine, Kevin Roose says that those using e-reader devices benefit from a more immersive reading experience - and are reading more. When they are reading on their iPhones or tablets a range of other information is competing for the reader's attention.
Digital in-store and re-inventing bookshops
Meanwhile in London Foyles the Bookshop has relocated to a new site on Charing Cross Road and undergone quite a transformation. You can see a nice time-lapse video of half a million books being moved on YouTube. In this article, Ben Davis visits the new store to test the digital in-store experience as he set out to find a specific book.A feature in [The Economist's] Intelligent Life asks architects and designers to design a bookshop. Their responses include: download and vending walls; literary sommeliers; social reading experiences - the bookstore becoming (like the library) a social experience rather than a place purely for commercial transactions.
Finally..... If anyone can help me locate a copy of my Sunday Observer magazine article, I would love to hear from you!
Sources: The Bookseller; Publishing Perspectives; econsultancy; Mashable.