Shaking hands with the long tail at Borders
Today contemplation rises in the ascendant, and I’m thinking about what we lose with all the blessings of technology. (This was evident in my last post, I think.)
Here’s another story about loss: I needed a break, and my sweet wife Kathi sent me out into the San Fernando Valley night by myself (!) while she bathed and fed the kids and got them into bed. If readers of this blog haven’t already noticed, I’m a lifelong booklover and found myself wandering to the nearest Borders. To my delight, they had the next installation in a science fiction series I’m enjoying, and then I wandered upstairs to check out Ian Buruma’s latest book, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, which my friend Warren Bennis had recommended over lunch the other day.
I read the first chapter, and it ROCKED, but then I put it back on the shelf because I decided not to pay $24.95 plus tax at Borders when I could get it from Amazon.com for $16.47.
I just finished ordering it a few minutes ago. I’m an Amazon Prime member, so it will be waiting for me when I get home from work on Wednesday.
I don’t feel terrible about this because I BOUGHT the science fiction book — so Borders has some of my custom — and because I found the copies of the Buruma book on the wrong shelf and pointed out the misfiling to a Borders employee who thanked me, and because I find it hard to feel all that bad about saving money by choosing to patronize one big corporation (Amazon) instead of their partner, Borders.
Still, I wish that the San Fernando Valley had some decent independent bookstores where a guy could go a-browsing on a Sunday night. My beloved science fiction bookstore Dangerous Visions went out of retail business years ago, as did the local Dutton’s. With a hall pass from home I would probably have been willing to drive to Santa Monica to seek out Midnight Special, but they’re gone. Book Soup on Sunset Blvd. is too far from my home for anything but a special occasion destination, as is Vroman’s out in Pasadena. I’d gladly vote with my dollars on this, but there’s nobody to vote for.
Chris Anderson’s long tail is all well and good, but I have yet to find an online bookstore that has a tenth the serendipity of a brick and mortar, and I miss knowing booksellers and trading recommendations with folks I know at a bookstore.
This all feels quite vivid right now because last month, on my way home from our iMedia Agency Summit in Scottsdale, I found myself browsing in the Borders at the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, where the sales lady, a pleasant middle aged woman, chatted with me for several minutes about what I like to read and then recommended The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I read it over the winter holiday and loved it, and plan to stop by that Borders the next time I’m in the Phoenix airport.
I feel like I should go rent “You’ve Got Mail.”
2 Responses to “Shaking hands with the long tail at Borders”
1 David 16 January 2007 @ 8:29 pm
My first instinct was “Don’t do that — the sellout ending undercuts any relevant point the film might have made, and besides it sucks,” but maybe the movie has a point. Perhaps independent bookstores giving way to giant chains and automated online shops is just progress, and railing against it makes no more sense than candlemakers battling the advent of the electric light. I’m just as guilty as anyone of using Amazon wish lists to quickly and easily finish my holiday shopping.
And yet, I don’t see any way off the slippery slope we’re heading down by placing price and convenience over the exploration and human connection of indie bookstores. Admittedly, I’m not impartial, as my family had a dog in that losing fight for two decades, but every purchase made with a few clicks, or at a megachain better known for its coffee bar than its well-read employees, is another step away from that experience you had in the Phoenix airport, one more vote for simple certainty over serendipity, one more nail in the coffin of a once-treasured institution.
Sorry about the rant, buddy.
2 JohnPearson 24 January 2007 @ 8:41 pm
Nice Post.
That was well said. Always appreciate your indepth views. Keep up the great work!
John