My Local Used Book Store

I have a small used book store in town. It has been there for decades. It survived the Borders, it survived Amazon, it survived Kindle. Why? It is cheap, it is some what friendly, it has interesting stuff, and it is a walk away.

Borders tried to be too much to too many. I do not think I bought anything from them in a decade. Not that I did not look.

There is a piece in the Boston Globe which I believe totally misses the point. It bemoans the loss of Borders. It states:

Speculations abound concerning the deeper effects of screen technologies on a thoughtful inner life, and it is too soon to mourn the death of reading altogether. People love their e-books. The disappearance of the public book shelf, though, is not unrelated to the blatant new illiteracy that shows itself, at one end, in the shrinking number of published book reviews, and, at the other, in today’s shallow political discourse. Junk opinion replaces the astute analysis that only careful and well-edited authorship provides. ...The business of Borders might be replaced online, but the web that matters most is intangibly of the spirit, and Borders was one of its master weavers. This is the death to mourn - and take warning from.

 Spirit of Borders, I think not. I have placed drafts of my books on line. The get down loaded by the dozens every day, all over the world. Once in a while I get comments. Rarely dd that happen with my Wiley books. I can write things that have a 1-2 year life, such as on health care, and then there are others with a longer life. Is it worth the trouble of getting something published or just getting the ideas out there. Since I no longer worry about tenure, or getting the PR, I can do this. My younger colleagues cannot. But perhaps soon they will.

So is Borders a loss, not at all. What spirit are we talking about! Stuff is out there, and Amazon is making a fortune selling it, and there are tons available on line free.

The issue is what is the purpose of publishing. Making money for the publisher. Sometimes for the author. If that is what you want then stay put folks. If however you are a Thomas Paine and you want to get your ideas out, this is the time to live in. Paine paid to have Common Sense printed and distributed and he took the profits and gave them to Washington. Unlike the classic Harvard Prof in Newton or Lexington, who forces students to but a $200 book, an on line thinker just wants some one to read and perhaps understand his ideas. That is where we are today, that is the new spirit.