I was delighted to read a column by Ezra Klein about the transformation at Barnes & Noble (B&N) in the US: ““How is it that bookstores do justify themselves in the age of Amazon?” James Daunt, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, asked during the Book Industry Study Group’s 2020 Keynote. “They do so by being places in which you discover books with an enjoyment, with a pleasure, with a serendipity that is simply impossible to replicate online. And to do that, you have to have a good bookstore.” Daunt’s diagnosis of the industry is refreshingly simple: Good bookstores thrive, bad bookstores die. He waves away the belief that online shopping and e-readers have been unstoppable harbingers of demise. “My view was that the reason bookstores had failed to defend themselves against Amazon is simply they weren’t good enough,” he told me, “and the only reason they would fail to defend themselves against Kindle is they wouldn’t be good enough.”…Barnes & Noble’s resurgence is a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about its (or any bookstore’s) demise. Great bookstores and libraries still provide something the digital world cannot: a place not just to buy or borrow books, but to be among them.”
Ted Gioia wrote about B&N: “Daunt started giving more power to the stores. But publishers complained bitterly. They now had to make more sales calls, and convince local bookbuyers—and that’s hard work. Even worse, when a new book doesn’t live up to expectations, the local workers see this immediately. Books are expected to appeal to readers—and just convincing a head buyer at headquarters was no longer enough. Daunt also refused to dumb-down the store offerings. The key challenge, he claimed was to “create an environment that’s intellectually satisfying—and not in a snobbish way, but in the sense of feeding your mind.””
Financial Times had this to say about Kitab Khana in Mumbai: “When the motorcycles, shouting hawkers and stalls sizzling with frying snacks get too much, Kitab Khana – a spacious, wood-panelled bookshop in a colonial-era building in Mumbai’s southern Fort neighbourhood – makes for welcome respite from the heat and bustle. The store, named after the palace libraries kept for Mughal emperors (it means “a home for books”), stocks an intriguing variety of Indian and international authors, including collections in languages such as Hindi and Marathi, with staff on hand to provide guidance and cosy nooks in which to read. A programme of regular talks and readings and an in-house café round out the offering.”
The world – and we adults and kids – needs more bookstores and libraries. We need to surround ourselves with good books; in times of need, they can be our friend, philosopher and guide. Even as screens chip away our free moments, we need to pull ourselves away into the world of books and bookstores – to imagine worlds we could never have dreamt of otherwise, to discover voices different from our own, and to probe ideas which challenge our thinking. The next time you want to do something different, go and spend time in a bookstore. And while there, put your mobile on ‘Airplane’ mode, pick up a book, find a comfortable spot, and read.
