Bookstores and buggy whips

David Streitfeld in the Los Angeles Times writes about the rising death toll last year among independent bookstores in California -- previously thought to be immune to Amazon's effect on bookbuyers.

The headline in a surviving bookstore's ad -- "rare but not extinct" -- reminds one of the cliche comparison about "going the way of the buggy whip" as a statement of economic obsolescence. Actually, if a company survives such a cultural-technological shift, it can find that it's now in a much smaller market -- but it has that whole market pretty much to itself. The Westfield Whip Manufacturing Co. in Westfield, Massachussetts (once eyebrow-raisingly known as "Whip City") owns the last remaining, 19th-century whip braiding machine in the U.S. And the town manufactures more high-grade whips than anywhere else in the country. Small consolation, I suppose, to all those people who lost factory jobs along the way, but it does mean there is life after horseless carriages and life after the internet.

Nowhere in Mr. Streitfeld's otherwise thoroughly reported article does anyone address the fact that bookstores satisfy customers with something in addition to just books for purchase. The independents that survive often make themselves an integral part of their communities -- they are "destination" stores, "event" stores.

It's a fact, for example, that the Dallas-Fort Worth area suffers when it comes to author tours because publishers do not want to send an author to an empty chainstore in AnySuburbAnywhere. It's depressing for a novelist to sit at a table for two hours with no one knowing who the hell he is. It might make him think his publisher isn't marketing his book and make him start thinking about getting another publisher. Well-run independents know they have to do more than just set the books out on the shelves; they have to bring people in. When they present authors, they often use mailing lists of customers to draw an audience.

Which is why publishers repeatedly send big-name authors to Book People in Austin or Brazos Bookstore in Houston -- and bypass all of Dallas-Fort Worth. There is no major independent bookstore here. An author can be touring to 12 cities, I've even seen 24-city tours -- and Dallas-Fort Worth isn't on his itinerary. Authors such as Martin Amis have come to Texas several times, and never stopped here.

So that's why it's worrisome when a Clean Well-Lighted Place closes or a Micawber closes. It's not just that Amazon has killed another one; it's that a long-time community asset has gone, a gathering place for people who read, a place to connect over coffee and books and shared literary interests. There aren't many such places left in American cities, whether the place is public, private or commercial.