The Future of Bookstores

Paul Collins (proprietor of the excellent Weekend Stubble and writer of "121 Years of Solitude", my favorite piece in Bookmark Now) has an excellent essay in the Village Voice about bookselling's future. The 1930 quote from the Carnegie Corporation is particularly priceless, and suggests that the plight of old-fashioned bookstores is hardly a recent phenomenon.

Despite the current dominance of the Killer B's (who shall further remain nameless), those chains' executives should be sobered by the litany of past bookselling giants who have fallen by the wayside, as well as the promising potential of print-on-demand. In fact, right now I'm reading my first Lulu-published title (Richard Grayson's very nice And To Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street), and have another on the way. This may very well be the future of publishing. As an aspiring writer with admittedly limited commercial potential, I certainly hope so.