Culture may close the book on shops

Contra Costa Times ^ | 6/22/6 | John Simerman

[Larry Lucido]

What on earth made you decide that the people in the article are liberals?

Given the venue, it's not much of a leap. Like asking how you know a shopkeeper in Palermo is Italian. He might not be, but probably is.

That said, I've spent time in Berkley and have had discussions with business owners. They were nominally liberal to a person, but when it came to their own money and business they magically turned into free-market private property enthusiasts.

[Larry Lucido]

I think Dagney is way hotter than Pamela.

[MarkL]

You can't grep a dead tree!

Mark

[MarkL]

There is a very easy reason why these stores are closing.

Hippies who read commie hate speach and islamofacist literature and smoke hand rolled cigarettes all day, have NO MONEY.

If they want to start making money, maybe they should set up an Ann Coulter display.

Mark

[Larry Lucido]

Don't discount audio books. Books that are mostly narrative and not overly technical lend themselves to this format. I always have one available when running, driving, or just tinkering around the house.

[hoosierboy]

How ironic, a victim of capitalism.

[LowOiL]

What on earth made you decide that the people in the article are liberals?

TLB loaned me his ability to see the truth for the week. < /sarcasm>

[Old Student]

"Honor Harrington rules, maybe the most interesting military speculative fiction of the last quarter century."

Not to argue, but maybe quibble a little, Queen Adrienne rules, and Honor makes sure it stays that way! ;) Excellent stories, indeed. I think David Weber went a little better than C.S. Forester. John Ringo does some pretty good stuff, too. I even like Eric Flint, lib that he is.

[js1138]

I'm not currently into audiobooks, but they seem to be a growth industry.

I'm thinking that people with great reading voices will eventually copyright their voice signatures for computerized readers. Current text to voice technology is pretty primitive, but I can foresee a solution.

A talented actor reads the text, and his/her inflections are digitally encoded. Then the original reader's voice is replaced with a licensed voiceover emulating the actor of your choice. Actors could earn royalties from their voices long after they are retired or dead.

TV commercials are already running with clips from old movies digitally embedded into new footage.

[Centurion2000]

I've often thought someone should open one catering to "righty's". Might work...might not but it's worth a try.

It might work, but I doubt it considering that most of us would be WORKING, not sitting around in a shop adding 'culture'

I buy most of my books off amazon and my first wish list is something like 15 pages long.

[Old Student]

"I've read a lot of public domain works online, but if I really like a book I buy a hard copy. Somehow curling up with a cup of tea and a laptop just isn't the same as curling up with a cup of tea and a good book."

Try a Palm. I've got a Zire 31 with a 1GB SD card, and a couple of hundred ebooks, mostly SF from Baen Books, but also including a lot of Project Gutenberg's stuff.

[SauronOfMordor]

It's getting easier to publish via the print-to-order businesses, some of which can even produce hardcover editions. In the long run, that avenue will develop a lot more, and result in publication of a lot of books that would never have gotten published before as they have a very small target audience.

I'd like to see that in technical textbooks. Some of my daughter's textx are obscenely costly, although I think much of the cost is professors lining their pockets

Stuff that needs to be updated frequently is a prime candidate for print-to-order

[SauronOfMordor]

That said, I've spent time in Berkley and have had discussions with business owners. They were nominally liberal to a person, but when it came to their own money and business they magically turned into free-market private property enthusiasts.

Not surprising. I've found that a liberal can be accurately defined as somebody who is generous with other people's money

[GOPJ]

ping

[SauronOfMordor]

I think David Weber went a little better than C.S. Forester. John Ringo does some pretty good stuff, too. I even like Eric Flint, lib that he is.

David Drake is one of my favorites in the military/SF category

[Billthedrill]

Bibliopath BTT. (Guilty as chargec, m'Lud!) There are, of course, two arms to this argument, only one of which is cultural. The first of these is business model. There was a charming, old-school model in which the customer used to like to come in and browse for something interesting he or she might purchase. This corresponds very nicely with dusty old used-book shops that hold a 20-year-old printing of Kant. There is another, however, in which the customer already knows what he or she wants and will go to whatever outlet promises availibility and low price. And that's why you find the big-box book bins. The difficulty is that the latter can support browsing while the former can't support inventory.

It's boutique versus supermarket and there is room for both models as long as the boutique really does offer something unique. Smart businesspeople running independent bookstores know this and behave accordingly.

Now, cultural arm of this little problem is fairly evident here:

Kepler's Books...was saved by a group of investors who could not bear the loss of a cultural and literary hub with a long history of progressive thought.

As long as the "boutiqueness" of the bookstore revolves around politics it has to depend on only that portion of the population that is sympathetic to those politics and not the population at large. It may be wonderful for close-minded progressives to expect only books that agree with their politics to be displayed but they're going to have to pay for the privilege. A political monoculture is and ought to be an expensive luxury. And unfortunately this portion of the population has a decidedly anti-business sentiment and an expectation that such things as these bookstores ought to be provided to them just because by a society that ought to be grateful for their enlightened presence. That makes for lovely coffee-house rhetoric but it doesn't pay the light bill.

[redgolum]

A more alarming trend, to me, is the one that has public libraries reducing the number of books available in the stacks.

I see that also. I have a lot of fond memories of pulling all sorts of weird stuff of the shelves of the library growing up. Stuff from AI theory, to how to make stink bombs, to old forgotten history books, etc. Now, when I live in a much larger metro area, most of the libraries are half empty. Yet the cities keep building more, but just take books from the old.

[Old Student]

"David Drake is one of my favorites in the military/SF category" Yes, and he has collaborated with David Weber and Eric Flint, so far, IIRC. Lots of good stuff there, as well. I think Ranks of Bronze is my favorite of his...

[Mamzelle]

Was it a good book?

[Mamzelle]

re: Nonsense about e-books. Nobody's going to read an entire book on screen.)))

I don't think so, either, unless the technology changes and you can print out a book for a reasonable cost, or some similar and yet-unimagined change in format. But, then, there was a time I never expected to get to read the Wash Times online.