New York's Last Remaining Independent Bookshops (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Guardian, written by Hermione Hoby: Michael Seidenberg, pictured kingly in his throne of a wicker chair, feet spread, pipe in mouth, is one of around 50 New York indie booksellers featured in a series of portraits by Philippe Ungar and Franck Bohbot, a pair of bibliophilic Frenchmen who met and befriended each other in Brooklyn. The two, writer and photographer respectively, have taken great pleasure in traveling across the city, to neighborhoods in every borough, to meet and photograph booksellers in their habitats. Despite their diversity, the way their distinct personalities and passions are reflected and amplified in their shops, they are all, says Ungar, "looking for the same thing -- a generous vision of sharing culture". Ungar mentions Corey Farach, owner of the scruffy, adored and longstanding feminist bookshop Bluestockings. Farach, as Ungar recounts with admiration, encourages those people who can't afford to buy a $40 book to take a seat, make themselves comfortable, and just read it in the shop. "That is to me," says Ungar, "the spirit of the indie booksellers." Because, as he sees it, "a bookstore is much more than a bookstore, it's much more than selling books. It's a public shelter. Whoever you are, you don't have to buy anything, they won't ask you for your ID. You're free -- you can stay for hours and browse. There's a generosity, an optimism. And that's what we wanted to enhance." "[I]ndie bookshops are outposts of idealism," writes Hoby. "And if they seem like the most romantic places in the city, it might be down to this -- to the way their owners and customers might all be engaged in the same project, a kind of sanctuary building in the unsheltered world."

She goes on to mention Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, "a small space crammed with vintage titles," as well several closed bookshops "which have fallen to astronomically rising rents." "Three Lives & Company [...] narrowly escaped closure in 2016 after an upswell of neighborhood support," writes Hoby. The group that owns the building decided to "provide it with stability," given how well-loved it is in the West Village.

Comments

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Grunschev]

With no special care or handling, books will easily last a century or three. My oldest book was published in 1848 and it's in pretty good shape. I own three other books that are more than 100 years old. Roughly a third of my ~800 books are older than your few dozen years (i.e. published prior to 1982). They're all perfectly readable and the vast majority are in fine or very fine condition.

If you're really a librarian, you'd know how ridiculous your claims are. Most books are withdrawn from circulation because they're not being checked out, not because they're unreadable. I don't find century old books in the collections of my county library, but I can easily find them in the main branch of the Denver Library or Norlin Library on campus at C.U.

As a counterpoint to your preference for digital, I have a copy of the first software I developed back in the early 1980's. It's construction accounting software. I printed out the source code and documentation and also have copies on 5.25" floppy disk. I can still read the hard copy, but the digital copy is unreadable for me. You may have some old hardware available to you, but I'm not a collector. I'd have had to convert the format of that stuff several times over the years to keep a readable digital copy. I don't think I've had a machine with a 5.25" floppy drive in more than 20 years.

Are you going to format shift your eBooks or just let them fade away? Sure, somebody will keep doing it, but what makes you think they'll make it available to you? Think of how much music and how many movies are already unavailable because they're not commercially viable.

Not only that, but do you realize how few books are actually available as eBooks? Sure, most titles being published today are, but I seldom read new books. Had this conversation on a plane, once. Guy sitting next to me said I should get a Kindle. I had him search for the book I had in my hands. Not available. I gave him the titles of the last half dozen I'd read, only one was available. But, you're a librarian. You already know everything I've said.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[mschuyler]

I stand by my original statement. Please don't pretend to tell me my business. I've been a librarian for 44 years. How many of you have books over 100 years old? Oh, you have one, or two? Hey, that's great! Where are the others? In a landfill. So mildewed that they are unusable because you stored them in a garage or basement. Pulped. Gone. Only the finest books are published on acid-free paper. And you know what? They won't last either, not because they can't last, but because they will be mistreated, discarded, thrown away, sold for fifty cents at a yard sale, given to the Rotary auction, devalued completely, unwanted. Pick up a random book from 1950 that has "lasted" a whopping 70 years or so. Is that on your reading list? I didn't think so. And if you think your current mass market paperback will last hundreds of years, you're completely delusional. Sure, you may have a beautiful Currier & Ives from 1860 that you rarely look at, but that's not normal. Keep it. It might be valuable.

I'm associated with an active "Friends of the Library" group. We make $90,000 per year selling old books for 50 cents to $4.00 a book at weekly book sales. They are all donated by area residents or discarded by the public library. We milk those books for everything they are worth, selling the most valuable on Amazon before they get to the local sales. And you know what? You know those old post office canvas mail bins on two wheels? We fill a couple of those a week that go directly to pulp and another bin of books so mildewed that they won't even take them for pulp so they go to the dumpster. . You guys have a couple of old books and come to the conclusion that "they will last forever," but you completely lack the scope of the issue because you do not deal in thousands of books at once. You've never dealt with the issue in bulk. 99% of books will NEVER get saved for posterity. In the Real World, they get tossed.

Now what about the digital book being obsolete? You think because I don't have a 5.25" disk drive that somehow makes a digital book obsolete? I have had digital books since their infancy. Anybody remember the Rocket Book? Well, it's true, that's obsolete, but the Kindle isn't. In fact, I don't need a KIndle to read a Kindle book, just an app for my PC, any PC, or my phone, or any phone, and the book itself is stored in the cloud. I can get to my "library" from anywhere, or even keep it on a thumb drive. It doesn't matter what the "reader" is made of or what OS it uses.

The fact is, paper-based books are not cost-effective in the long run. As the cost of paper and transportation continues to go up, the gap between e-books and paper books will grow ever wider. And when it costs you $25 for an ebook, but $75 for a hardback, guess which one you are going to buy? And for that matter, when is the last time you used a card catalog in the library? Probably about 30 years ago. We have adults now who have never seen one. And what were they made of? Paper. Nostalgia is going to be worth only so much to you, and if you can't bring yourself to do it, your kids will without a care in the world.

Contrast the physical book made of paper and glue, ink and cardboard, made mostly from trees, and transported by diesel truck all over the place. Anybody want to claim that is a cost-effective and efficient way to transport words? Yeah, one book feels good in your hand. Try lifting 50 pound boxes of books every day and see how soon you tire of them. The paper-based book is a dead man walking. It's just a matter of time.