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by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Mattox
You may have read lately that HMV, who once really dominated the music store scene, has sold off most of their stores in Canada (article here). This is more than symbolic of the end of music stores, and we’re not that surprised really. What you may not be aware of, unless you’ve walked into one lately, is how big box book stores are basically getting out of the book business.
If you’ve walked into a Chapters/Indigo lately, and you think about it for a minute, you’ll notice it has started its transformation to a Lifestyle Store. This has been happening bit by bit, and it has always been epitomized for me by the little zen sandbox and rack, sold at what I think of as a book store.
While it feels premature for big box book stores to be reducing their dependence on selling glued together pieces of trees with dirty spots on them (that’s a book with pages with writing), you can understand their position. There isn’t a lot of margin to be made, and going to a bricks and mortar establishment versus ordering online doesn’t have an allure for everyone, particularly when you show up (because online it said there was a copy in the store) and there isn’t, or at least no one can find it. “Should have ordered it online.”
As Chapters/Indigo makes its way further down the path of a LifeStyle Store, you’ve got to ask yourself what that really means. As they expect to more and more books and music and videos to be sold online, you’ve got to wonder what this means. I mean, a coffee shop can only be so big. And who really wants a little book store meets Bed, Bath and Beyond meets Zen & The Art of KnickKnacks meets StarBucks? It doesn’t really justify the same square footage of floorspace in my mind.
The biggest thing that I think gets lost with this change is the art of browsing. The art of just walking through an area, while maybe you wait for a friend or loved one to find the book they are looking for, and you happen upon something that catches your eye. As a software architect, the “Browse” use case has gone from VITAL to “if we have to” in the eCommerce world. And it makes sense, because usually someone has already done the browsing (at a store) and therefore is looking to pinpoint what they want to buy. Remove the store (effectively) and you now have a use case that you have a tradition of disregarding that now needs to be considered (and I’m willing to bet no one is really going to believe until someone like Amazon does it, and then you’ll be all “I KNEW IT!”). Now to be clear, I don’t mean a top down, categorical search which is what browsing is today, I mean the real peruse, the wander, the random walk, the appreciating the layout of the place and knowing that you haven’t been “In that corner of the store since they changed where everything is placed.”
The last thought on this that pops into my mind is how these big box book stores consumed the economic landscape, cleaning out almost all, if not absolutely every single last, small bookstore. Now with these big box book stores changing direction, I’ve got to wonder if we’re going to start to see that Cyberpunk-esque return of the neighbourhood used book store, where you can actually find a book, on PAPER. Wow, so cool and novel, I’m sure that grandma would appreciate one of these.
There will always be the connaisseur who wants the paper book, and I have to say that I am bothered by the idea that I can’t browse my own book collection when it’s digital because it’s in several different applications, and I think a lot about format-longevity and the ability of the Amazons and what not being able to ‘de-sell’ me a book, removing it from existence, without me being able to say anything about it. This isn’t that important today, but in the near future, that also can be used for revisionist history in real-time. Remember 1984 and Brave New World? I thought they were stories about futures where everything was controlled, but I just re-read the latest updated copies, turns out they are graphic novels of cooking shows. Huh.
The real concern I have for these big box book stores is that I don’t really believe they are going to be able to make the transition, I don’t think that there is sufficient need for LifeStyle establishments, and I could easily be wrong, but I think we’re going to see the classic case of something that grew, like bacteria, to the point where it has consumed everything and sadly it can’t evolve past it for it was designed with one purpose in mind, and therefore it must pass on, as so many things before it.
Bye bye big box book stores, you’re future was written when the Kindle came out to wide spread adoption.
