Bryan Appleyard has provoked quite a response, pro and con, over his thoughts on the future of the printed page:
With luck, within five years your local Waterstone’s will have shrunk roughly to the size of a branch of Snappy Snaps. Books will be a lot cheaper, and you will be able to buy anything published anywhere in the world. In fact, you probably won’t bother with Snappystone’s at all. You will go into Starbucks, slip your credit card into a machine, order a book and grab a latte, which you will finish just as your book completes its printing and binding process….
He’s given up on the major book chains. I can't say I blame him. I make the occasional sortie into Borders on Oxford Circus, which still has the, er, bookish atmosphere of the best of the New York branches. Otherwise, I steer well clear. Independent shops have a lot going for them, but it’s hard to find one where I live, out in the sticks. So it’s Amazon almost every time, usually in the secondhand section.
Bryan, who thinks we're on the verge of an iPod moment, responds to his many commenters today:
Independent bookshops can, indeed, be very good. The big chains were my primary target. Current POD books are often of poor quality; however, I am assured the technology now exists to match the quality of conventionally published books. Of course, browsing in bookshops can be nice; my point was that this pleasure is systematically denied real readers in the chain bookstores.
