Writing and Reading

I had a severe wake-up call yesterday when one of my friends told me of a great pastime closing down for business–not because money ran low or because rats were in the kitchen or because a fire torched everything and not enough funds to rebuild. No.

A bigger ‘fish’ took over the market, choking out the smaller ‘fish’. Pretty sad, really. Because I loved the place ever since I was a kid.

I’m talking about Waldenbooks, a mall-associated chain bookstore basically all over the United States. Whether I was growing up in Chicago or living here in Grand Rapids, I’d step into the mall with my family, I’d see the Waldenbooks, and my mind would drift away to whimsy and wisdom and beauty of books and how important it was to have an imagination, and to see the smiles on the faces of those working in the store.

It made me love books. No kidding.

Well, here in Grand Rapids, the Woodland Mall, the Waldenbooks is closing down. You know why?

The unstoppable juggernaut, the unbeatable Roman gladiator, the Death Star of the literary world (well, next to Amazon, of course)…

BARNES & NOBLE…

is opening up a new branch right in the mall.

This takes me back to certain clips of a relatively popular film in the romantic comedy genre known as “You’ve Got Mail”. A story about an old little Jeffersonian-quality bookstore that promotes the enjoyment of reading, that reading is priceless and shouldn’t be about money–

Until the big, bad money-making machine of a superstore comes in, squashes the tiny little store with its low prices and coffee shop and tons of soft sofas and chairs and rows and rows of mass-produced books.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I happen to adore Barnes & Noble.

In fact, you can’t get a better chance of finding the book you want, reading the book you want. Sometimes I take my son there, because they have a kids section with a “stage” for playing and reading and one of those nice “Thomas the Train” train sets.

But this thing happening, these small, dedicated bookstores closing down (read Colleen Lindsay’s blog for more news on things like that, too), because of these bigger ‘fish’ monopolizing the book industry, serializing the concept of the ‘book’, ‘expanding’ the industry, it really does make me wonder….

I mean, agent Nathan Bransford once touched on this before, too, due to the rapid change in the book industry because of the current economy.

Publishers these days are relying more on the bestsellers and celebrity books than on first-time unknown authors with something new and fresh and not necessarily ‘popular’. Editors and agents these days are more comfortable with something that will sell based on the current numbers than something that will sell simply because it’s just a good book.

(However, on a sidenote: you got to hand it to many literary agents out there, Nathan included; for them to take on a project with a prospective author, the agent still has to be completely in love with the work. Bravo, agents. I heart you big time.)

Is this a proportional trend to the fact that smaller, independent bookstores all over are closing down because of the big ‘fish’, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble and even Borders?

Is the industry turning into something more about mass production and media and big bucks and less about literary quality and the joy of reading?

Here’s a more interesting question: is this a good thing or a bad thing for the book biz? Hmm….

DISCUSS.