How I buy books: past, present and future
I have a dream: to travel the world, visiting its unorthodox bookstores. First stop is a shop on Newtown’s King Street titled Better Read Than Dead. Next is a secret room tucked away in New York that is possibly not secret anymore, thanks to Paris Review and others. Third port of call is The Book Barge, which floats along UK waterways.
So here’s where I admit to being naive. When I wrote for Meanland on how I read now, I was not sensitive to our stores and the way they are hurting.
No one said it aloud; I saw it in the quiet way booksellers were retreating. As if I had waved away their concerns with an internet-driven hand. I might be buying cheaply from Book Despository and Amazon but whose place had the giants taken? Did I not remember my weekly visits with once tiny boys and the small rocking horse that my elder son used to ride on? Isn’t it curious that my sons are likely to play-up elsewhere, just not in a room shelved with paper spines? How often was I visiting my local bookstore? Hadn’t I once been loyal?
When I heard Borders was going down, part of me was smug. After all, this American leviathan had come to Australia to knock our Independents off their feet. Conveniently I forgot hours spent in the literature section of a massive Jam Factory store ten years ago as my beau (now my husband) knelt in front of Lord of the Rings collector editions as if paying homage to the greatest storyteller of all time. I ignored that through my visits, I was buoying this read-and-drink-coffee outlet while smaller mustier shelved shops remained empty, waiting for their patrons to return. The Borders fascination didn’t last long. Soon we grew weary of bright lights and a barrage of calendars. Books seemed classier and more intelligent when purchased from Readings Carlton or the Brunswick Bookstore. Plus, author-friends were launching first books. I left Australia at this time. When I came back, I became more intimate with Readings Hawthorn, where Stephanie Alexander once spoke to an audience of at least fifty women on the importance of growing up in a food-loving household. Soon I settled in the burbs where the range of books wasn’t quite as vast as what I had known.
My online buying frenzy began almost through default. I had stumbled on Mo Willems in our local library. His Elephant & Piggy Books tickled my then learning-to-read son’s funny bone. I travelled from bookstore to bookstore trying to access every one of the series from the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator. His latest titles were only available – my local bookshop tried but to no avail – through Amazon.
Enter Book Depository with their free shipping and ‘About Us’ web page wording, which if I remember correctly, had the company sounding like a charity. If I wanted to order a novel or picture book online and feel good about it, Book Depository was for me.
In the space of two years, how I bought changed. Book Depository was cheap (if we ignore Australia Post picking up the tab – which we taxpayers later pay – as soon as books arrive in our country) and easy. I could buy hardbacks, paperbacks, rare books and ones with pictures from the comfort of my couch. Instead of ordering overseas titles online and shopping locally for Australian titles, I was gorging it all through the web.
One night I itched to read a novel then and there. I was on Amazon. A couple of clicks later, Simon Mawer’s The Glass House was on my iPhone. Quickly I moved through the novel’s early chapters, my finger gliding across the screen as if through water. Soon, I wanted more. Surprisingly, more came in the form of a traditional book which I bought from my local store.
When Angus and Robertson announced their closure, I was not perturbed. Another chain. I had no real connection. Then Amazon took over Book Depository. Something in me snapped. The people of Amazon could not tell me, face-to-face, which books they were fond of and what I might like. They could not present my gifts in wrapping I chose, nor did they have an array of good-looking cards should I wish to buy something more than a book while visiting. That weekend, after coffee and macaroons in Cavallini, I strolled with a friend into the Clifton Hill Bookstore, my children hurtling down to the back to throw themselves on corner cushions. I bought four junior books (surprisingly, each cost less than fifteen dollars), three handmade cards and a gorgeous material bookmark, a funky pink donkey stitched across its face.
What gets at my guts is that Readers’ Feast will soon close its doors. Only a month ago, on walking from Bourke onto Swanston Street, I touted the bookstore as one of Melbourne’s sunken treasures. Ashamedly, I did not usher my family down the escalators for a peep. If I had I may have told them I saw the author Audrey Niffenegger speak here of first books which she printed and bound by hand in batches of ten. A friend of mine – an academic and writer now living in Berlin – adored working in this cantina of books. When we both studied creative writing at the University of Melbourne, I would visit. Store aisles were like Thai market canals where I could pluck whichever exotic fruit I liked. I am still afraid to email her the news lest I hear her pain. Hers will be an ugly cry, as if part of her is being removed.
If I buy organic food locally even though it’s triple the cost of conventional supermarket goods, I do so to enjoy produce without pesticides, shop ethically and to ensure my local organic store will exist to serve me tomorrow. As a mother and reader I am wondering: how can I extend this kind of thinking to cover the local purchase of tree books? Which choices do I want available in my family’s future? Will I continue to pour cash into the big guns’ pockets or will I support the small stores? If I’m to put my money where my heart is, then I will cherish independent bookstores. I will visit as often as I can, and buy what I can afford.
Considering what’s now on show at your local bookstore, you might like to do the same. Flipbacks were launched in Australia last week. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, they are flimsy in the best sense of the word. Made of bible-like paper, they flip back rather than turn. Coming in at $19.95, I bought David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas last weekend. Amazingly, it’s very light. When my fingertips brush over wafer-thin pages, it fans out a feathery wind.