I don’t enjoy bookstores very much.

Books are wonderful, and shopping for books is fun.

But the brick-and-mortar maze of volumes has “time sink” written all over it. I have spent hours in a bookstore with a paid gift card in hand and finally had to spend it on something, anything, just so that I wouldn’t have to go back.

I can’t find what I’m looking for. If they have it, it’s hidden, and if they don’t have it, they can order it for me, which I could have done from home in about 5 minutes without putting my shoes on.

The sensory assault of covers and titles and authors makes it hard to think of what I originally came for.

I do like the smell of printed paper, especially if it’s spiced with coffee from the in-house coffee shop. I like the bookish knickknacks — the tiny booklights, the classy journals, the ingenious little bookmarks. But my booklight that I bought years ago still works fine, and I can only fill so many journals.

When it comes to actually buying books, I prefer the online book sellers. Their database  knows my name no matter how seldom my budget opens for a book purchase. I can find just about anything, and the database knows that a lot of people who bought A also bought B, so I might like B also.

The database never judges my taste or makes assumptions about my politics. It keeps a list of books I might want to buy for as long as I might want to buy them. When people talk about the personal touch, they could be talking about the database.

What bookstores have that online sellers can’t:

1. Live human beings. Readers, authors, clerks. Make the most of them. More authors. Clerks that enjoy the customers. Make connections between readers. The coffee shops are good for this.
2. Make it easier and faster to find books. That might involve filing a book in two places — if it’s well-reviewed murder mystery with aliens, do I really have to not find it in SF and mystery before I find it on the Local Authors table?

Maybe what I want is a coffee shop with books, where the friendly clerk (who likes the customers and enjoys his or her job) takes your order for books and coffee and brings both to your table. it’s a wacky idea, but in the face of closing shops and declining sales, maybe wacky ideas will help shake things up.

Until that happens, if  you like to shop your laptop, check this out:

Fund Literacy, Care for the Environment, and get a Fair Price on the Books you Want.
Better World Books.com