doomed books.

Well for one there is the domesday book, with its accurate survey of the landscape of England. Bot what of the doomed day of books? I alluded to this in a previous post, but I've really been thinking about it in light of the way things are in the current consumer climate 0f 2011.

A) you can't peg all the misfortunes of bookstores solely on ebooks. They have been around quite awhile now, but its a fallacy to believe that it only now has wrought the end of stores such as Boarders. Better ereader technology, combined with lucrative tie-ins to online bookstores (Amazon) have made a far greater impact. This is what has nailed it for me, the proprietary dealing of their books to their own device. If you wanted a book, you could go anywhere, but if you want to buy a new ebook for your kindle, where will you go? This has led ebooks to be the biggest seller on Amazon, not to mention that it's cheaper than buying in hard copy.

Another factor I see is the diversifying of large bookstores stock options at the point consumer choices were being siphoned away by online dealers. Everything you can buy at a boarders you could pretty much buy online, right down to magazine subscription vendors like isubscribe.

All in all this is only bringing books in line with other commodities via online shopping. If I wanted to I could live my whole life in front of a computer. And why, because its easy. It also means less time actually reading books. Most of the hardcore readers I know are not of the X or Y gens and are the older patrons of the library, who have no interest in an ebook or its reader. So who is? I see alot of commuters reading on portable devices, and for me, this is also the same time only get a chance to read. There is so much demand for our cash and attention these days its hard to find the time to fit in a book. Hell, I've even abandoned video games, a sad time indeed.

So basically, the way in which society consumes knowledge is changing, just as the way books are written, music is played, art is created, etc. maybe books will come with a free ebook download (like new vinyl is nowadays)as an added incentive, or they become limited edition print runs. Who knows. but if the big sellers in the market can fall, what about all the little independent stores? In the end, if music stores can continue to exist, than bookstores can as well. Unless the whole world forsakes materialism for the avdancement of society ala Star Trek. Then I'm ok with it.