Local Borders Closes

Many of you probably know that Borders is closing a lot of its stores. No bailout for the bookstores, I guess. One store that’s closing is the store in Metairie, Louisiana where I’ve bought most of my Bricks & Mortar books over the last decade. It’s also the store where my Wordsmiths Writing Group meets, so we are for the moment a group without a home. Anyway, Borders is having a going out of business sale and I naturally stopped by last night to pick over the carcass. I’m enough of a scavenger that way, although I will weep while cracking the bones for their marrow. A lot of other folks had the same idea I did. Too bad business couldn’t have been that good for them before bankruptcy.

I bought some $300 dollars worth of books, mostly nonfiction, with about 75% of it being related to the Darwin project I’m working on. These include books by Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins on the anti-creationism side, a book on the cool new area of evolutionary theory called “Evo-Devo,” and several books by religious thinkers who are trying to resist the Fundamentalists’ attempt to hijack the Bible and Christianity for their own ends. A lot of good reading ahead of me.

I did buy some just-for-fun books. I picked up three of the “Chuck Norris” is the man books by Ian Spector, including one entitled Chuck Norris vs. Mr. T. Some light, quick reading. I only bought one novel, Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry, which I’ve been intending to get for a good while. I also bought a Batman graphic novel, and books on Dave Mustaine, Motley Crue, and AC/DC.

I do not need more books to read. But that has never stopped me before. A couple of months back I bought a new bookshelf that I intended just to hold 1) my highest ranked TBR pile, and 2) unread books by friends of mine. I’d hoped to keep that shelf under 50 books but it’s over 200 already, not counting the ones I’ll be adding to it today.

I have to face it, I suppose. I just can’t stop. My name is Charles, and I’m a Bookaholic.
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One Thing I Miss About the Old Days

Most book lovers I know have at least some rather obscure writers they read, and obscure works they’d like to own. There’s no doubt that the internet has made it easier to scratch that itch. And except for the hit to one’s pocketbook that’s a good thing. In most ways.

Using the internet in the past few years has led to a substantial increase in book buying for me. A lot of those books have been just the kind of obscure works in SF and fantasy that I so love. A lot of them have been books that I read when I was a kid and have wanted to own and reread ever since. And, I’ve also been able to discover series that I had never heard of but which were right down my alley. I’ve found a lot of good reading via the net. These are good things

But… (You knew a “but” was coming didn’t you?), there’s one thing I miss about the old book hunting days. To channel for a moment my inner nerd, I remember the thrill of finding an unknown used bookstore and going in to browse the shelves for the first time. I had a list of books I wanted, although I didn’t generally have to carry the list with me. I knew in my head what I was looking for. I’d scan along the rows of colorful spines, checking for an obscure Robert E. Howard book here, searching out an Alan Burt Akers volume there. And OH the excitement when I found something I’d wanted but didn’t have. I generally didn’t ‘kiss’ the covers. Not physically anyway. But it was like finding a gold nugget in a pan of dross.

I still remember with absolute clarity one of my favorite moments in personal book hunting history. In high school I’d borrowed a book from my brother-in-law called Meat on the Hoof, about college football at the University of Texas. The book stayed with me, and when I was in my early thirties I began searching for it in used bookstores everywhere I went. Although I remembered the title and the cover, I had no idea who had written it. But I wanted that book. I even called my brother-in-law but he no longer had the copy. I couldn’t find it anywhere else either.

Then, one day, my ex-wife and I were shopping for furniture. No matter where I’ve ever gone, I’ve paid attention to the books that were in that place. So on this day I stopped to glance at a set of books being used as ‘props’ with furniture. And there lay Meat on the Hoof. I immediately took it up to the salesman and asked to buy it. He had no idea of a price for it. They sold furniture. So he just laughed and told me I could have it. I know exactly where it is on my shelves right now. And I remember almost every detail of that ‘find.”

Would it have been the same if I’d been able to search it out on the net? I know from other experiences of finding books via the net that it would not have been. Oh, I still get a sense of excitement and pleasure, but it’s like having a glass or two of wine with dinner as opposed to the buzz of those first couple of pitchers of beer on a lazy afternoon in a darkened bar when you’ve got Friday night ahead of you.

Sometimes I miss the old days. How about you?
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Rising Tide

They say a rising tide lifts all boats. I’ve been thinking about that lately, thinking about the explosion in publishing wrought by the advent of the internet, ebooks, and print-on-demand companies. It seems to me, although I don’t have the figures in front of me, that more books are being published today than ever in the history of humankind. And these are being published by more writers.

At the same time, I suspect a lot of mid-list writers are making less money that they have in the past, and a large number of the new authors are making very little, especially if they are being distributed by small presses, ebook publishers, and pay-to-publish presses.

The rising tide has lifted the total number of book publications, but I wonder if it has lifted the total amount of money that is being spent by readers on books each year. I personally suspect it has raised that total somewhat, because I find that newly published authors also “buy” a fair amount of books, both books on writing, and books by other new authors who they have made connections with. I’m not sure however, that the total amount of money spent on books in the US has risen very much in the past ten years.

For myself, the total amount that I’ve spent on books has risen over the past few years, and this is in large part due to buying quite a few more new trade paperbacks than I’ve ever bought before. I’ve bought many of these because they are written by other new writers and I want to support those writers as they have supported me. At the same time, I haven’t actually bought as “many” books lately as I used to, because each of the books I do buy is more expensive.

How about you? How has the current publishing explosion affected your buying habits, and reading habits?