The fate of bookstores

[thesummerqueen]

Thank you for telling me about the podcasts, I should look them up. I wanted to reply about the non fiction choices and the kindle. I love non fiction, it's mainly all I ever read, and the kindle has nice selections, everything coming through amazon. The nice thing is, once you select a book, it will continuously provide you with new options ...''if you liked this book, you'll like that book...'' kind of thing. It's pretty cool. Pros and cons to books and kindles. lol

They sound a bit dry at first, but once you get used to that I find the statistics they bring up to be interesting, and it's nice to get recommendations of new books from people who work in publishing.

I agree whole-heartedly about Amazon's usefulness, particularly because Goodreads' recommendation algorithms sometimes make me scratch my head. Amazon's are a lot better. Now, I've read a lot of non-fiction on the kindle, but only the ones which don't really need pictures or graphs to demonstrate a point - or use very little of it. The sorts of books I mentioned, I can buy those in droves because I really just don't like reading them on a tablet device - not the color sort, or on my very old black and white kindle (obviously).

Having stepped into photography, I know that food photography in particular is a Very Big Thing. Cookbooks can sometimes be works of art in themselves, and people love to look at them. That reason alone makes me think bookstores will continue to exist, because people will want to peruse the things they want before they will buy them, rather than just getting a sample on the net - much like malls continue to exist. There will just be fewer and further between. And I'm still kinda okay with that, because I feel like it would add to the experience - making a specific driving pilgrimage to a bookstore where you enjoy your hot beverage, and maybe get to smell old AND new books.