The 5/15 issue Publisher’s Lunch featured an interesting piece on the death of the independent bookstore, with a link to the article on Slate.com. The mention of print-on-demand and self-publishing technologies is heartening!

Slate features a characteristically pointed piece by George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen that uses Laura Miller’s book Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption as a lens for asking “what are independent bookstores really good for?” Cowen maintains: “Our attachment to independent bookshops is, in part, affectation — a self-conscious desire to belong a particular community (or to seem to). Patronizing indies helps us think we are more literary or more offbeat than is often the case.”

His larger case is two-fold: Chain stores often provide more choice in terms of books available, and better prices, and the real “independent spirit” in bookselling is found on the Internet, where the chains have lost.

Amazon reader reviews, blogs such as Bookslut, and eBay, the world’s largest book auction market, all are flourishing and are doing so outside the reach of the major corporate booksellers.

Print-on-demand and self-publishing technologies are booming. Along with Google and other search engines, they will allow niche titles to persist in our memories for a long time to come. This is the flip side of the same computerization that elevated Wal-Mart and Borders: Information technology brings more voices into book evaluation and supply.

Read Slate.com’s full article here.

Our own editrix MaryAnn Johanson comments on the POD/Internet library phenomenon in her article, “Building the Internet Bookshelf.”