Here are two fascinating visions for the future of the book and bookstores:
First, a piece by Richard Nash, formerly of Soft Skull press, about an online community of readers and writers from which published works will emerge. It's intended to be a highly social experience that allows much more feedback from readers than publishers usually have access to. Check it out.
And then there's novelist Moriah Jovan's vision for the bookstore of the future--one without books, mostly. It's very much like the bookstore at the very end of LAST BOOKSTORE IN AMERICA-a bookstore in which books serve as a touchstone but books are mostly sold in digital editions. She really tells it like it is:
You booksellers have been rolling around on the back of the consignment system like it’s catnip for too long—and it’s still going to bite you in the butt.
You publishers are doing everything you can to stymie ebooks and are determined to cling to your outmoded ways. You can lay off people all you want, but you’re not actually willing to do what it takes. Never fear, though! The economy will help you with that.
And really, the model that she suggests does seem, as she says, perfectly reasonable. Sell some books, sure. Sell print-on-demand editions of what you don't have in the store. Sell digital downloads and the devices to read them on. Sell devices already loaded with a library of great books. Why not?
Oh, and Nicholson Baker isn't so crazy about the Kindle.
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