One book, one reader

Seminary Co-op Bookstore

In his book In Praise of Good Bookstores, Jeff Deutsch, points out that in 2019, the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago, which he manages, sold roughly 28,000 titles — not books, but titles. Of these, nearly 17,000 were single copies. Think about that for a minute.

That means that in a year's time, nearly 17,000 different books sold just a single copy in that store. The bookstore stocked all these books just to sell one copy. Most books, in fact, sell very few copies. Even the so-called best-sellers, in most cases, don't actually sell that many copies. There are so many books being published and so many readers that relatively few people may be interested in reading the same book.

I have been a member of LibraryThing for many years. You might call this social media for bibliophiles. You list your library on the web site and post your reviews of the books you read. You can also have conversations about those books or anything having to do with books.

LibraryThing has thousands of members, yet I've noticed that several of the books I own are owned by nobody else on the site.  One of these is The Photographer's Guide to Great Lakes Lighthouses. Meanwhile, more than 93,000 other members own Pride and Prejudice.

As a reader, here are my conclusions:

1. I am glad people write books even though relatively few people will ever want to read them.

2. I am glad there are publishers still willing to publish books that few people will want to pay money for.

3. The more different books stocked in a bookstore, the better.

4. The longer these books are kept on their shelves, the better.

5. Eventually every book will find its reader.