Actual bookstores

People still want books; I've got the numbers to prove it.

Ann Patchett, The Care and Feeding of the Independent Bookstore

Ann Patchett and friend at Parnassus Books

Ann Patchett is talking about the sales figures at Parnassus, the bookstore she co-owns in Nashville, Tenn. She wrote those words in 2012, but I suspect they remain true and are probably more true now than they were then. People do want books, actual books, and they are willing to pay for them, full price even, at actual bookstores staffed by someone who actually knows something about books.

Let's look at each of those three points:

1. Actual books

Just a few years ago it seemed that e-books read on Kindles, Nooks, phones, iPads, laptops and other electronic gear were the wave of the future. I own a Nook, but I haven't even turned it on in at least five years. I much prefer the feel of a real book in my hands. With a real book it is easier to take notes  and then go back to an important place in the text. So many other people seem to feel the same way. I've read that sales of e-books have been dropping, and I am not surprised. Real readers like real books.

2. Actual bookstores.

In the article Patchett wrote for The Atlantic Monthly, reprinted in The Care and Feeding of the Independent Bookstore, she mentions a Barnes and Noble, a Books-a-Million, a Costco and a Target that existed in Nashville at the time she and a friend opened Parnassus. Each sold a lot of books, but she asks if they counted as bookstores. "Not to me, no, they don't, and they don't count to any other book-buying Nashvillians with whom I am acquainted." Amazon doesn't county either. Why not? That probably has to do with ...

3. A staff that actually knows something about books.

I have met clerks at Barnes and Noble who struck me as professionals, but most of them seem to come and go like servers at Applebees, viewing the job as a steppingstone to something better. Sometimes they ask if they can help me find something, but usually I feel that I could better help them.

I like going into a bookstore, or a restaurant, and seeing a familiar face. I like having a little conversation about books, especially those I am thinking of buying. I can still remember a conversation I had with a clerk at Parnassus about the Norman Rockwell biography I purchased there.

Independent bookstores remain few, and if a city, even a large city such as Nashville, has even one, it is a fortunate community. But now, like Ann Patchett, I believe they have a future. A few years ago I wasn't so sure.