Do bookshops have a future?
When you open a school, said a French Enlightenment philosopher, you shut down a prison. In the same vein, some could argue that when you shut down a good bookshop you leave the field wide open for Philistines to run riot. Book publishing thrives in India - more than 19,000 publishers produce more than 90,000 titles a year in all the major languages. Literary festivals, held in many parts of the country, including several small towns, draw unprecedented crowds. Book fairs too attract vast numbers of bibliophiles. So do annual discount sales held by bookshops such as Strand in Mumbai. Do footfalls match the sales? The jury is still out on this one. Some book sellers swear that business has been brisk. But others are not happy with the way their business is progressing.
This brings us to the crux of the issue. Do bookshops have a future? Do books, as we have known them since Gutenberg some 600 years ago, have a future? The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader. Everyone who stands between the two has both risk and opportunity.
What are these opportunities? Let's begin with the obvious. Time and again we have been told that ours is a culture dominated by images. Then arrives the computer. Much of what you find on it has to be read, not just seen. The computer establishes the sovereignty of the act of reading. So, much like the advent of photography, cinema and television did not kill painting, can one assume that electronic publishing will kill the printed book?
There are book lovers who argue that books in their printed form will survive because no amount of technological innovations can deprive them of their quintessential qualities. The book, they say, is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, they cannot be improved. Much in the same spirit, we can assert: Bookshops can't go under. They allow you to do things which no one else can: an opportunity to browse, chat with the knowledgeable owner, meet fellow bibliophiles. Some book shops will shut down; but the spirit that sustained its vast reputation will survive.
When you open a school, said a French Enlightenment philosopher, you shut down a prison. In the same vein, some could argue that when you shut down a good bookshop you leave the field wide open for Philistines to run riot. Book publishing thrives in India - more than 19,000 publishers produce more than 90,000 titles a year in all the major languages. Literary festivals, held in many parts of the country, including several small towns, draw unprecedented crowds. Book fairs too attract vast numbers of bibliophiles. So do annual discount sales held by bookshops such as Strand in Mumbai. Do footfalls match the sales? The jury is still out on this one. Some book sellers swear that business has been brisk. But others are not happy with the way their business is progressing.
This brings us to the crux of the issue. Do bookshops have a future? Do books, as we have known them since Gutenberg some 600 years ago, have a future? The only really necessary people in the publishing process now are the writer and reader. Everyone who stands between the two has both risk and opportunity.
What are these opportunities? Let's begin with the obvious. Time and again we have been told that ours is a culture dominated by images. Then arrives the computer. Much of what you find on it has to be read, not just seen. The computer establishes the sovereignty of the act of reading. So, much like the advent of photography, cinema and television did not kill painting, can one assume that electronic publishing will kill the printed book?
There are book lovers who argue that books in their printed form will survive because no amount of technological innovations can deprive them of their quintessential qualities. The book, they say, is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, they cannot be improved. Much in the same spirit, we can assert: Bookshops can't go under. They allow you to do things which no one else can: an opportunity to browse, chat with the knowledgeable owner, meet fellow bibliophiles. Some book shops will shut down; but the spirit that sustained its vast reputation will survive.
No comments:
Post a Comment