(Roughly) Daily

Your correspondent is certainly among that number; bookstores– and libraries– are at the center of my mental map of civilization. So imagine my surprise when Alex Leslie delivered data demoting book shops in the literary hierarchy…

A lot of ink has been spilled over the decline of the dedicated bookstore – stores dedicated “just” or primarily to selling books – amid the rise of online retailers and e-readers in the 21st century. Yet dedicated bookstores were often not the main source of books in the U.S. historically. In fact, that market role was highly contested over the last two centuries.

In the early 20th century, a consumer could buy books from many different types of retailer. The specific focus, stock, clientele, and consumer experience of these different retailer types varied significantly and did much to shape the relationship between consumers (or readers) and books. In this richly varied market, the dedicated bookstore was outplayed on multiple fronts…

[Leslie brings the receipts…]

… Perhaps the most striking aspect of their position in the book retail market is how unstriking it is. Dedicated Bookstores represented a significant 7.5% of Lippincott’s revenue, yet they trailed behind News companies and Department Stores (Fig. 1). They carried less purchasing power at the individual level, where they fell in the middle of the pack behind less-common yet higher-volume retailer types like Foreign, Medical, and even Religious (Fig. 2). And while Bookstores were easily the second-most-common retailer of books, only 9% bought directly from Lippincott’s—meaning that they weren’t especially consistent either (Fig. 3).

Dedicated Bookstores were a major player in the book ecosystem, but they did not define it. They competed in a tight market where other retailer types beat them on affordability, breadth of location, specialized subject matter, and high-margin editions. In this context, dedicated Bookstores could all too easily become jacks of all trades and masters of none. A majority of Americans got their books from other retailers, and this was not entirely due to a lack of dedicated Bookstores in many towns: it also stemmed from a lack in dedicated Bookstores’ business model, a lack which continued to plague them into the 21st century even as they became more ubiquitous. For all our platitudes about the power of books writ large or reading as a single hobby, books seem to be less of a unifying force in their own right than the subjects they concern or the experiences they complement…

Still, I love them: “The Dedicated Bookstore Predicament,” from @azleslie.

* Anna Quindlen

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As we browse, we might spare a thought for Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (known in English as Leo Tolstoy); he died on this date in 1910. A writer whose works adorn most bookstores, he is considered one of the greatest authors of all time. (He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909, but never won. After one slight, August Strindberg and dozens of other authors and artists issued a proclamation shaming the Nobel Committee.)

Tolstoy is best known for War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1878), widely regarded as pinnacles of realistic fiction. In the late 1870s, after a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, he became a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

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