Grim Days for the Publishing Industry

When I was a kid, there were so many good outlets for books, and it seemed as if we were encouraged to read as much as possible.

My mam used to get catalogues from places like The Red House, which mostly sold children's / educational books. They're the only one whose name I can remember off the top of my head. But even if we never actually ordered stuff from them I was addicted to just looking through them and reading about all the different books available.

The Shetland Times Bookshop was - and seemingly still is - the main outlet in Shetland for reading material. It's a small shop - still open, although I imagine it's probably suffered a bit since Tesco finally descended on Shetland in 2008. But when I was little we went there on most trips to town and I had a field day. I was usually satisfied enough with the range of books available there.

I'm not sure when I first encountered Waterstone's...probably on a trip south as a kid. That was a place I became even more enamoured with. There were other chains too. I loved Ottakar's best, better than Waterstone's by a mile. There was also Bookworld, and some others. But again, whenever I was on the mainland (which, come my teens, was at least once a year usually) I frequented the chain stores.

Then came the internet.

No, this is not going to become a tirade about the internet, because given that I'm writing this in an online diary, that'd be somewhat hypocritical.

When I first began to use Yahoo!, which has been my primary email address host since I first got one, the homepage was, for some reason, merged with Waterstone's. So we ordered books from them - which took around a month to come. Some time later my mam discovered Amazon. The books she ordered from there came in days, so we didn't go back to Waterstone's.

When I first moved to Glasgow in 2006, Ottakar's still existed...but not for long, unfortunately. Shortly after my arrival they were bought over by Waterstone's and rebranded as such. I was gutted. Then I discovered Borders, which became my new love, and continued frequenting places like Fopp. Alas, Fopp went into administration in 2007 - although that one has a happy enough ending, since HMV bought them and retained the two main stores in Glasgow (stop me if you've heard this one before). Then, of course, at Christmas 2009, bye bye Borders. It's an All Saints now.

What I'm trying to say is that the traditional bookseller seems to be dying out. I hate to be one for speculation but what about Waterstone's? Maybe they'll suffer too, like Borders and Zavvi, even Woolworths. Then what are we left with? Fucking Tesco and their bestseller list.

Yes, I do shop at Tesco. But I don't buy books from there, it just feels wrong to me. I go there for groceries, not books. I buy from Amazon only when I can't get the book on the high street. I'm glad I was able to download their Kindle app for free because I wouldn't be seen dead buying one for myself. At the Frankfurt Book Fair one of their buyers declared "I cannot mourn the death of the traditional bookshop." Well, personally I can and will. I hate to think future generations won't enjoy what I did. Even those catalogues...do they still exist? Doubtful, if I'm honest.

At times like this I worry for publishing and whether it may be about to die on its arse. This, however, brings me comfort of sorts: