The Library of Barnes & Noble

A few days ago, a story was tweeted from The Washington Post concerning the idea that bookstores should charge customers to browse the store. Obviously the idea was not taken very seriously by anyone who owned a bookstore. But the chilling fact remains: B&N estimates 40% of their customers browse their bookshelves, go home, and buy the book cheaper from Amazon. And anyone with any ear to the publishing world knows the rampant fear of bookstores (and publishers?) going the way of the telegraph office.

So what are we to do? Print books are still demanded, and not just by old people who can’t understand technology. Even yours truly can appreciate the convenience of carrying multiple books on one super-light reading device. In the publishing-industry shake-up, it is very clear that e-books are staying. The best thing everyone can do is recognize it and figure out how to adapt to it.

But returning again, what about print books? There is one place where people have been free – and even encouraged – to browse books with no intention of buying them: libraries. If you remember those things, they were those institutions that were going the way of the telegraph office before bookstores even felt a tremor from e-books. Libraries have been fighting for their lives – and staying in the ring, no matter how severely punished by heavyweight champions – for a long time now. And I think it’s time they bounce off the ropes and give one big wallop to extinction.

Receive shipments from publishers.

You heard me right: let’s start having libraries stock up copies of new and newly popular books for the reading public. When Game of Thrones came out on HBO, every library in my area two months later had double-holds on their copies of every book in Martin’s series (double-hold means two people wanted it after it was returned by the first person – kids today need these things to be explained to them.) Thus people were driven to bookstores to buy copies – or, as B&N fears, to glance through them and then buy them online.

But if the libraries have multiple copies of books in high demand, they can lend them out to more people, and more people going to libraries means more agreement to fund libraries, which means libraries can stay open.

Then let’s say demand for those books drop – it’s discovered George R.R. Martin worships the devil and has sacrificed children to Baal, or GofT goes off the air and people forget about it or move on to the next adaptation: now the libraries can bring in some non-taxpayer coin by selling off those extra copies (we’re not trying to turn them into warehouses, after all) either to or through Amazon or through local used-books stores (there aren’t many now, I don’t think; but with libraries resurging with lots of used books to sell, they might flare up again).

Oh, and e-book lending in libraries needs to become more widespread.

There: publishers stay in business, as do authors. Problem solved.

Now, you said something about world hunger? Okay, let me think…