Elevating the experience of book buying
How many books did you read last year? A Gallup poll some 40 years ago found that 42% of American adults had read 11 books in the previous year; by 2014, that number had dropped to 28%. The distraction provided by shiny, internet-connected, handheld devices, and the explosion in the number of television channels is the obvious suspect here. But technology eventually even crept directly into book territory with the advent of the Kindle, which, when it was released in late November 2007, promptly sold out in less than six hours and was out of stock until the following spring. Magazines and newspapers were also tossed onto the funeral pyre and eulogized, with dire “print is dead” warnings being whispered as the industry scrambled to adapt to a fickle audience.
But for those who never took to electronic tomes (ahem)—and even for those who did—physical books never really went away, and in fact are experiencing a renaissance. According to a CNN report this past April, e-book sales plunged 18.7% in the first nine months of 2016, while paperback and hardback books saw upticks of 7.5% and 4.1%, respect ively. For many book lovers, the bells and whistles of e-books never managed to outshine the sensory experiences provided by physical books: the feel of the paper, the smell of books, both old and new, the weight of it in your hand, perhaps even the absence of a sense of terror that it would be ruined beyond redemption if dropped in a bubble-filled bathtub (ahem, also). And, for many readers, that most singular delight that only comes from whiling away an afternoon in a bookstore. Indeed if browsing is your mission, Baldwin’s Book Barn is your mothership…
