“What’s more, Mr. Leibson said, ‘fewer people read for pleasure and fewer people read for reference,’ and those who do are dying off.” – New York Times, offering one of the reasons for the death of Coliseum Books.
The TeleRead take: Bad news for certain categories of e-books, too, in the long run? Significantly the story says that ‘”The slowest sellers have been books aimed at preteens, like Would I Lie to You, No. 10 in the Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar.” Just what does this say about the future of reading? Are all the Coliseum’s lost customers really just redirecting their shopping to Amazon.com and chain stores?
Coincidentally this morning, a friend writes of her grandson who just got his first e-mail. A new ritual of youth, just like The Driver’s License? Part of “his idea of fun is playing a geography computer game with his ‘peeps’ during lunchtime… For XMAS I gave him a book on African exploration by the photographers Martin and Osa Johnson. Its copyright is 1930, and it’s one of the first grown-up books that I ever read. I want to be sure that he knows the past as he dives into the future.”
What a wonderful role model for other parents and grandparents! Even more than patronizing bookstores, that will be the best way in the end to keep retailers in business.
