Walk down the unassuming steps to the basement of Blackwell’s bookstore on Broad Street and you will find yourself in the Norrington Room, a vast room with 150,000 non-fiction books on 2½ miles of shelves. The chamber was opened in 1966 and required tunnelling under the Trinity College grounds. It is staggering, and I make it a point to show it to friends when they visit. I have spent hours weaving between the shelves and staring at the special editions in glass cases. It is a special place.
Ask around Oxford and a dozen more special bookstores emerge, from the charming Arcadia on St. Michael’s to the towering Waterstones at the corner of Cornmarket. Everyone has their own favourite, chosen carefully after spending hours flipping through pages. These bookstores emerge as beating hearts amidst the spires that dot this city.
But look at the bigger picture, and you see the signs of an industry in crisis. The independent Book House in Summertown closed in 2018, owing to rent increases and falling trade. The Oxford University Press bookstore on High Street also permanently closed following the pandemic. Blackwell’s itself was sold to Waterstones because of financial troubles, taking the chain out of family hands after 143 years.
The pandemic accelerated a long-term decline in sales that online shopping had introduced and, while independent stores are the hardest hit, chain stores are also feeling pressure. Even Amazon’s brick-and-mortar bookstores came and went, only surviving a little over seven years. Some say this is evidence of a future where bookstores are rarities, exceptions in a world where most people buy books online and read them on an e-reader.
Is there something important that the Norrington Room with its 150,000 books provides that Amazon with its 33 million titles cannot?
Think about the question, and some clear answers emerge. The sights and smells of being surrounded by paper and ink. The tactility of holding hefty hardcovers. The freedom to talk, to recommend, to ask, to find books together with people. The regulars you have seen frequenting the store before.
In his book In Praise of Good Bookstores, Jeff Deutsch writes, “The good bookstore sells books, but its primary product, if you will, is the browsing experience.” While e-commerce may be superior when you want to buy a specific book, bookstores are better if you want to buy a book but aren’t sure about which one. With curated displays, the freedom to ruminate, and booksellers with sage advice, bookstores are places of discovery.
The fundamental set of differences between bookstores and online retailers goes beyond the physical store. After all, many bookstores have successfully embraced the ways in which brick-and-mortar stores can be supplemented by the internet. In these cases, bookstores lean into their power to create community. Independent bookstores are using social media sites like Instagram to connect with readers and create spaces where people can share their love of reading. A post-pandemic boom in independent booksellers has seen a wave of stores focusing on local neighbourhoods. The space is used to curate stories that are otherwise underrepresented and host events that are widely attended. They have harnessed the internet to survive and evolve, from GoFundMes for seed funding, to online sales during lockdowns.
There is a sense that the bookstore as an entity, from the storefront to the online channels, is a space for readers. This is a sense that online retailers fail to create, even when they enter physical spaces. With cafe tie-ups, a more relaxed approach to those looking but not buying, and a push towards engaging with readers, the best bookstores seem to be understanding that they need to be more than a place for commerce. They need to be places for people.
For the industry, then, there is optimism. Bookstores are finding their place in a new cultural landscape. It is an optimism that is boosted by a population that wants to read more, and holds on to a penchant for physical books despite the increasing popularity of e-books.
But it’s important to keep in mind that, across individual bookstores, the optimism isn’t universal. Where some thrive, others sputter and die. Some do not have the know-how to adapt and rebrand, others do not have communities that can rally around them to support them. Some can’t afford to invest in changing because they don’t have the money to keep the lights on.
The bookstore is answering the questions posed by online retailers with vigour. Some will fit into the future with renewed strength, galvanising book lovers around themselves. Others will only survive in the fond memories of the few who walked through them. In a rapidly changing world, there are stores to visit and stores to mourn.
