Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Buying Books


As those of you reading this blog know, we at the store not only love books, but also bookstores. When we travel the invisible list of things to do is to visit any (preferably independent) bookstore we happen to stumble across.

I recently went on vacation to Europe and throughout my trip I tried to look for bookstores.I saw a few interesting ones. In Paris there was one called “Silly Melody” that only sold used books and vinyl records. I kept looking for others but I went to 7 countries in 12 days so finding the time to really explore any bookstore didn’t happen.

However, the night before I left London, I noticed something that caused me to do a double-take. Next to the elevators in the hotel lobby was a book vending machine (picture above).There were about 30 selections of paperbacks that ranged from Stephanie Meyers to John Grisham.I don’t know why, but I feel that would be an odd way to buy books.I guess can buy food and rent movies via vending machine, so why not books? I think I was put off by purchasing books this way because it automatically limits the customer. To someone aware of the wide variety of books available (with hundreds of thousands being published every year) the meager 23 to choose from was just painful. I don’t this mode of books sales will catch on, but keep your eye out.

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