Books and bookstores

Was realizing yesterday, after driving past a closed BlockBuster, that I lived through the beginning and end of the video rental era. I remember my dad rigging up our first VCR and being perplexed about what it did, then excited about the the one shelf of movies at our local video rental store – a boon for the town in Ireland I grew up in. We had no cinema in our town, and had to travel to Belfast for the experience of seeing a movie.

So – roughly it took about 30 years from the first store I visited to driving past the closed BlockBuster. We transitioned from tape, to dvd, blueray ( not me ), and finally to digital on demand movies.

I’ve reached a stage where I want to reduce my footprint. I think I’ve always been that way. As long as I have a macbook, smartphone/iPad and my guitar, I think I’d be ok. I won’t buy another dvd, and likely won’t buy a CD again.

I’m writing this because I was debating with someone that books will be the next to go. It took 30 years for movies, books have been around for thousands of years. I think it’ll take much less than 30 years for us to say goodbye to books as we use them now. I’ve been reading books on my iPad, and I’m starting to adjust. With all of the kindles that Amazon have been developing, it seems that we’ll see more and more transition to digital publishing in short order. At least in the Western world.

So, will there be bookstores like Chapters in 30 years time? I wouldn’t bet on it, to tell you the truth. I think that stores like Starbucks will become bigger, and maybe help us socialize new and good choices of books, music and movies.

I just think the clock is ticking now.