The jeremiad of John
The closing of the bricks-and-mortar location of Boston’s Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop (the store will continue to sell its wares online) after 30 years in business has inspired the owners to post “The Crepuscule,” John Usher’s wonderful screed on the 12 reasons for the demise of the independent bookstore. Even In Other Media can’t do justice to Mr. Usher’s pithy summation of everything that’s gone wrong in the book biz in the last two decades, but here’s one of his 12 points to whet our readers’ appetites: “Publishers, [for] marketing their product like so much soap or breakfast cereal, aiming at demographics instead of people, looking for the biggest immediate return instead of considering the future of their industry, ignoring the art of typography, the craft of binding, and needs of editing, all to make a cheapened product of glue and glitz — for being careless of a 500 year heritage with devastating result.” Ouch. (Thanks to bookninja.com for the link.)
Related links:
Read John Usher’s “The Crepuscule”
