Conversations about retail, like so much of modern discourse, always feel pre-loaded with negativity.

There’s that innate sense that things used to be better. That unspoken hint that everyone is getting everything wrong (with the exception of course of whoever is posting or writing).

I’m British, therefore I have cynicism coursing through my veins. But so many of all these conversations just carry too much of it.

Even the seemingly positive cliches like “physical retail isn’t dead” actually have a slightly negative framing. The optimist wouldn’t waste their time trying to debate something that is already, empirically, self-evident. 

They would simply say, physical retail is great isn’t it? 

And some recent experiences I’ve had with the book industry have given me a timely reminder not just of how great bookstores are, but how the entire modern experience of buying books is earth-shatteringly good.

The naysayers’ narrative

We all know the history of how Amazon, and more broadly ecommerce, disrupted the bookselling industry.

Books were the first products Amazon sold, and a kind of trojan horse for the commercial world we now live in. They were easy to list, easy to store, easy to ship and easy to sell.

A straightforward narrative builds from there. The first e-reader is released at the turn of the century. The Kindle makes that a mass market proposition in 2007. The iPad arrives in 2010.

Along a similar timeline, Audible launches and grows, and is ultimately acquired by Amazon in 2008.

Meanwhile, indie bookstores across the world start to close from 2010 onwards, and major global chains such as Borders fall into administration. Even Amazon closes its physical bookstores.

The doom and gloom narrative in the industry is established, and holds firm. Bookstores are in permanent decline. Books are in permanent decline.

Happily, we now know that this narrative was, and is, wrong.

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