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mdp · 04-03-2020, 07:50 AM

I just read an article from Giorgio Agamben (Italian philosopher). A paragraph again proposes one of the points I expressed many times in these pages - on the importance of bookstores and on the dire state of their median instance as found during these times:

Imagine entering a pharmacy and asking for a product you urgently need. What would you do if the employee replied that that medicine was produced already three months ago, hence it is not anymore available? This is exactly what happens today entering a bookstore. The book market has become an Absurdistan in which the circulation has a book kept in the shop for as little as possible (oftentimes no more than a month). Consequently, the same publisher plans for books that must exhaust the printouts - /if/ sales actually happen - in short terms and renounces building a lasting catlogue. So although I call myself a good reader I am more and more uncomfortable entering bookstores (exceptions aside) where the tables are only covered by novelties and where I can everytime more hardly find the medicine (the book) I have a vital need for. If booksellers and publishers will not revolt against this system, mostly a consequence of the distributors' policies, it will not be a surprise if bookstores will disappear. Considering what they have become, their current form will not even be missed.
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Giorgio Agamben
13 June 2017

04-03-2020, 07:50 AM	#112
mdp Wizard Posts: 1,481 Karma: 9010563 Join Date: Jul 2013 Device: none	I just read an article from Giorgio Agamben (Italian philosopher). A paragraph again proposes one of the points I expressed many times in these pages - on the importance of bookstores and on the dire state of their median instance as found during these times: Imagine entering a pharmacy and asking for a product you urgently need. What would you do if the employee replied that that medicine was produced already three months ago, hence it is not anymore available? This is exactly what happens today entering a bookstore. The book market has become an Absurdistan in which the circulation has a book kept in the shop for as little as possible (oftentimes no more than a month). Consequently, the same publisher plans for books that must exhaust the printouts - /if/ sales actually happen - in short terms and renounces building a lasting catlogue. So although I call myself a good reader I am more and more uncomfortable entering bookstores (exceptions aside) where the tables are only covered by novelties and where I can everytime more hardly find the medicine (the book) I have a vital need for. If booksellers and publishers will not revolt against this system, mostly a consequence of the distributors' policies, it will not be a surprise if bookstores will disappear. Considering what they have become, their current form will not even be missed. [...] Giorgio Agamben 13 June 2017 Last edited by mdp; 04-03-2020 at 07:53 AM.