Doing Things the Old-Fashioned Way

I was reading the news this morning when I was hit with a bit of nostalgia. Vertigo Books is a bookstore in College Park where I spent my undergrad years and it was the type of small-time bookstores that are quickly disappearing across the landscape of our country. It was a small out of the way place where they may not have had a coffee bar or a music and movies section but it was a small and comforting place that many people visited throughout their time at College Park. The bookstore originally opened in Dupont Circle and then moved to the Maryland suburbs around 1992 and since then it had continued to see a steady stream of regular customers which unfortunately began to dwindle in recent years. Now it seems that the downward trend has meant an end to Vertigo Books.

In the face of bookselling giants like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the like offering up books at a very low cost it has become increasingly difficult for smaller booksellers to sustain themselves. In the cases of companies like Amazon, they not only offer up books from their own stores but from groups of authorized booksellers that help keep their virtual inventories stocked but without having to bear the cost of holding on to inventory and having it sit for a very long time. Compound that with the fact that they don't have to charge sales tax and it becomes quickly apparent that these online and large volume sellers are effectively squeezing the smaller guys out of the competition.

Now I'm a big time book reader. I literally cannot go to sleep without having read for at least ten minutes and in college, when I wasn't studying for class or attending class, I could be found reading books at one of many places where I would sequester myself to read. If not reading then browsing at the bookstore was another favorite pasttime of mine and the cozy familiar atmosphere of a place like Vertigo Books or the Book Nook (another College Park store) were the types of places where I could literally spend hours without ever getting bored. But there's been a fundamental shift in recent years.

Slowly the nature of buyers out there is changing and going are the days where buyers would want to hold and feel their purchases in their hands before making a decision. I guess it makes sense that you wouldn't really need to hold a book in your hands before making the decision as to whether or not you would want to purchase it, but there's still something to holding a book in your hand and reading it. Sure there are newer inventions out there that can allow you to carry the equivalent of two hundred novels in something the size of a small notebook but still, I think I'm old-fashioned enough to want to read a book in my hand rather than stare at a screen. I do enough of that at work as it is!

But casualties like Vertigo Books also has an impact on the local community. Money generated by the bookstore, like many other businesses in a community, often give money back to the community through taxes or such and it helps keep the local economy bolstered. When businesses such as these go away then the burden falls on a shrinking group of responsible people and pretty soon you are stuck with very few paying for a lot of people. But even more so, for me, it has meant the loss of something that signals continued change. I remember growing up and enjoying trips to the bookstore. I can still remember hunting for books I liked and getting excited at the prospect of finding new books to read. Maybe it is a very nerdy and bookish excitement but it was something that has shaped who I have become. I would hate to think that future generations wouldn't have this simple pleasure if stores like Vertigo Books continue to go the way of the dodo.