Bookselling utopia?

16Feb08

The Internet definitely isn’t going away. The decisions made six or so years ago, at the end of the dotcom boom are now being rolled back, Waterstone’s parting from Amazon, Borders finally forging ahead with its stand alone e-commerce site, even WHSmith seems to have discovered it still owns a web site.

I wrote a piece for The Bookseller in early 2002 bemoaning what I saw as a missed opportunity for the trade. A trade that I see as unique in its love of literature and desire to delight customers with books – potentially meeting its perfect match in the internet, in enabling it to deliver the vast range of titles and the connection to every conceivable reader.

However even with the renewed vigour and enthusiasm seen within the business for the web, I feel we’re still letting Amazon define the terms. For Amazon it was always about the catalogue not the book.

Potentially the Internet really could offer what Jorge Luis Borges saw as the utopian dream of the Total Library – or at least a window onto it.

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