I Destroy Bookstores

The brick-and-mortar bookstores are closing down one by one, and it's my fault.

Well, partly my fault.

I love going into bookstores. I'll browse for hours, wandering from section to section, pulling book after book of the shelf. Then I'll put them back. I rarely buy anything except a coffee.

When I do buy, I buy online. Meanwhile, the local bookstore has to pay its lease and employees with revenue I'm not giving it. No wonder they're going away.

It's like the airlines: we moan about horrible food and and that we're being treated like cattle instead of passengers. Yet we buy the rock-bottom cheapest tickets that we can find online with little regard for anything but price.

What are the airlines supposed to do? To stay in business, they have to cut services so they can compete on price. If we passengers truly cared about service, we'd fork over the extra coins for the extra perks.

I expect that the large bookstores will slowly disappear, while smaller stores with low overhead and maybe an inventory consisting of used books might survive a little longer at least on coffee revenue. We'll wistfully recall the old days when we could leaf through books before buying--while clicking the "Add to cart" button on Amazon.