The economic recession has touched all aspects of our lives including the book publishing industry. A blog in the Huffington Post describes how retail giants such as Amazon, WalMart, and Target are selling books such as Dean Koontz's "Breathless" and Stephen King's "Under the Dome" for prices as low as $9. As a result, small independent bookstores are being undercut and forced to go out of the business.
I find this situation regrettable since the local community bookstores have catered to a small but loyal niche market. For literary art to flourish , we need the voice of new creative authors to be heard . If only the most popular authors are being sold than fresh, innovative perspectives will be shut out of the market. The article states that only 1% of authors sell 30% of books. This statistic should alarm anyone seeking new ideas and voices in the literary field.
I work in the newspaper industry and have observed firsthand the decline of journalism to new media and technology. The publishing industry is at the similar crisis if mass merchandisers who know nothing about books are allowed to drive out the small independent stores. The loss will be felt not only among talented fledging writers who go undiscovered, but by the book buying public in every local community.
As the holiday season approaches, we must patronize the small independent booksellers so that these vital connections to our communities are not lost to mass merchandisers interested in profits rather than books.
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