Remembering Al's

(This originally appeared as a comment on a Jo Walton post at tor.com.)


Back in my teens, when I was first really getting into science fiction, the go-to used bookstore in Phoenix, AZ, was Al's Used Books. Al's was in a shabby building in a bad part of town with bad parking. But it was a big storefront; where the average used-book bookstore held maybe 10,000 or so books, Al's held 300,000. The space inside, except for narrow aisles, was completely filled with bookcases, tables, and floor-to-high-ceiling shelves on the walls. There were scattered fluorescent lights on the ceiling, but most illumination came from the big windows at the front of the store. The floors were bare concrete, no tile or carpet. If you'd asked for a cup of coffee there, they would have called the police to report the lunatic that had wandered into the store.

If you were looking for a specific title, Al's wasn't where you wanted to go. The proprietors sorted books by genre and that was it; books to be shelved were shoved into the closest available space in that genre section. When you went book-hunting at Al's, you hunted.

But for someone still fairly new to SF, looking thru those shelves and shelves and shelves of science-fiction paperbacks (hardcovers were a fairly small minority of the available selection) was kind of wonderful. Because you could go into Al's with two or three titles in mind to look for, and by the time you staggered up to the cash register several hours later you'd have made a couple of dozen serendipitous discoveries you hadn't known you wanted.

(This was in the late 60's/early 70's, long enough ago that you could eventually see almost every paperback since the start of paperback publishing a few decades earlier pass thru Al's. If not on one trip, then possibly on the next few trips there.)

I eventually got out of the (inconvenient) habit of going to Al's, shifting to newer and newer books as I got older. But I still held fond memories of the many books I'd discovered there. So it was still a shock when, sometime in the 80's, I happened to be back in that bad neighborhood on other business... and saw the storefront where Al's had been was now selling used appliances instead of used books. (Part of that shock was because I wasn't the only local SF fan who'd been a regular customer of Al's, and I would kind of have expected to hear of Al's closing a lot earlier.)

Not Al's, but this looks a lot like
the shopping-at-Al's experience.

Barnes & Noble News, and Speculation On The Future of Bookstores

News outlets report that B&N founder Leonard Riggio wants to buy out the retail assets of Barnes & Noble.

It strikes me that this could portend the return of "catalog stores", the way department stores (Sears, Wards) marketed themselves outside big urban areas many, many years ago.  These were smaller storefronts in smaller communities.  There might be some samples of popular goods, or even minature models of large items like furniture, but it particuarly gave people a venue where they could browse the big catalogs offering thousands of items (or come in with a list from their home-delivered catalogs) and order what they wanted.

With bookstores, it might work with a combo-type store.  Keep the coffee/cafe areas, where people can sit and relax.  Browsing books might be done in a variety of ways:  Bestsellers and highly marketed items might have the full books available, for people to be able to buy immediately.  Publishers might provide sample chapbooks containing anywhere from a few to 50 pages, excerpts from books being pushed but not as hard as the bestsellers.  There could be racks of publicity sheets for still other books for customers to browse through.

There'd also be plenty of electronic displays and kiosks.  Cafe tables would have built-in displays, or wi-fi for customers' own devices.  This enables still more browsing, with touch-screen access to further information or sample excerpts.

One easy thing to do with those displays is to display a shelf of books SPINE-OUT.  One of the annoying things about shopping for books online is that the screens always show the covers of the books.  That's one of the reasons I stil like to go to brick-and-mortar bookstores, where the vast majority of books are shelved spine-out.  When you're a frequent or complusive reader (and there are still quite a few of us), you have an awareness of what's going on in your preferred genres or areas of interest.  At a regular bookstore, I can browse through thousands of spine-out books, looking for familiar or interesting authors and titles, in a short period of time.  Doing the same with online, cover-out, displays takes... a LONG time.

Using touch-screen technology, you could touch a title on that spine-out display and convert it to a full-cover image.  Provide a button on that full-cover image, touch, and you get a more in-depth screen with jacket copy, reviews, excerpts, etc.

You choose a book you want, then what?  If you're a regular customer, you might have a customer card with a bar code/magnetic strip.  Have a card reader built into the display, and just swipe your card.  If you want an e-book version, and your portable device is wi-fi enabled, you can download it on the spot, with your account automatically billed.  If not, or you want a physical copy, the display might also be able to send your purchase info electronically to the front desk, or print out a physical receipt containing a bar code for your purchase.

You go to the front desk.  For e-books, the clerk hooks up your device to their server and downloads the book for you.  You're done and on your way.

If you want a hard-copy version of the book, these near-future bookstores will also have machines like the Exprsson Book Machine, capable of printing out and binding a hard-copy with 5-10 minutes.  Place your order, enjoy a cup of coffee and a doughnut, pick up your completed book, and you're done.

I'm not certain if this will best happen with a central, controlling retailer, or with franchise-type operations, or by a return of independent booksellers.  (There'd be smaller overhead for square footage, but larger overhead for equipment.)

The near-future bookstore wil need to combine the best attributes of both brick-and-mortar bookstores and the online book sites.  I think the above description comes pretty close.