a for app, b for book

I went book shopping last weekend. It's funny how that doesn't have a ring to it in the way that clothes shopping does. Book shopping. But that's what we did. I got a few Whitcoulls book vouchers for Christmas, one from my little sister Esme, and the others from the girls. I didn't want to go to just any branch, partly because I wanted to have a good selection, and partly because I spent three years working at the big store in Queen St what seems like a lifetime ago, back when I wondered what on earth I was going to do with my life.

So into town we went. It rained all weekend, it was raining when we left. The drive right into town takes about forty minutes, and we drove in with the tires hissing on wet road all the way. I was really looking forward to having a nice time browsing and then coming out with a handful of treasures. I have good memories of working there all those years ago, and I remember clearly the layout of the fiction section where I spent most of the three years I worked there. It had a wall of fantasy and sci-fi, half a wall of classics, three stands of what we called "contemporary fiction" and a long wall filled with bestselling, money-making paperbacks. I spent my days dusting and tidying shelves, bringing armfuls of books down from upstairs and re-stocking, helping customers find or choose books, and serving at the counter when it was busy. The fiction section was tucked in behind at the back of the store, and it was a quiet oasis.

But I knew something was up as soon as we walked into the store. I could see cards where there used to be books, and cook books where there should have been NZ fiction. I walked around to where the fiction section should have been and my heart sank. It was a funny mix of business, craft and reference which melded around the corner into fiction. The entire fiction section fitted into the same floor space that the greeting cards used to take up. I found a few books I was happy with, but I didn't want to browse. It just felt wrong. We went upstairs and my unease grew. Stationery was spread out unevenly over the top floor, and sidled up to it were rows and rows of a complete mix-up of books, all with coloured stickers, most of them blue-stickered, meaning 75% off. I felt like I was at the bedside of a terminally sick relative.

Then we went up to Borders (now owned by the same company as Whitcoulls.) It was the last day of their closing down sale. If being in Whitcoulls had been like being in a hospice, then being in Borders was like standing in the desert and watching vultures consume the remains of a carcass. The once grand three level store had been reduced to one small level, and what books there were scattered on tables and stands there were random and dog-eared. I found a few things, but everyone was hungry and Abigail was starting to lose it, so we left.

I remember being horrified when I first heard about e-readers and the prediction that one day real books would be a thing of the past. I couldn't think of anything worse than no real books. How could you be truly reading without holding a book in your hands and feeling the weight of it? What was a book without pages, spine, cover?

Just before Christmas I read this post at Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef. It's about a recipe and the gorgeous Holiday Food app that the recipe came from. And it's about iPads and the creative potential that exists with apps. I was completely taken. I've got an iphone but I never used a reader on it, and I've never been interested in having an e-reader. But something in my brain came alive when I read that post. I spent the day with this bubbling going on inside, this incredible sudden alive-ness in my brain. I couldn't stop dreaming about apps.

So when Paddy came home with a surprise Christmas present for the both of us, I was petrified and desperately hopeful that he'd gone out and bought an iPad. And when my hopeful fears were fulfilled, there was no way I could tell him off for spending so much money because I was too happy. We bought the Holiday food app that introduced me to iPads, and it was even better than I imagined. It is luscious. Beautifully designed, easy to use, and full of recipes and how-to's. It has crisp, vivid photographs, and video too. I would never have thought that anything could be more beautiful than a beautiful book. But this app is even more beautiful than a book.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

At the end of our book shopping expedition I didn't feel sad any more. By the time I'd made my way round two stores, one trying to re-make itself to survive, the other already dead, I'd worked through my grief. E-books are here to stay. Within twenty years I expect that most of us will read more books in electronic form than we'll read printed on paper. But that doesn't mean it's the end of books, and it certainly doesn't mean it's the end of writers. Digital publishing means that more books will get to more people more easily. And writers will still get paid. But I don't have the same confidence for the publishing industry as we know it. Publishing survives on paper and ink and mass production and will have to re-invent itself several times over to avoid becoming a relic.

I'll tell you what I do have confidence for, and that is for small publishing houses who specialise in very special books, treasures that will be works of art in themselves, and the small but clever book stores who will sell them. I don't believe we will see the demise of all booksellers, but I do think the bell has tolled for supermarket-style booksellers, the ones who think they can sell lots of everything without really knowing the books they sell or the customers who come to buy them. The kind of stores who have no idea about range other than to make sure that they have a good stack of bestsellers and a handful of whatever has been recently published.

I hope I get more book vouchers next Christmas, but this time I'll ask for vouchers for Time Out or The Women's Bookshop, both veritable institutions who have weathered the rise and demise of the supermarket bookstore. They both have a loyal following of customers, and both have a genuine online presence. In the future stores like these will become treasuries and precious links to the past. Books will be collectors items, and families will pass them down like heirlooms. And writers? We'll keep on writing.