“Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits,” a literature and culture blog, has generated a state-by-state list of independent bookstores located in the vicinity of the Borders’ that have closed/gone out of business. I hope Champion is right that we could see a resurgence of the non-mega-store community bookstore. He writes:
We should not discount the reality that some Borders closings will have a serious impact on communities, especially in rural areas within Colorado, Florida, and Ohio. Yet my investigations have also revealed that there are a great number of independent bookstores, often in unexpected areas. These independent bookstores are run not by faceless corporations, but passionate book lovers who very often read the books they stock. Their stock is, in most cases, almost exclusively physical books.
This is probably preaching to the choir, but it’s a good resource (there are a few in my area I’ve not yet been to) and a sane and quantitative counter-offensive to those Doomsday death-of-the-book people.
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