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Cody's Books: RIP

2008-06-22 00:25:48.191532+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

Cody's Books: RIP:

The Board of Directors of Cody's Books made this difficult decision after years of financial distress and declining sales.

According to Cody's president, Hiroshi Kagawa, "[It] is a heartbreaking moment .. In the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody's, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody's. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it."

[ related topics: Books ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2008-06-22 03:02:29.60773+00 by: ebradway [edit history]

Unfortunately, there isn't a larger version of it on the web yet, but the current cover of The New Yorker is very apropos.


#Comment Re: made: 2008-06-23 03:16:17.368438+00 by: Dan Lyke

More of the same in the SFGate article.

I've been finding more and more of my reading on the net. I think the days of the dead trees format are numbered, and given that bookstores long ago stopped really putting heart into selection beyond the big publishers (although Cody's was quite a bit better than most), if I'm finding authors on the net and reading them on the net, there's no room for the bookstore.

Which is roughly what I said nine years ago.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-06-23 14:16:12.635484+00 by: ebradway

I'll argue against the end of dead-tree books until electronic readers get much, much better (that even the Sony). But I think there is hope for avoiding big publishers.

Asha and I are in the last revision of her salad cookbook. We are able to print one-off full-color books via Lulu.com for under $20 with no setup. Black and white printing is much cheaper. For color, it's actually cheaper than I can make on my own printer and it's a real book. So maybe the next step in the evolution of books is e-books you download and if you want a tree, you send the file to print-on-demand to be made into a book.

But the real question is: Is there still value to browsing?

I definitely do not find work-related material by browsing. But pleasure reading frequently happens by chance. However, I'd be more influenced by recommendations that by chance stumbling.