I say that these old fellows are the very backbone of the book trade. As they drop off one by one, like leaves from a tree, there is a gap which no modern pushful young salesman can fill, and they leave a memory that is a good deal more fragrant than the smelly hair-oil of those Smart Alecs who come asking me for a job in the confident tone of one who is quite prepared to teach me my own business. I salute old McKerrow and his colleagues as they pass from our midst.
(Augustus Muir, The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller)
Old McKerrow and his colleagues have largely passed from our midst, but a few of them remain. What they've been replaced by, though, is not Smart Alecs, slick with smelly hair oil, but a faceless behemoth that has sucked the humanity out of second-hand (and new) bookselling. The backbone of the book trade of which Muir speaks is all but gone, and the business is in danger of becoming an inveterbrate. I write this just a few hours after an old friend from Edinburgh dropped in to say hello with her elderly father. He wandered through the shop with a look of nostalgia, occasionally touching a book, and looking wistfully around with the amazement of a child who has entered a sweetshop for the first time. As they were leaving to go for lunch with some mutual friends, he came to the counter and said: "You know, Edinburgh used to be filled with places like this. I spent my life wandering about them and building up my library. I bought a sixteenth-century copy of Holinshed's Chronicle -- you have a later edition, I see -- in a bookshop in Leith in the 1940s. I remember it clearly. They're all gone now, all but a small handful.
Collecting books was clearly an important part of his life, and without bookshops there is little joy to be found in this pursuit. The serendipity of finding something you didn't know even existed, or asking a bookseller what they could recommend on a particular subject, isn't really possible online yet, although I expect it will come. A couple of years ago I approached Napier University with an idea for that very thing: a 3D model of the shop through which avatars could wander, controlled by online customers, and look at the actual stock on the shelves and even interact with one another. They told me that it would require technology that has yet to be developed. In a way I'm glad it isn't there yet, but I doubt if it will be long before it is. Still, the smell, the atmosphere and the human interaction will remain the exclusive preserve of bricks-and-mortar bookshops. Perhaps, like vinyl and 35mm film, there might be a small revival, enough to keep a few of us afloat for a bit longer.
