The Dying Christian Bookstore
Frank Turk has written a guest post on Between Two Worlds concerning the “dying” Christian bookstore. The Christian bookstore closest to our home has recently closed, at least anecdotally confirming the observation that these bookstores are in trouble. As I read Turk’s expanation of why this is happening, I found myself in agreement with many of his insights. Here is a pertinent excerpt, comparing the average Christian bookstore to Barnes & Nobles:
Listen: the fact that a CBA store cannot be seen as credible to the average customer unless it has one of those execrable plastic junk spinners — home of the plastic fish — should tell us something about why people shop there.
Let’s make a quick comparison: think about Barnes & Noble for a second. When you walk into B&N, what’s the first thing you see? You see books. Books are everywhere. I grant you that the first pile of books is usually closeouts, and the next pile of books is usually NYT best sellers at 30% off, but when you walk in, you see books. B&N is about books.
Now, why are they about books? Think about their annoying but usually-helpful staff for a second: you hate to ask any of them for help in spite of their usual helpfulness because they think they are very smart. B&N is all about books because books are for smart people. They employ people who think they are smart, and part of the thing going on there is that you could be more like them. So pay $5 for a coffee, full retail for all our books except the 25 titles on sale until they fall off the NYT best seller list, or maybe buy some of our phony “bargain” books which we publish ourselves in Asia to cut out the publisher and pretend we’re doing you a favor, and buy a discount card which you have to really, really use to get back, and voilà: you can be smart like us.
My experiences in most Christian bookstores have been in accordance with Turk’s description. One must wade through lots of fluff to arrive at anything of intellectual substance. Turk concludes:
I’m a Christian bookstore owner, and let me tell you something: the only bookstore I would miss if it closed would be mine — warts and all. We are hardly perfect, but we have striven over 5 years in business to show people that their faith can be more than a scripture on a mint. God forbid that our faith, and our choices to shore up our faith, are ever linked to the frivolous and the consumable. Our faith is not in something that moth and rust will devour, and if we have made it such a thing, may God have mercy on us.