The New Age of Reading: Are Bookstores Making a Comeback? | Torg Stories Podcast

We’ve heard a lot of bad news lately about the future of reading, but it looks like bookstores are actually making a comeback.

In his New Yorker article “The New Age of Reading,” Nathan Heller introduces us to James Daunt, the bookseller who has helped revive Barnes & Noble. Daunt believes bookstores should be places of discovery, where knowledgeable employees, inviting displays, and store personality help readers find books they didn’t know they wanted.

For this week’s Torg Stories Podcast, Anne and I decided to do a little field research. We each visited bookstores—Anne in Los Angeles and me in North Carolina—to see how Daunt’s ideas played out in the real world. We came back with photographs, observations, and books we hadn’t necessarily planned to buy.

In the episode, we discuss Heller’s article, Daunt’s ideas about selling books, and what our bookstore visits revealed. Below the podcast, you’ll also find photographs from our visits, some of Daunt’s bookselling strategies, and a list of books mentioned in the article.

Our Bookstore Field Trip

In Nathan Heller’s article “The New Age of Reading,” we meet James Daunt, the man behind the comeback of Barnes & Noble. Daunt has some very specific ideas about what makes a good bookstore, and many of them have to do with how books are displayed and how people discover what they want to read.

So Anne and I gave ourselves an assignment: visit a bookstore, look around, take some pictures, and buy something.

Anne visited bookstores in Los Angeles, including Skylight Books. I visited FireLight Book & Candle in Blowing Rock and had recently visited Huzzah Books! in Boone, North Carolina. We wanted to see what we could spot in relation to what Daunt discusses in Heller’s article.

James Daunt’s Ideas for Selling Books

1. Show the covers, not just the spines. Daunt wants customers to see books rather than having to pull them off shelves to find out what they are.
2. Make the display tables inviting. The way books are arranged matters. Daunt likes displays that encourage customers to stop, look around, and discover something unexpected.
3. Pay attention to lighting. A bookstore should be bright enough that customers can easily see and appreciate the books.
4. Experiment with the shelves. Daunt has even considered the angle of the shelves and how that affects the light hitting the books.
5. Hire people who read. A knowledgeable bookseller who genuinely loves a book can make a recommendation that no algorithm can quite duplicate.
6. Give individual stores some personality. A bookstore in Los Angeles doesn’t have to look exactly like a bookstore in North Carolina. Daunt believes the people working in a store should help determine which books belong there.
7. Make browsing an experience. One of the pleasures of visiting a bookstore is finding something you weren’t looking for.
8. Give people a reason to come back. Good recommendations, interesting displays, and a welcoming atmosphere can turn a bookstore into a place people want to visit regularly.

Is Reading Really Dying?

One of the interesting tensions in Heller’s article is the difference between the gloomy headlines about reading and statistics about what is happening in bookstores.

Heller reports that print book sales in the United States have increased nearly 25 percent compared with a decade ago. He also reports that the number of independent bookstores has increased 70 percent since 2020.

Those numbers surprised us.

A Few of the Books Mentioned in “The New Age of Reading”

• Life of M – Rachel Cusk
• Middlemarch — George Eliot
• The Odyssey — Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
• The Bookshop — Andrew Pettegree
• Suite Française — Irène Némirovsky
• Costanza — Rachel Blackmore
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency — Alexander McCall Smith
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
• The Rings of Saturn — W. G. Sebald
• White Teeth — Zadie Smith
• Moby-Dick — Herman Melville
• The Magic Mountain — Thomas Mann
• Tinkers — Paul Harding

What’s Your Favorite Bookstore?

Anne and I had fun with this assignment, and we’d love to hear about your favorite bookstores.

Is there a bookstore you go out of your way to visit? Have you ever discovered a favorite book just by browsing? Or is there a book someone recommended that you never would have picked up on your own?

Leave us a comment below. We’d love to hear your stories.

Next Week on Torg Stories: The True Story Behind Argo

For our next Story Club assignment, we’re reading “The Great Escape” by Joshuah Bearman, published in WIRED in April 2007.

Read “The Great Escape” in WIRED

It’s the true story of a CIA operation to rescue six Americans hiding in Iran during the hostage crisis. The plan involved creating a fake science-fiction movie production to help get them out of the country.

The story became the basis for the 2012 movie Argo, starring and directed by Ben Affleck.

You can read along, watch along, and join us next week on the Torg Stories Podcast.

Thanks for reading and listening!