There is an occupational hazard in my role as the retail liaison for BookNet Canada - this hazard is that I have to go to a lot of bookstores. This is a hazard because inevitably I end up buying far too many books. There is something seductive about seeing all of these beautifully designed objects placed in seductive positions on lovely shelves.

This past week I went to the University of Waterloo bookstore and since I was in Waterloo I later dropped in on Words Worth Books - a general trade bookstore. Although I was tempted to buy something at the University I did escape wallet intact. But I was blown away by the aggressive position that the bookstore is taking toward ebooks. The university is in an enviable ,or unenviable depending on how you look at it, position of being embedded in a highly sophisticated technology environment. This means they need to stay up on technology and to this end they have been running an espresso machine (for books not coffee) as well as selling mobile phones (they are a rogers dealer and licensed to sell!) Soon the university will be selling ipads and ereaders alongside their laptops and iphones -and oh yeah blackberries too. If the ipad had been in Canada I surely would have been hooked and bought one here.

We all know that the road is not that smooth for this kind of mix of products - books and ebooks. However early signs indicate to the managers of the store that students want bundles and that ebooks do not cannibalize pbooks but actually enhance the reading experience by making those books available at all times in all places. Who wouldn't want to be dancing up a alcohol enhanced storm at ....... and suddenly when the conversation has room to happen and the arguements begin to fly being able to whip out your medical reference text and supporting your position?

My next stop was the general trade bookstore. The difference between visiting an academic bookstore and a trade bookstore cannot be too finely stated.  I sat leisurly in an office discussing a wide range of issues at the university and then left two hours later while at the general bookstore I inserted comments in between customer transactions at the bookstore till. Comments about ebooks, or software, the digital catalogue project and more. Occasionally I just had to back away from the till to let the late lunch rush load up on books, which was quite impressive to see. I would wander the store, load up on books of my own, then back to add another point - harried bookseller saying hmmm, ok hmmm, edespair, hmmm, ok - more edespair.

But at the end of it all, and the point of this blog post, was that I left the store with four books and three of them would be highly unlikely to see any life as an ebook. In the hopes of spreading a veneer of hope for the booksellers I said as I bought the Andy Goldsworthy and the humungous kid's books that these are books that will never be ebooks. Hmmm, said the bookseller -edespair!

Posted via web from Tim's posterous