Looking For a Good Book

I have always enjoyed bookstores. There is something about walking into a bookstore and looking at the shelves, seeing what catches your eye, and discovering a book you didn’t know you wanted to read. (You know you’ve done this!) So a book about the history of bookselling sounded like something I would enjoy, and I’m thrilled that Andrew Pettegree’s The Bookshop did not disappoint.

The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling From the Dawn of Print to the 21st Century takes a look at how books have been sold from the earliest days of printing through the bookstores we know today. What I found particularly interesting is that the modern bookstore, as we know it, is actually a fairly recent development. Who knew? For hundreds of years, books were sold in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of places, and booksellers had to continually find new ways to get books into the hands of readers.

Pettegree covers a lot of ground. There are stories of early booksellers, traveling sellers, secondhand books, books being sold in railway stations, specialty bookstores, chain stores, and eventually online bookselling. Some of these were businesses I would never have thought of as part of the history of the bookstore. I especially enjoyed seeing how some of the ideas that seem modern really aren’t all that new. Booksellers have always been experimenting with different ways to reach customers.

One of the things I liked most about the book was learning about the business side of bookselling. As readers, we tend to think about the bookstore as a place where we go to find books, but there is a tremendous amount that has to happen behind the scenes to make that possible. Distribution, pricing, competition, changing technology, and the simple problem of keeping a bookstore in business have been challenges for booksellers for centuries.

The later chapters were especially interesting to me because they deal with things that are much more familiar. The growth of chain bookstores, the struggles and successes of independent bookstores, and the rise of online bookselling show just how much the business has changed in a relatively short period of time. Amazon, e-books, and the changing ways people discover and purchase books might seem like completely new problems, but Pettegree makes it clear that bookselling has always been an industry in the process of changing.

This is a history book, and there is a lot of information here. It isn’t something I would necessarily recommend to someone who isn’t interested in books or bookstores, but for someone who enjoys reading or has ever wondered how the bookstore became what it is today, there is a lot to enjoy. I found myself frequently stopping to think about how different buying a book must have been in the past and how much and how consistently bookselling has evolved. We think of the Amazon ‘problem’ as being new, but similar issues have faced booksellers ever since books existed.

This appealed to me for the obvious reason that I enjoy books, but I’ve also worked in three different bookstores (two chains [both mentioned in this book], and a local store) and a good friend currently owns and runs a second hand bookshop.

Looking for a good book? I really enjoyed The Bookshop by Andrew Pettegee. I learned a lot about the history of bookselling, but I also enjoyed the look at the more modern aspects of bookstores and the challenges they face today. It also gave me an even greater appreciation for the places where we buy our books. If you are a book lover (and if you’re reading this review you most likely are), I think this is a book worth picking up.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars

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The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling From the Dawn of Print to the 21st Century

author: Andrew Pettegee

publisher: Profile Books

ISBN: 9781805224372

hardcover,  352 pages