As We Go, So Goes the Nation?

Hold off on buying that ticket to Tulsa--

Book club met last night, valiantly gathered around a fire pit because, dang it, thermometer notwithstanding, it's summer. While the rest of America fried like the proverbial egg on a sidewalk, we counted ourselves lucky not to be wearing fleece. And I'll bet any other book club in America which tackled Edith Wharton's Summer spent way more time on all her descriptions of heat. Hot weather, hot emotions, hot times on a Mexican blanket...

But while we may not be in step with our compatriots weather-wise, we were utterly representative of publishing trends. Of the nine of us gathered, five of us had e-readers: two iPads (with Kindle for iPad), two Kindles, and one Nook. Two more had library copies, and the other two might have owned the book from high school. Now, we usually try to pick books available in paperback or at the library, but it's unusual to have a month where no one had to buy a copy.

Publishers Weekly summed up the latest AAP report this way:

All major adult print segments—hardcover, paperback and mass market—showed a decline in sales in May...While e-books showed a steep uptick of 146.9% for the month, bringing in $73.4 million in sales, adult hardcovers dropped 38.2%, adult paperbacks dropped 14.3%, and adult mass market fell 39.4%. For the calendar year, e-books brought in $389.7 million in sales, a 160.1% climb over the same period 2010.

Not only that, but Borders has finally cried uncle, which had our book club spending two minutes mourning the fact and five minutes thinking we had gift cards we needed to use up, and do you think we could pick up the Hunger Games boxed-set at the sale..?

People love bookstores (I count myself in this crowd) and bemoan their death, but how many of our reading purchases are still made in them? And I'm not talking about Amazon killing the bookstore, either. So many people I know buy all their physical books at Costco! Amazon at least offers millions of books--Costco a few hundred. Traditional publishers don't have a prayer if they're jockeying for a few spaces on the Costco table.

I don't buy many books, but I make an effort to get them at my local, independent bookseller now, if I can't get them free from the library or for less than $5 on my Kindle. I've never bought a book at Costco, just like I've never bought one at the grocery store. The thought that "everyone else is reading it" makes me less likely to pick it up. But that's just me, I've been told.

I'd love to hear from you in the Comments. How many non-gift book purchases have you made recently, and where did you get them?