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Web allows booksellers to flourish

24.04.07

Times columnist Michael Gove says that the internet is not to blame for the decline in independent bookshops--instead he points the finger at supermarkets. "The web has become a catch-all villain for any individual or movement unhappy with trends in modern life, a handy focus for all the discontents of globalisation, up there with Tesco as a disrupter of the settled, the small-scale and human-centred."

"But while the jury may be out on Tesco, the internet deserves to be acquitted. Certainly on the count of grievous bodily harm to the book trade. The truth is that the internet now allows many antiquarian and secondhand dealers to flourish even more successfully than before, by allowing them to reach a far larger market than just the passing trade provided by Conservative MPs making time en route to a speaking engagement in Worthing to see if they have any Bulldog Drummond first editions."

"No, the real revolution altering the balance for independent bookshops is not the web but another bogey of our time — the supermarket."

Times

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