Monday, January 12, 2009

The course of progress ...

... “The tap-tap-tapping of the typewriter pays…”

In 1997, I wrote a piece for The Inquirer about how the Internet was proving to be a boon for used-book stores. Here's how the story ended:

The effect of the Internet on books and reading is turning out to be different from what many expected it would be. Powell's Kanth Gopalpur says that at the American Booksellers Association convention a couple of years ago all the talk was about ``the demise of the book and about how everything was going to be online. But when I was there last year, everybody was talking about the Internet and how it was going to change the book business. ''

Eileen Serxner, the Bala Cynwyd dealer, thinks she knows what the nature of that change will be: ``In the years to come, that's how people will buy books.''

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